吾爾開希的流亡筆記

The dream is still there
on top of the marble of the Avenue
without the dreamers around
and they will be quite
for my life long, I am the surviver
because they need not to repeat
when echo don’t dissolve
and it will one day
become solid in the hand of a Chinese girl
she is more beautiful than the porcelain doll
then I can let go of them,
dreamers of Tienanmen Square
we will understand the smiles on our faces
and we will be quite
unlike the night
stay with me now
stay with me

Written in June 1st, 2009

As an ethnic Uyghur, I am horrified by the riots, deaths, injuries and arrests – the worst military-civilian clashes in modern times – in Urumqi, the city my parents call home. I have lost contact with them, and so – like everybody else now – I rely on reports filtering out of Xinjiang for news of what is happening there. I have to accept the government figures of 156 people dead, more than 1,000 injured and more than 1,400 arrests.

Of course, I am skeptical about such figures. As a student leader in the 1989 student protests, I am still waiting for reliable government figures as to how many people died on June 4. It makes me wonder why it is today – when so little has changed politically in my homeland and I, like many others, remain in exile –the numbers are so high … and so exact?

The only conclusion I can come to – even if the real numbers are even higher – is that the Chinese government wants to send a zero-tolerance, brutal message to the Uyghur people of Xinjiang, the greater Chinese population and to the outside world that Uyghur dissent will be met with force. Beijing also no doubt expects that, when it releases statistics on the civilians it has shot in the streets, it will also have the broad support of China’s predominantly Han population. When Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang gave a press conference denouncing the Uyghur protests as “organised violent crime … instigated and directed from abroad, and carried out by outlaws in the country”, he showed a video as proof with what I can only describe as a smirk on his face, giving the impression that we are now dealing with a China that no longer cares about global opinion.

The broad consensus in China is that the Han Chinese occupation of formerly Uyghur and Tibetan territories has brought prosperity and liberty from feudal regimes to the subjects of “liberation”. In this sense, all opposition to Chinese cultural dominance and rule is viewed as a kind of betrayal. In fact, a nationalist netizen made precisely this point in a riposte to my blog on the recent events in Urumqi. The Han people, he pointed out, are the dominant force and can bring a better life to the Uyghur.

I replied that I was skeptical of arguments of this kind. If it was a logical position, we might argue that we would have been better off supporting the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s. The Japanese too promised us a better life – and, who knows, perhaps, they might have been able to provide it.

The dominant Han culture of China is quick to react to any perceived attack on national pride – which is often conflated with ethnic notions of what it means to be “Chinese”   – and the Japanese invasion is currently more emblematic of national humiliation even than the Opium Wars,  which, incidentally, is another unsettled grudge for the nationalists of China. Despite this, the average Chinese has a patronising attitude to the “minorities” it brings enlightenment and prosperity to. There is very little – let’s be honest, none – sensitivity about ethnic sensitivities for minority ethnic groups that feel politically oppressed and squeezed out of opportunities by the mounting numbers of Han “immigrants” who, in cities like Urumqi and Lhasa, have come to outnumber the indigenous populations.

I live in exile because I stood up for political reform in 1989. I regret my exile. I am in pain because I am not able to be with my parents in this difficult time. But I still believe I believe democracy is an eventual means to freedom from political oppression. I also believe that democracy means the broad representation of all interest groups. I believe democracy should not serve the interests of nationalism.

I do not argue that independence for Xinjiang or Tibet is the answer to our problems. But I will argue that ethnic self-determination is. By this, I mean  a fundamental  right: that the ethnically distinct Uyghurs, like the ethnically distinct Tibetans – and I would argue the same for the culturally and politically dissenting people of Taiwan, the country I call home – have the right to decide whether they want to be part of China.

My people in Xinjiang have never been offered this choice. Those that live in Urumqi now live in a city that is 70 per cent Han Chinese. They were in hiding Tuesday as thousands of armed Chinese roamed the streets singing the Chinese national anthem and crying “exterminate the Uyghurs”. The government response to the Uyghur explosion of frustration that sparked this crisis – for having become politically oppressed and treated as a minority in their homeland – was to label them “separatists” and “terrorists” and to shoot them in the streets.

I am of China. I was born in modern China. I once struggled publically to make it a better place. But I cannot be a nationalist in country where nationalism trumps democracy – a place where nationalism is an excuse for brutal suppression of protest and dissent.

The Uyghur people are a politically oppressed minority – and, of that political oppression, cultural and economic oppression follows. I cannot help but think that the prompt government release of casualty numbers in Urumqi reflects an official attitude that the indigenous people of Xinjiang are not entitled to even the rights of regular Chinese citizens – or, to put it more simply, the domestic outrage they deserve.

I can only hope that, as the foreign reporters that the Chinese government took the highly unusual move of allowing to witness an “internal conflict” file their reports, the world understands that China has effectively declared war on an oppressed minority group within its own borders.

This article is published July 8th, 2009, The Guardian

Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the bloodshed in Beijing, when I first went into hiding, my mother had a stroke. It paralyzed one side of her face. I was 10 years in exile before my brother told me. I do not regret what we did in Beijing that year the Berlin wall fell, when there was so much hope of change in the air, but the deaths have haunted me for 20 years, and I want to hug my mother and tell her. “sorry”.
I can’t. China will not issue passports for my parents. China will not allow me to go home. It is difficult to explain the feelings I have at this moment to a world that has come to see China as a responsible member of the global community – the motor of global economic growth, the miracle that will re-jump-start global capitalism. But the feelings can largely be summed up as disappointment – disappointment that China’s “progress” has been so one-sided.
The crime we committed in 1989 was to hope for change. In 1919, students campaigned for change, for a China that was genuinely part of the modern world. In 1989, we did the same. In 2009, change has come to China. It is a country awash with foreign investment – a country that is superficially the same place that readers of Wall Street Journal live in. I have not seen it with my own eyes, but I know that China today has Seven-11s and Metros and malls and discos and outlets for Italian brand names … Hooters. China has walked in space.
In part, the change we hoped for has happened. When the people of Beijing took to the streets in 1989 –however people might read it today – they were acting out of frustration. In 1989, when I went into exile, I said the reason for the protests initially was that China’s youth wanted Nikes, wanted to be able to go to a bar with their girlfriend. Such things were not possible in the China I grew up in. They are possible today, largely because China’s university students rose up in 1989, and the workers’ unions and the common people joined them. The government realized It had no choice but to liberalize the economy, if it was going to keep popular discontent at bay.
In short, 20 years on, I believe the protests in of 1989 were a kind of tragic success. China got its Nikes and discos. Unfortunately, China did not get the other change we yearned  for – political reform. For many years, I have been of the opinion that a deal was struck with the people of China. The deal was economic prosperity in exchange for political quiescence and continued and unchallenged one-party rule. For years, I have been describing it as a “lousy deal”. But today, on the anniversary of the bloodshed that ended the protests, I would like to add that it is an illusory deal. 
For the past decade or more we have been hearing about China’s development. But shopping malls and designer brands that come at the expense of an open society is not, to my mind, development at all. What is more, China’s illusion of development comes at a cost not only to the Chinese people but to the global community. The result is that the world’s third largest economy is in the hands of a leadership structure that does not speak the same language as the rest of the modern world. Whatever critics might say the state of democratic politics in the rich world, neither the West, nor Japan – nor even Taiwan – routinely imprisons and exiles open debate.
China is with us on a daily basis – in television news reports, in the newspapers, in blogs and in movies. It is in your living room. But politically China is a man in an ill-fitting suit and he does not speak your language. He will not until he learns that there can be no true development until open debate and dissenting opinions are essential ingredients in the emergence of a developed society.
In 1989, as I said, we wanted Nikes and discos. But we also wanted to belong to a country that truly lived up to the heritage it is so proud of – a great nation with an important role to play on the world stage. We wanted China to allow open debate about its future, and we wanted to be part of that future. This has still not happened. If it had, I and all the many exiles like me, would be allowed to come home. At the very least my parents would have been issued passports and I would be able give my mother the hug and the apology she deserves for all the heartache and anxiety I have put her through.

This article is published today, 2009,06,04 at the Wall street Journal Asia

Leaving in exile for nearly 20 years, I wonder all the time how much I can be the same with my fellow Chinese left behind, classmates, childhood buddies, or just average Lao zhang and Xiao Wang walking on the street of Beijing.

I know the difference must be enormous. 20 years living aboard have given me opportunities to learn so much more than I would ever have if I spent the last 20 years living in China.

Few days ago, I was surfing the internet, looking for some old time literature and music. I was searching for those that made some strong impacts to me twenty some years ago. Novel such as 北方的河, 海水下面是泥土 or an old song from a TV series. They are a little old now as they are not the most hit item on the net, digging them out can be a labor. The return from the search-engine on those entries often direct me to BBS where people talked about or, doing the same, searching for those. Messages left on those BBS have convinced me for one thing. The similarities of thought on those are quite amazing. Maybe we lived through a time period when accessible cultural materials are so limited, our focus were often directed to same items; maybe we lived through a time period when surrounding are so challenging, our outlooks were often shaped to same types; maybe we lived through a time period when the hope are so faint, the quest for it were often merged to same path.

I found amazing similarities in the ideas that was buried in very different choice of words between myself and those who left behind, classmates, childhood buddies, or just average Lao Zhang and Xiao Wang walking on the street of Beijing. I found these similarities soothing, to an anxious heart worries about exile may change too much.

If there is no surprise, Ma will become the
president of Taiwan
in little over a week, and resume his office in two months.  With all the problems he is facing, Taiwan’s international
status will be a more and more important issue he must deal with.

 

Taiwanese people want a membership in the UN, in
what way, with what name maybe hard to agree, but hoping for the government to
do something about it is overwhelmingly coherent.

 

China, on the other hand, yelling anti succession, blocking
all access of Taiwan on its attempt to claim its name on any international
arena, not only on UN membership but also WHO and many others.  Any time Taiwan
wants to use the name Taiwan
or ROC will be boycott by the Chinese government.

 

The West, worry they may piss off the government
that controls the largest economic engine of the world, took the easiest stand,
repeat one of the most out dated diplomatic statement of the time: “Status Quo!”

 

Taiwan
is an obsessed democracy.  Even if Ma
wants to ignore this demand of people on having an appropriate international
status Taiwan
deserves, the opposition will make sure that voice will be heard.  This will become a big pressure to Ma for
sure.

 

Is this a solvable trigonometric challenge?

 

If one pays enough attention, one would
understand the true interest of all three parties that hide behind the tumultuous
and hostile and tough voices and actions.

 

What Taiwan really wants is dignity,
safety, equality and participating opportunity.  Do they really want to declare as an
independent country?  Many politicians
argue that that is the only way to secure those wishes.  China’s military threat make people hesitate
about taking any action toward that directions, but at the same time, it makes
people believe more and more in some day it maybe the only way.  Military threat aside, the cultural tie and
economical interests are playing no small part in peoples mind.  In sum, people in Taiwan are undecided about weather
they should claim independent or not.

 

That is actually the only thing China cares.

 

It should be understood that China don’t really want reunification with Taiwan, but they sure can not tolerate Taiwan
to become independent.  This may sound
funny or even contradictory to many who don’t understand the totalitarian
thinking.  To the Chinese regime, to
reunify with Taiwan would only be extra credit, and nobody will be blamed if
that is not done, because the separated status was passed down from the last
generation or even from Mao time.  The
current regime does not have any responsibility of carrying out the
reunification that was not done by Mao or Deng. 
However, it was also seen to the regime that neither Mao nor Deng lost Taiwan.
 Whoever losses Taiwan while in the office will
face tremendous challenge.  It was just a
status of temporarily non-unified.  That
is the status quo China
wants.

 

The West’s true interest now is to have a stable
cross strait relation.  At the beginning,
US and the West supported Taiwan
being an allied-force against communism. 
Time goes by, for other interest, earlier geopolitics, now economy, the
West betray Taiwan.  But after all, in the mean time this allied
force developed into a democracy.  It
became an inconvenient fact that Taiwan
is democracy and China
is not, and they have to take sides from time to time.

 

Given these are the true interests; is there a
chance to find a solution that satisfies all parties?  The answer is yes.  It is not easy and will take quite some
creative thinking, but, yes.

 

The key relay on the fact China wants nothing more
than Taiwan forsake the possibility of Claiming independent; and in the myths
of “One China” to be respected that was created over the long time of
propaganda and self-hypnotism.  If it is guaranteed
that Taiwan
will not claim independent and agree on some terminology of “One China”,
Chinese regime is willing to give up so much on the negotiation table.

 

Assume there is a negotiation table, whereas China has the economic, military and diplomatic upper-hand,
it may seems Taiwan
has little bargaining chips.  But in
fact, giving China those
words of guarantee is the biggest chips Taiwan has.

 

If Taiwan
can get dignity, security, equality and opportunity to participate in the world
arena in exchange of those wording, in my humble opinion, this is a good
trade.  The only issue left is, last but
not the least, the trust issue.  Lack of
trust have brought China to use military threat against Taiwan, blockage in all
international arena against Taiwan;  lack
of trust have made Taiwanese people not being able to sense with the Chinese
regime.  And that is an issue can be
solved by international involvement.  If
the deal is endorsed and guaranteed by the West, if Taiwanese people are
convinced that they can actually get what they truly want without worrying
Chinese may change their mind after they have entered and agreement, they will
take this deal.

 

Let us countentplay a little further, after a
dramatic hand shaking between Hu Jin-Tao and Ma Ying-Jeou in Washington DC or
Paris, the communiqué was announced, and it reads like this: “The two
governments on the two side of the Taiwan straits meet today and agrees that
there is only one China in the world. 
The two governments are equal brotherly members of this one China;  The two government declare that under this
condition, they will never use military force against each other;  In the world, the two governments will support
each other in all areas according to the best interest to their people,
including United Nation; ”  Following the
communiqué, PRC announce full military adjustment and remove of all missiles
against Taiwan, and form a cooperation mechanism with Taiwan defense force for military
coordination;  Taiwan’s UN membership is
agreed by all nations with no obstacle;  State-head
of Taiwan jointly take part in all international occasions side by side with
their Chinese counter part…

 

Of course, this is only a countemplay.  But the logic is not.  Ma Ying-Jeou has a chance, a genuine chance
to realize this.  This maybe is the only
chance too.  Even if the development of
history sets a different course, it is beneficial to understand this chance
truly does exist.

When the Summer Olympics take place in Beijing next year, I will
not be there. The obvious reason for this is because I was a student leader in
the protests of 1989 that resulted in what is now often referred to as the June
4 Tiananmen Massacre, and have been in exile ever since. But the less obvious
corollary of this is that I will not be there because China is not ready to embrace the
Olympic spirit.

 

I think it is safe to say that, if the
Chinese government were ready to embrace the Olympic spirit of unity,
inclusiveness and equality, all of us who are exiled from our homeland would
like nothing else than to be in Beijing next year. After all, it would be an
opportunity, not only to enjoy the Olympic festivities, but also to be reunited
with out families. The fact that this will not be the case makes a mockery of China’s
“One World One Dream” Olympics slogan, and its pretensions to being a mature
member of the global community.

 

Mine is simply one of countless stories of
exile from the world’s fastest growing economy, but I think, in view of Beijing’s triumphalism
about hosting the world’s premier sporting event, my exile and what it means
for me personally is worth mentioning. Not only will it not be possible for me
attend the Beijing Olympics, but the Beijing
government will continue to hold the family I have not seen in 18 years
hostage, and will no doubt continue to refuse to issue them passports so that
we can be reunited in a foreign country.

 

I am sure that many people who attend the
Olympics next year will be aware to some degree or other that, despite the
newly sanitized streets of Beijing (involving the eviction of 1.5 million
people, according to the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions), the
awe-inspiring sporting facilities, and the grand panoply of the ceremonies,
there is a dark side to the festivities. But, as the International Olympic
Committee did when it awarded the event to Beijing,
they will have decided that China
has still made great strides towards becoming a better place than it was in the
summer of 1989, and it deserves a chance.

 

I wish this were true. If it were, I would
be joining family and friends in Beijing
next year.

 

The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics are
regularly described as “China’s
coming out party”. Nineteen years after the world watched the student
occupation of Tiananmen Square, the subsequent decade-and-a-half of
record-breaking economic growth is poised to culminate in a spectacle
calculated to awe the world and marginalize the hecklers who point to China’s
poor human rights record, its petrodollar complicity in genocide in Darfur, its
occupation of Tibet and its aggressive stance on unification with Taiwan, as
evidence that China is not yet mature enough to host the world’s most coveted
sporting event.

 

Politics have been an issue at nearly every
Olympics since the 1936 Berlin
meet, when athletes were expected to shout “sieg
heil” as they marched past Adolf Hitler’s chancellor’s box. Germany and
Japan were not invited, and the USSR failed to show, at the 1948 London
Olympics; 11 Israeli athletes died as a result of an attack by Palestinian
terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics; and more than 60 nations boycotted the
1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But, it
seems likely that the Beijing Olympics, despite the hecklers, will go ahead
without any boycotts, and – if Beijing has its
way – without incident in Beijing
itself. 

 

The reason for this, I believe, is related
to the complexities of the West’s perceptions of and relations with China.
A strong case can be made that the protests leading up to June 4 in 1989 were instrumental in opening
up China,
forcing the government to acquiesce to the demands of an educated emergent
middle class. But the suppression of the protests came at enormous cost to China
on the world stage, and the government has been paying for it ever since in
terms of western scrutiny of its human rights record.

 

At the same time, however, when Deng
Xiaoping toured southern China
in 1992 and called on Chinese to go into business “even more boldly” and “more
quickly” to create a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics, the
West put its post-Tiananmen qualms behind it and poured into China with a flood of foreign
investment. This is perfectly understandable. Since the Opium Wars, the West’s
relationship with China
has hinged on how to inveigle the world’s most populous nation into opening its
doors to the global economy.

 

Fifteen years on, China has become an important motor
of global economic growth. In this way there are two opposing western views of China:
the one-party state that denies basic human rights and imprisons or exiles
dissenters, and global powerhouse, home to 1.3 billion potential consumers.

 

When Beijing
hosts the Olympics next year, it is the latter view it is looking to capitalize
on. Despite the relentless trickle of negative press about China – the
disparities of wealth and poverty, environmental degradation, suppression of
human rights – over the past decade the world has beat a path to China’s door,
and the government in Beijing sees the Olympics as an opportunity to put on a
spectacle that will finally eclipse the world’s lingering images of bloodshed
in the capital.

 

It is very possible that government will be
successful in this endeavor, but as one of countless exiles from modern China
who will not be able to be there in person, the summer of 2008 promises to be a
major betrayal of the Olympic spirit.

 

For Pierre de
Coubertin, who was responsible for the revival of the Olympic Games in 1900,
one of the four principles of the games was to achieve a truce, “a four-yearly
festival of the springtime of mankind.” I find this idea of a “truce”
interesting because the reality is that Beijing
has no plans for a truce of any kind. The intention is for Beijing
to parade itself to the rest of the world as the China everybody doing business with
it and the government that rules by slogans and an iron fist would like to
pretend it is: an open, harmonious and peaceful society that is taking its rightful
place as a global leader.

 

The idea behind this four-yearly festival
is that the world put its conflicts behind it and comes together in a spirit of
unity. In Beijing,
that will not happen because any Chinese national who has a grievance with the
country’s one-party government will have no part to play in the celebrations.
That list includes anyone who campaigns for greater autonomy in Tibet, my
homeland of Xinjiang, my adopted home of Taiwan, anyone who has struggled to
expand participatory politics in China or to have the right to worship as they
choose, or anyone who has dissented publicly from whatever the current Party
line happens to be.

 

There should be no mistake about this. China’s
“coming out party” is nothing of the sort. The party in Beijing will be the Chinese Communist Party’s
“coming out party”. This government has long seen participating in the Olympics
as a legitimizing maneuver, not only on the world stage, but also in terms of
winning glory for the Chinese nation, playing on nationalism and simultaneously
conflating China with the one-party state that rules it – as the famous saying
goes, without the Communist Party, there would be no modern China.

 

The state has devoted enormous resources
into transforming itself into an effective sporting nation. It was not until the Los
Angeles games in 1984, that the PRC managed to win its
first gold. But by the 2004 games in Athens, China was in third place behind the United States and Russia, sweeping up 32 golds.
Winning the right to host the Olympics, then, is the final act in this more
than two-decade crusade by the CCP to achieve legitimacy through sporting
prowess.

 

Of course, the Chinese government itself
knows that its motives have little resonance with the Olympic spirit, and as a
result it is cloaking the event in the familiar, fuzzy rhetoric of unity we see
in the official slogan, “One World, One Dream”, which the official website
helpfully explains, “conveys the lofty ideal of the
people in Beijing as well as in China to share the global community and
civilization and to create a bright future hand in hand with the people from
the rest of the world.” Similar sentiments can be seen in the website’s
explanation of the Beijing Olympics emblem – a calligraphic seal that features
a wriggly human being who appears to be dancing, and which symbolizes a China
that is “opening its arms to welcome the rest of the
world to join the Olympics, [in] a celebration of ‘peace, friendship and
progress of mankind’.”

 

If this is the message
to world, at home the Chinese government is using the Olympics to repress
dissidents and activists, while at the same time using the games to more firmly
establish the legality and validity of its rule. The terrible pity of this is
that the Party is exploiting national pride, and denying the Chinese people of
the right to enjoy the true spirit of the Olympics. Meanwhile, the world’s
participation in the event is an act of collusion with a political party that
in recent years has presided over a remarkable period of economic growth, but
has nevertheless throughout the past six decades since 1949 been responsible
for far more setbacks than it has successes. It also continues to be as
oppressive as it was when I was forced into exile in 1989, despite the
foreign-invested veneer of westernization that can be seen in the major cities.

 

When China made its most recent Olympics
bid, it promised the IOC and the international community that it was prepared
to make substantial improvements in human rights. But, just four days after winning
the bid, then deputy prime minister, Li Lanqing, announced that China
should step up its efforts to counter the Falungong, a spiritual movement whose
members are routinely imprisoned – at least 100 are thought to have died in
detainment. The then vice-president, Hu Jintao, weighed in next, saying it was
essential for China
to counter separatist movements “orchestrated by the Dali Lama and the world’s
anti-China forces.”

 

This should come as no
surprise to anyone, least of all the OIC, which took the surprisingly naïve
position that holding the Olympics in Beijing
was likely to improve China’s
human rights. The opposite was always bound to be the case. For Beijing to pull off the
kind of Olympics it would like to, it is forced to repress anything of a
political nature that might mar its moment of glory.

 

Amnesty International,
for example, is calling for the immediate release of Ye Guozhu, who was
arrested in December 2004, and is serving a four-year prison sentence for
attempting to organize a demonstration against forced evictions in Beijing,
after two restaurants he owned were demolished in 2001 to make way for Olympics
sports facilities. His relatives say he has health problems after having been
tortured in prison, and it is claimed he was beaten with electro-shock battens
in Beijing’s
Chaobai Prison.

 

An equally high-profile
example is human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who was convicted of “subversion”
in December 2006, and is now under house arrest. While under formal arrest, he
claims to have been treated harshly by police. Meanwhile, in April this year,
four pro-Tibetan independence protesters were arrested, after they hung up a
Free Tibet banner at Mount Everest base camp,
protesting the government’s plans to relay the Olympic torch through the Tibetan
Himalayas.

 

According to the
Olympic Charter, sport must be “at the service of the harmonious development of
man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the
preservation of human dignity.” But groups protesting against, or calling for
boycotts of next year’s Olympics point to a host of CCP transgressions against
both a peaceful society and human dignity.

 

A commitment to reform
or abolish China’s
“re-education through labor” policy appears stalled, possibly so as to clean up
the streets of Beijing
of vagrants and drug-users ahead of the Olympics. Meanwhile, Amnesty reports
that the lead up to the Olympics has seen “moves to expand detention without
trial and ‘house arrest’ of activists, and … a tightening of controls over
domestic media and the Internet.”

 

For the most part, the
foreign community seems to have found it relatively easy to ignore these
domestic affronts to the spirit of the Olympics. The issue of Darfur
is proving somewhat more problematic. Names such Bob Geldof and Mia Farrow have
publicly criticized China
for supporting the atrocities in Darfur through massive subsidies to oil-rich Sudan.
In March this year, Farrow wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal that popularized the term, “the Genocide
Olympics”. A Google search for the latter, five months later, produces close to
1.5 million hits.

 

For any Chinese – even
those of us in exile – this background to China’s successful bid for the
Olympics should be more a cause for self-examination than for celebration. Ideally,
the Olympics I would like to attend next year would be the ultimate culmination
of the kaifang – open – policy that
was ushered in by Deng Xiaoping in 1979.

 

Deng’s “open door”
policy was a revolutionary turning point in modern Chinese history, and for all
the problems facing China
at this juncture, it has been successful in raising the living standards for
millions of Chinese people. Unfortunately, China’s new-found economic openness
has never been matched by the openness that is needed to reform the country’s
oppressive one-party state. And this being the case the games that will take
place next year will belong to that state, not to the Chinese people, the vast
majority of whom will not be allowed anywhere near the Olympics festivities in
Beijing.

 

For my part, if I were permitted to return to China
for the Olympics, I admit I would seize the opportunity – it would be my chance
to see the ageing parents and the brother I have not seen in close on two
decades. But, the long-awaited family reunion aside, I think it unlikely I
would find much else in the way of cause for celebration.

 

——Published Far Eastern Economic Review, Cover date 2007.09.04.
      This article has won the Hong Kong Human Rights Press Award, (Oped) 2007.

The recent comments by veteran Hong Kong
politician Ma Lik have reignited media interest in the events of June 4, 1989,
sometimes – though less frequently in these heady days of the China economic
miracle – referred to as the Tiananmen Massacre. Mr Ma’s comments may have been
inopportune and ill-considered, but the media interest in and subsequent public
debate on the issue have brought to light issues that laid buried in recent
years.

 

On May 15, Mr Ma, who is chairman of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and
Progress of Hong Kong, stated at an informal press conference that the June 4
crackdown was not a massacre because troops in Beijing did not fire
“indiscriminately” at the protesting students. It has to be said – there is not
point pretending otherwise – that these were foolish words. Mr Ma has seized on
the word “massacre” and, in denying that it can be strictly apply to events
that transpired on June 4, attempted to whitewash a very problematic moment in
recent Chinese history. It is small surprise then that Mr Ma has suffered a
fierce backlash from many quarters, including exiled dissidents such as myself.

 

I do believe, however,
that clumsy comments such as those by Mr Ma need to be considered, not only at
face value, but also in terms of the implications for all of us who have any
kind of relationship with China.

 

The truth is that China
is no longer the same country that galvanized the world with scenes of tens of
thousands of students and workers taking to the streets to demand change. For a
huge number of Chinese today, particularly the elite who have access to the
university system, that change has already taken place. Despite the manifold
problems – a precipitous wealth-divide, rural unrest and intolerance of
political dissent, to name just a few – China today is far wealthier and more
cosmopolitan than the country I was forced to leave in 1989. It is governed by
a new generation of leaders – technocrats who speak in terms of words like
“governance” – and the old-generation Iron-Curtain generals are gone.

In short, with the rise
of China as a global economic force, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics just around
corner, it comes as no surprise that businesspeople and politicians of all
stripes should be considering how to put the political bottlenecks of the past
behind them. Sooner or later, after all, the past has to take its place in
history so that we can all collaborate in making a better a future. It goes
without saying that this is something that occupies the minds of dissidents
such as myself who cannot return to their homeland.

 

I am sure that Mr Ma
too is one of those people. Like us, he would like to be able to move on.
Unfortunately, his remarks were so outrageous that mostly all they served to do
was to open old wounds rather than stimulate debate about what the
preconditions for reconciliation might be. Even, I am sure, most dissidents
would welcome reconciliation – indeed it is a necessary development. But until
this day, 18 years on, reconciliation has not taken place, and for the most
part the world deals with June 4 by pretending it did not happen. Mr Ma’s
comments were a reminder that, whatever we call it, it did happen, and that
ghosts of June 4 can still arouse powerful emotions. Amid widespread public
calls of “shameless” in Hong Kong, the Apple
Daily ran a front-page headline calling Mr Ma “a scoundrel”, while the
Tiananmen Mother’s Group accused Mr Ma of “helping evil people do evil”.

 

For me, these reactions
underscore the fact that, no matter how vital China has become to world economy
and how much it has changed with the times, the Tiananmen knot cannot be
unraveled either by ignoring it or by denying it happened. The truth has to be
confronted before reconciliation can take place. The question of whether it is
time to forgive and move on is on many people’s minds, including my own. But
forgiveness, like reconciliation, has as its precondition the truth.

 

To this day, the
Chinese government calls the Tiananmen student movement, a
“counterrevolutionary riot”, all the while denying the scale of bloodshed. This
is a convenient line that I’m sure many would like to go along with, but as a
falsehood it leaves no room for dialog. It is a position that asks us to
forgive by forgetting.

 

Forgiveness will come
with reconciliation, but for that to happen the Chinese government, and its
defenders such as Mr Ma, will have to extend the same goodwill to the victims
of June 4, and to those bereaved, imprisoned and exiled, that they are willing
to extend to China. That means confronting the truth. Reconciliation under any
other terms is nothing more than appeasement.

 

As I have said before,
I think often about reconciliation. Like many of us in exile, I would like to
be part of the new China. Unfortunately, the day for that to happen has not
arrived. The conditions are not right. And until Beijing and its champions are
willing to engage in open dialog about the events of 1989 that day will not
arrive.

 

 ——Published 2007.06.04, Asia Wall Street Journal

 

As a former student leader who has been exiled for 16
years since the Tiananmen massacre of June 4, 1989, I see cause for cautious optimism in the
recent developments in cross-Strait relations. Taiwan is now my home, and the hostility
with which Beijing so often treats this young democracy never ceases to remind
me of the hostility that I and so many others–too many of them now dead–faced
in 1989.

 

That’s why I was so pleased to see the recent
reconciliation between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Nationalist
Party, symbolized by CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao’s historic handshake with
visiting Kuomintang Chairman Lien Chan on April 29. I’m not suggesting that any
dramatic changes will come directly from this meeting–the way ahead will not be
easy simply because of a single handshake. Nonetheless the fact that Mr. Hu
greeted Mr. Lien in such a friendly manner marks a significant shift from the
usual strategy of threatening military action against Taiwan, which Beijing was still pursuing
only a month earlier with the passage of the anti-secession law.

 

The handshake took place against a very troubled
background on both sides of the Strait. Many Taiwanese–in particular
supporters of the island’s so-called “pan-blue” opposition parties–have long
been frustrated by confrontational domestic politics and the economic setbacks Taiwan has
experienced in recent years. But distrust among the island’s political forces
had made it almost impossible, until now, for them to reach agreement on how to
reach out to the mainland.

 

On the Chinese side, there is even less trust and
understanding. Modern Chinese have grown up indoctrinated in the belief that a
unified China
would be an even greater China.
The orthodoxy of this faith is reinforced by the fact that they live in a
politically monochromatic system that exiles diversity of opinion and dissent.
This in turn makes it difficult for both Chinese citizens and their leaders to
understand either the KMT or the democratic Taiwanese environment in which it
vies for power.

 

That gulf still separates China and Taiwan. But
reconciliation has to start somewhere, and that’s is why I found some hope in
the smile that creased Mr. Hu lips when he shook hands with Mr. Lien. I know that
smile conceals a greed for power which could one day cause China to attack
Taiwan,
and that the island will have to remain vigilant against this possibility.
Nonetheless a smile is far more likely to lead to a brighter future than a
scowl. Even though the way ahead is still difficult, and will require much hard
work and sacrifices from many people, the goodwill that was extended during Mr.
Lien’s visit makes for a good start.

 

It also makes me wonder whether it is possible to
start bridging another fissure in China’s modern political landscape.
In the run up to Saturday’s 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, I would
like to call upon Mr. Hu to stage a similar reconciliation with the student
protesters. The bloody confrontation between peaceful petitioners and the Beijing regime that took
place that day was a tragedy born of poor judgment and bad decisions by the
government. And the skirmishes that have persisted between Beijing and a generation of exiled dissidents
over the past 16 years are a result of the central government’s inability to
accept dissenting opinions. The outcome has been lives lost, wasted in
imprisonment or lived in exile far from home, while families have been torn
apart, not to mention the immense damage done to China’s image on the international
stage. For some, perhaps, memories of Tiananmen may have dimmed, but there are
still enough people who have not forgotten that, whenever China turns to
the world with a request or demand, inevitably the word “Tiananmen” comes up.

 

The truth is, China continues to politicize Tiananmen
by suppressing information about it and failing to face up to its
responsibility for the lives that has lost on June 4, 1989, just as it has
politicized the Falun Gong religious movement with extensive and ruthless
suppression. If China
truly wants to be accepted into the international community, sooner or later it
will have to settle these grievances by staging reconciliations with both its
political and religious opponents–and a good way to start would be with my
fellow exiles and I.

 

For my part, I would leap at the chance to be able to
return to my homeland, to see my family again and participate in the new China,
providing there were no conditions, such as a prison sentence, an apology for
my student activities or a demand that I not raise my voice with unwelcome
opinions.

 

The international applause for such a step would ring far
louder for Mr. Hu than when he shook hands with Mr. Lien. And it would be far
more than applause–a friendly gesture to a generation of peaceful protesters
would show that China
is taking its first step toward greater tolerance of diversity, out of which
springs the only real hope for a great nation.

 

If the leaders of two parties who fought a civil war
half a century ago can shake hands, it should not be too much for China’s leaders
also to extend a welcoming hand to the students of 1989. Like all other Chinese,
we dream of a greater motherland, and I say to Mr. Hu–let us come home. That
is our undeniable right as Chinese citizens–guaranteed by China’s
constitution–and it would show the world that China is sincere in its efforts to
become a truly modern state. Let us start with a handshake, and bring smiles to
the faces of all those who have suffered in exile over 16 long years.

——Published 2005.06.04, Asia Wall Street Journal

 

 

In the standoff between the United States
and Europe over lifting the Tiananmen Massacre
arms embargo on China,
I find myself on the side of George W. Bush, even if my reasons for being there
differ from his. President Bush’s interests are, of course, those of the
world’s leading superpower. Mine are those of a Chinese student leader who,
after more than 15 years in exile, is still waiting to be allowed to go home.

 

The U.S. position is well summed up by
Peter Brookes, senior fellow for national security affairs and director of
Asian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, who wrote recently: “Lifting the
embargo would endanger U.S.
interests, accelerate China’s
military build-up, undermine stability in the Pacific and send the wrong signal
to repressive regimes everywhere.” These are legitimate concerns, and I see no
reason to contest them. China–currently
second only to the U.S.
in terms of arms spending–is clearly seeking to extend its influence in Southeast Asia and into the Pacific via the sea lanes
controlled by U.S.
allies Japan
and Taiwan.
And, yes, China
continues to be a repressive state, and to kowtow now would send the wrong
message to similarly repressive regimes.

 

But, as an exiled Chinese citizen who has lived in
Paris and the U.S.,
before settling in Taiwan,
I would add to Peter Brookes’ list the objection that lifting the embargo now
makes a mockery of the Europe’s decision to
put it in place to begin with.

 

Perhaps from the worldly, sophisticated perspective
of the Europeans, I am taking things too personally. But if Europe
does go ahead–as it says it will–and lifts the embargo shortly after the
British elections, expected around May 5, I do have to wonder just what China has done
to deserve the favor. To be sure, China is richer and more powerful
than it was when I was forced to leave in 1989. But have human rights improved?
Have there been substantive moves towards participatory politics? Is there
greater freedom of speech? Can I go home? The answer is “no” every time.

 

And then there is the question of Taiwan, which I
also happen to take a personal interest in because it is now my home. Europe’s decision takes place as China puts into
place a so-called anti-secession law. This in effect legitimizes the use of
force to take over a liberal democracy and the world’s 15th largest trading
economy. From where I stand, I cannot help but be reminded of Tiananmen
Square. In 1989, as a leader of a movement that is thought to have
brought up to 100 million people onto the streets China-wide, I saw the ugly
face of Chinese Communist Party rule. Here in Taiwan in 2005 I worry that before
long, I will see it again.

 

This is precisely what I mean when I say
that lifting the embargo now makes a mockery of the decision to put it in
place. When China
turned its troops and tanks on its citizens in Tiananmen
Square, the world recoiled in horror and imposed sanctions.
Sixteen years later, as China
embarks on a massive military build-up aimed at enforcing a disputed territorial
claim on Taiwan,
Europe decides that the best course of action
is to supply it with the high-tech weaponry to do so. I’m afraid the logic of
this defies me.

 

It could be argued, of course, that Chinese
leader Hu Jintao, who just succeeded Jiang Zemin as chairman of the State
Military Commission, gave a relatively measured–if not conciliatory–speech to
the National People’s Congress on the subject of Taiwan late last week. Proof, Europe might say, that China is doing everything it can to
resolve the Taiwan
problem peacefully. It would only use the weapons we are selling them, Europeans
might say, if Taiwan
did something rash like enshrining independence in a new constitution or,
heaven forbid, allowing the island’s 23 million people to cast a vote one way
or another, for or against: unification on some mutually tolerable grounds, or
independence.  

 

It is a disingenuous argument. Firstly, we
are asked to believe that the Chinese leadership can be counted on to be
reasonable, and I know for a fact that this is a naïve and dangerous assumption–I
have been guilty of making it myself once before, with disastrous consequences.
And secondly, we are asked to ignore the fact that China’s military arms purchases are
aimed as much at denying its own people and the Taiwanese the right to
self-determination as they are to national self-defense.

 

In short, whatever the strategic aims of
its China
policy, in terms of my personal engagement with the Chinese government, Europe’s position is morally flawed and intellectually
absurd. I may not have the advantage of a European education, but I say that
when the Europeans tell us that one plus one do not equal two, that the
advanced weapons it has for sale will never be turned on the Taiwanese people,
I say they are wrong. When the Europeans tell us it’s time to forget Tiananmen,
I say I am sorry but until I hear an apology I cannot even begin to forget. And
when the Europeans say, China
has improved, I say, does that mean I can return to my homeland and visit my
ageing parents without going to jail?

 

——Published 2005.03.16,  Wall Street Journal Europe.

 

      The death of former Chinese Communist Party
Secretary-General Zhao Ziyang does
not mark the end of an era, but is rather a reminder of unfinished business.
That business is the democratic reforms and the end to official corruption we
students protested for in Tiananmen Square in
the summer of 1989. Nearly 16 years on, and from my exile in Taiwan, I
cannot but see Zhao’s lonely death as
further evidence that that the protests I helped lead won China neither
democratic reform nor an end to official corruption.

      The
obituaries for Zhao, whom I recall
as a humble, grey-haired scholarly man who spoke Mandarin with a folksy Henan burr, have made
much of his last public appearance. He had already been stripped of his
position by Deng Xiaoping when he came to us in Tiananmen
Square on May 19 with the words “I’m late, too late. Sorry.” Zhao’s arrival was unannounced and discrete, and like
most of the students in the square that day–less than three weeks before the
tanks and troops would clear us out–I wasn’t even aware that the man was
amongst us uttering those historic words. But, if I missed the opportunity to
be present when he spoke, I have often thought those words in the years since.

      Above all,
today it strikes me that the words, “I was too late,” might well serve as the
epitaph of a man who ended his life a tragic figure, who was offered a historic
opportunity to embrace reform but who did not come to the square and offer any
support until he had been stripped of his rank. Until the last of his days he
was a living symbol of much that is wrong in China today.

      In death
that symbol becomes all the more potent, which is why China this week
is in such a heightened state of alert, and why there will be no state funeral
service. It is also why former Zhao
aide, Bao Tong, who recently accused the state of trying to erase Zhao from history, was not allowed to pay his
respects, and Public Security Bureau thugs injured Mr. Bao’s 73-year-old wife while
pushing her into an elevator. That act of violence alone is a reminder that
while much has changed in China,
much also has not. Wracked by social unrest born of the world’s widest wealth
divide, China
is still a place where the response to dissent is sharp and brutal. It can be
no other way, because all dissent in China is a reminder that, despite
the economic changes that have swept the nation since Tiananmen, reform on all
other fronts is on hold.

      This, of
course, is the tragedy of modern China. The Chinese way is to
systematically banish all agents of reform. My generation of student leaders
lives in exile or in imprisonment, and Zhao
Ziyang passed his remaining days after being stripped of his job under police
supervision. I’ve often wondered where his thoughts led him when they turned to
the events of 1989. Many of us who survived the Tiananmen protests are haunted
by a sense of failure for not having accomplished what we set out to do, and by
feelings of guilt for the lives of those who perished in the effort. To my
mind, it’s hard not to imagine that Zhao
must have had similar feelings and have spent much of his “retirement”
wondering whether he could have done it differently.

      In my
thinking–and this has haunted me for close on 16 years–he could have. It’s
impossible for me to forget that spring and summer of 1989, when I was a
student barely into my twenties and I took the streets of Beijing. To be sure, I was idealistic, and
perhaps in some ways naïve, but like so many others in those heady days I only
took to the streets because I thought there was a real opportunity for change.
We would never have taken the chances we did if we hadn’t thought that what we
were demanding was possible. And we saw the possibility in reformist elements
in the government, chief among whom is the man China is quietly mourning this
week.

I say to history that at any time before he was
stripped of his position, particularly in the days after we started our hunger
strike on May 13, Zhao, as the
nation’s most powerful title holder, could have come to the square, or gone on
national TV, to at least acknowledge that we students had just cause for
complaint. It would have put him and other reformists in control of the
situation. Instead, he attended a meeting of the standing members of the
Politburo in Deng Xiaoping’s private residence in which he was stripped of his
rank. He did come to the square too late.

      To this
day, I cannot help but see Zhao as defined by that moment He missed his
historic opportunity, and in the end his most notable achievement was that he
did nothing. On this week of his death, my thoughts go out to his family and
all who loved him, and I say may he rest in peace. But at the same time I
cannot but wonder, as I have all these years, what if.

——Published  2005.01.20.  Asia Wall Street Journal