I didn’t write a post to commemorate anything last week. I didn’t even feel any need to do so, as there were apparently more than enough other people out there who were more than eager to do the job for me. I only wish a few of them hadn’t been talking out of their arses.
It seemed to me, as a reader who also just happens to know a little about China, that most writers felt June 4th was a good day either to remember how pro-democracy protesters were gunned down in Beijing, or to use it as an excuse to say how bad the United States is for doing business with Saudi Arabia etc and that it’s pretty much the same thing as what the folks at Zhongnanhai did in 1989. I’m not up for a naming of the names here, but certain bloggers have been crossed off my Christmas card list for that last part. In related news, I’d just like to say that Dan Harris is a complete twat.
What happened in Beijing twenty years ago was an utterly despicable act by an utterly despicable group of thugs and murderers, and there is no way that it can ever be forgiven or casually swept under the carpet. That said, however, it isn’t the savage butchery of the Chinese Communist Party that really gets my goat, not by a long shot.
Mrs MyLaowai knows a thing or two about what was happening throughout China in 1989. She should: she was here. As a member of the proletariat and one of the masses, she has never fallen into the group of journalists and ‘experts’ who have the most to say on the issue, but be under no misapprehension at all – she was very well aware of exactly what was going on.
So, what was going on? Well, to start with, it wasn’t about a bunch of students who wanted democracy. Or Democracy, either, for the benefit of those of you who like to see the word capitalised. In truth, it wasn’t even really about the students who were in Beijing. Sure, a lot of students were demonstrating in Beijing, and a great many of them had travelled from their hometowns across China to do so, but democracy was a very tiny part of what it was all about. In general, most of them merely wanted to ask their ‘government’ to be a little more open and accountable to the people they claimed to represent. And it was a feeling that was widespread across the entire nation, not to mention the occupied territories. The students in Tienanmen Square were merely the obvious, TV-friendly face of a broadly-based, widespread, grass-roots wave of feeling that cut right across Chinese society, and which generally ignored class and status divisions. Even members of the Army and the Party itself claimed to stand with the students, in spirit if not in body. And it wasn’t just the students in Beijing, either: it was the students in every city and many towns in China. It was fire-fighters (who in China are also members of the Army), it was bus drivers, housewives, teachers, police officers, factory workers, you name it. The entire country had the feel of a holiday or festival. No, this wasn’t a few radical students looking to overthrow the government, it was the vast bulk of the population asking if it would be alright, please sir, to have just a little genuine representation.
We all know how that turned out.
At least, we all know how that turned out in Beijing. What virtually everyone forgets (neglects?) to mention is that the next day, June 5th 1989, the broad support had completely evaporated, and the subject made taboo. And it wasn’t the Party who did that, it was the people themselves. Virtually overnight the entire nation changed sides, switched allegiance, and sold out those who had stood up on their behalf. Ask anyone in China about the events of June, and not one person will claim to know anything about it. Mind you, ask anyone in China about the Cultural Revolution, and they will all say it was a difficult time but they are glad it didn’t involve them, despite the fact that for anyone over forty years of age, it involved them in the same way that the Nazi’s were involved in the deaths of six million Jews.
The Chinese have a selective memory for these things, and they are very happy with that. It allows them to absolve themselves of guilt, to ignore the consequences of their actions, to escape from the thought that they should have done something to help. It explains why large-scale organ harvesting continues to this day, and it permits the continued existence of Laogai slave labour camps that are as bad as anything Stalin dreamed up. There are so many injustices in China, so many abominations, so many abhorrent and disgraceful acts that have never been acknowledged, never put right, and for which no one has ever been held accountable, that some days I just honestly despair for the entire human race. But they all continue to exist for the simple reason that the Chinese people themselves are okay with it all. After all, why would you take any risks to help someone else? That’s something that only a foolish, charitable, Westerner would do, right?
Few people in China ever seem to help anyone else, no one ever seems to take any responsibility for anything, and almost nobody ever seems to care about anything that doesn’t hold an immediate benefit for themselves. There was a hue and cry last year when an earthquake knocked down some schools, but today it’s all forgotten, especially the part about how it was the Party-approved contractors who used substandard materials and methods to build those schools, whilst ensuring that the government buildings were built to spec. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of babies were made ill (and many died) when poisoned milk was sold, and nothing was done because the Party wanted their Olympics to go off without a hitch – where are the patriotic citizens today? They certainly haven’t all been shot. And what of the bus that burst into flames a week or so ago in Chengdu, burning to death most of the passengers? I watched video that was taken of the fire, from the moment smoke was seen to the awful end. Here’s what I saw: Not one person trying to help. Not one person doing anything at all to help a busload of human beings burning to death. Not one person doing anything at all.
It makes me sick.
So by all means punish the Chinese Communist Party with meaningless bans on weapon sales. Personally, I don’t see how anything the civilised world has done has ever had the smallest positive effect on the basic nature of the vast majority of the Chinese people. They may have better clothes and taller buildings and proper roads and television sets now, but China remains today what it has been ever since Qin Shi Huangdi took the reins: a savage cultural wasteland largely populated by selfish ne’er-do-wells who are utterly lacking in even the most basic of human virtues. To hell with ‘em. And to hell with anyone who claims otherwise.
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