A few days ago marked the 23rd anniversary of the government massacre of unarmed protesters near Beijing's Tiananmen Square. As in past years, Hong Kong residents gathered in Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil. The United States government urged China to release Tiananmen's political prisoners. China told the United States to mind its own business. As to the event itself, Beijing remained silent. And with that, everyone moved on.
Although the annual reaction to Tiananmen Square has not changed, the global context surrounding the massacre surely has. On the hot summer night when PLA tanks rolled through Beijing's streets, the Communist world was on the verge of collapse. Eastern European countries had begun to break away from the Soviet Union, and by the end of the year the Iron Curtain would be gone. The USSR itself was teetering under reforms implemented by then-Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Earlier in the decade both China and Vietnam defiantly broke with Communist orthodoxy by embracing elements of a market economy. These events may not have constituted "The End of History", as Francis Fukuyama's famous essay predicted, but most believed that 1989 marked a decisive turn toward the American-led global order.
So while Tiananmen Square represented a jarring setback to this glorious march of history, the event seemed to be death throes of a dying regime. But the Communist Party lived on. In the 1990s, China continued to grow at a breakneck pace, leading analysts to predict that the growing middle class would soon demand more political rights. It didn't happen. When the Internet reached China that decade, soon spreading throughout the country, analysts predicted that the medium would lead to the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party. That didn't happen, either. Gordon Chang's "Coming Collapse of China?" Nope.
This isn't to say that these factors- a growing middle class, increased Internet penetration, disgust with corruption- won't ever erode the Party's grip on power. In fact, I believe they eventually will. But it's striking to see how the narrative surrounding Tiananmen Square has adjusted to China's rise. Check out these comments by Eric X. Li, a prominent Shanghai venture capitalist and a cheerleader of the regime:
That {Tiananmen Square} uprising was decisively put down on June 4, 1989. The Chinese nation paid a heavy price for that violent event, but the alternatives would have been far worse.
The resulting stability ushered in a generation of growth and prosperity that propelled China’s economy to its position as the second largest in the world.
Rather than the massacre symbolizing the last, desperate act of a dying empire, Li gives it credit for China's continued growth! This opinion, it should be noted, is not universally held. But it is an important barometer for how much of the world now sees Tiananmen Square- as a decisive act by a strong government undeterred by quaint, Western notions of human rights. This viewpoint was unthinkable in 1989.
That year, China was just another destitute Communist country that had just managed to stave off the inevitable collapse of its government. In 2012, this same government represents an alternative model to Western market capitalism and an inspiration to developing countries worldwide. Even those who detest Communism and fear China's rise admire the country for its perceived willingness to take decisive action in the national interest.
In 2035, 23 years from now, I imagine that people will still gather on June 4th in Hong Kong to remember Tiananmen Square's victims. But only time will tell through which prism the rest of the world will view the event.
