Two Decades After the Fall: Visions of the Pro-democracy Movement
Two Decades After the Fall: Visions of the Pro-democracy Movement
Two Decades After the Fall: Guobin Yang
THE POPULAR movement in 1989 marked the peak of the Enlightenment project in modern China. Chinese struggles for Enlightenment started in the iconic May 4 movement of 1919. Like the movement in 1989, it was led by students and it started in Tiananmen Square. It celebrated the Enlightenment ideals of democracy and science, even as it attacked western imperialism and Confucian culture. The protesters in 1989 proclaimed themselves to be the true heirs of the May 4 Movement and fought for the same ideals.
The military crackdown on June 4, 1989 shattered their dreams. Disillusionment and cynicism permeated Chinese society in the wake of the repression. For the sake of self-redemption, if nothing else, the senior Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping pushed forward the party’s reform agenda in 1992. China has since rapidly transformed into a market economy. In recent years, a “China miracle” is suddenly all the buzz in the mass media.
It is a miracle with severe costs, however. As China maintains high levels of economic growth, it faces problems of social polarization, corruption, and environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale. In response, a new wave of popular protest and social activism is sweeping across China. Tens of thousands of protests and petitions happen every year, involving people from all walks of life.
Compared with the protests in 1989, however, the goals of this new activism are more concrete and down to earth, the means are more moderate, and the issues are more diverse. Many new issues have taken center stage, ranging from environmental protection and HIV/AIDS to marginalized social groups, alternative lifestyles, anti-discrimination, legal aid, education for migrants and their children, and domestic violence. Freedom and democracy are still inspiring ideals, yet activists begin to use more moderate tactics. They invoke the law in their struggles to protect citizens’ rights, adopt non-confrontational forms of action, make skillful use of the Internet, and emphasize the building of an organizational base.
The most important forms of China’s new citizen activism are probably new types of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and online activism. NGOs first appeared in China in the mid-1990s. Now numbering in the thousands, they conduct public forums, undertake community projects, and launch media campaigns. But they rarely organize street protests. To maintain legitimacy and some degree of independence, they avoid direct confrontations with government authorities and cultivate cooperative ties with state officials.
Online activism is primarily discursive and symbolic, involving verbal protests in online forums, the hosting of campaign Web sites and petitions. Speed and ease of access make the Internet an especially effective forum for exposing corruption and airing grievances. Cartoons, online videos, digital images, and other artistic forms are used to mock power and authority or express dissent. Despite (and often in response to) government censorship of the Internet, the most creative and penetrating of these cultural forms spread online like wildfire and become national media events. Many cases have shown unequivocally that Chinese citizens are effectively tapping the power of the Internet to achieve popular dissent.
In the two decades since 1989, protests have increased in frequency. But they have also assumed new forms. Large-scale mobilization of the 1989-style has not been repeated. In urban China, moderation, flexibility, and non-confrontation are the dominant style of the new citizen activism. This seemingly prosaic style of activism, however, is effective in its own ways. It has led to changes and shifts in government behavior and policies. Perhaps more importantly, the flourishing of this new activism both reflects and raises people’s consciousness about what they can do, and must do, to defend their rights. China’s political environment continues to constrain activism. Although Chinese society is more open than ever before, public discussions about many issues (such as the history of June 4) are still off limits. NGOs are sometimes forced to close down for political reasons. But the flexible style of the new citizen activism means that it is here to stay.
HOW TO account for the rise of this new citizen activism in China? One obvious reason is that Chinese society has undergone a profound change since 1989. There are a set of new issues that have arisen over the past two decades. While there has been significant economic growth, the rural population has been left behind. Unsustainable approaches to development have seriously damaged the environment. The privatization of large state-owned enterprises has caused unemployment and led to frequent labor strikes. With private ownership of houses, apartments, and automobiles, a growing middle class has begun to demand rule of law and the protection of their property and civil rights, thus becoming a main force in NGO-led activism.
The development of the Internet and mobile phones has also greatly facilitated citizen activism. China established Internet connectivity in 1994. As of July 2009, the number of Internet users has increased to over 300 million. This is the largest Internet population in the world. A crucial factor underlying the rapid development of the Internet in China is that the Internet meets urgent social needs—the needs for information, communication, social connection, and civic organizing. The growth of the Internet in China has paralleled the growth of civil society.
Globalization is another important factor. In the field of citizen activism, the influences of international NGOs on indigenous citizen groups have been significant. Hundreds of international NGOs have set up offices or run projects in China. Like domestic NGOs, they work on a broad range of issues. Greenpeace, for example, has an active office in Beijing and has waged several successful media campaigns. These international NGOs collaborate with Chinese NGOs. They offer them grants and provide training workshops and other forms of capacity building.
Members of the “Tiananmen generation” are active in this new wave of activism. The fateful experiences in 1989 gave the participants the collective identity as a new political generation. This generational identity carries with it the historical consciousness of a repressed revolutionary movement, and it helps to sustain a level of civic participation. The political experiences people gained and the social ties they forged in 1989 contribute to their new roles as environmentalists, human rights activists, Internet activists, legal activists, and organizers of homeowner associations. Naturally, the vast majority of the generation have settled into the routines of ordinary life. But in China today, everyday life is no less a site of political activism than Tiananmen Square. Much like the sixties generation, the Tiananmen generation has not relinquished its political passions; it has transformed them into new forms of political activism.
As China’s post-1989 cohort comes of age, a process of generational learning is taking place. Due to the lack of historical knowledge, the 1990s cohort often know little about what transpired in 1989. But many young people are eager to learn; they are not as politically cynical or indifferent to social justice as they have sometimes been characterized. This new generation has proven to be capable of civic engagement and activism through its outpouring of volunteerism after the Sichuan province earthquakes. Some of them are consciously learning from the political experiences of their parents’ generation.
The same conditions that gave rise to the new citizen activism also explain its relationship to 1989. The rise of a middle class, the Internet, the cultures of globalization, the coming-of-age of a younger generation—all these have shaped contemporary activism. Adapting to new conditions, Chinese activists have fashioned new identities and new forms of action. In the age of the Internet, they are both organized and scattered, both connected and decentralized. In dispersion as in solidarity, they are a formidable force of social change . Fighting for small gains in everyday struggles, they have not lost sight of the bigger visions of the pro-democracy movement in 1989, just as the generation of 1989 had upheld the visions of their May 4 predecessors.
Guobin Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (2009) and coeditor, with Ching Kwan Lee, of Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China (2007). This commentary is adapted from an introductory essay written for an exhibition of photographs of the 1989 Chinese student protests featured by the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY from September 18-October 25, 2009.
