Tears Flow, Righteousness Remains

By Jay Scott Kanes

HONG KONG – Even after 20 years, leaders of the student protests that jolted China’s authoritarian regime in 1989 spend much of their time assessing the country’s progress or lack of it. Although full of sadness, the dissidents, including many living in exile overseas, hold a powerful sense of having been right. They express no regrets.

That’s the verdict from Ida Chan, a Hong Kong-based cable-TV executive who took time off from work to travel and write a Chinese-language book based on interviews with eight such dissidents. Now a 27-year media veteran, Ida covered the 1989 Beijing protests as a young TV reporter.

“They (the former student leaders) have paid a severe price, but not a single one has regrets,” Ida said. “The biggest part of the price was for those who had to leave their homes and aging parents with little hope to see them again.”

One dissident interviewed in Los Angeles quoted an old Chinese saying: “Sometimes you can’t be good to your parents and virtuous to your country.”

Everyone interviewed for Ida’s book, titled June 4th: 20 (as in 20 years later), played leading roles in (or after) the defiant street protests when tens of thousands of students, soon joined by others, denounced corruption and demanded democratic reforms and media freedoms. On June 4th, 1989, soldiers killed thousands in “the Beijing Massacre”, an atrocity that shocked the world.

“I wanted to know if anything the students fought for 20 years ago has been achieved,” Ida said. “That’s the book’s main theme.”

Asked about China’s economic progress, the dissidents concede that living standards have improved. “People dress better and eat better,” Ida said. “Everything else has worsened.”

The dissidents believe that too much focus on earning money deepens structural corruption and corrodes ancient values. “The baseline for morals is zero,” Ida said. “To make money in China, you can do whatever you want, like putting chemicals in milk powder.

“When the army opened fire on students, it made people focus even more on earning money. That’s why moral standards have fallen so low. So what the students protested for hasn’t been accomplished.

“For academics who speak out, the punishment is so strong that they’ll die, so they’ve decided to keep quiet. Some dissidents blame the intellectuals for giving up their responsibility to fight for the poor. Now poor people must become more violent to fight for their rights.”

Ida’s book sold 900 copies on one day – June 4th, 2009, as 150,000 people gathered for a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong to honor the massacre victims. “Hong Kong people are pragmatic, hard-working and money-oriented,” Ida said. “But when it comes to right-or-wrong and rule of law, our core values, we stand firmly by them.

“Many people shook hands with me. They said: ‘You worked hard. Thanks for your work.’ They appreciate when someone finds out the truth and writes it for them.”

On the Chinese mainland, the authorities outlaw events to honor the fallen protesters. “Many people from the Chinese mainland came to the candlelight vigil in Hong Kong,” Ida said. “They wanted to know more about what really happened.”

Although Hong Kong enjoys more freedom than the Chinese mainland does, its people face big restrictions too. “We have a stern grandfather to the north and always must consider his attitude,” Ida said.

Published last month, June 4th: 20 (270 pages, HK$60) sells mainly at small Hong Kong bookstores. Larger book-sellers, those with mainland investment or business interests, deem the content too “sensitive”.

Anxious to offer a truthful account, unlike the mainland propaganda aimed at rewriting history, Ida sent hundreds more copies to university and high-school libraries.

“I have strong feelings about what happened 20 years ago and about what happens now,” she said. “The ‘incident’ of June 4, 1989, is long gone, but China hasn’t improved. Bad things still happen every day because there are no checks-and-balances or press freedoms. It all reflects a government that refuses to respect human beings and the rule of law.”

June 4th: 20 is Ida’s first “solo” book. She also contributed to People Will Not Forget, a newly reprinted collaboration by 64 Hong Kong journalists who covered the 1989 protests.

Twenty years ago, Ida worked for ATV. As a grim reminder, she keeps a Chinese re-entry permit stamped to show her arrival in Bejing on May 31 and departure on June 5, 1989. She watched many of the soldiers’ deadly deeds from a hotel balcony. When Hong Kong’s government hastily chartered a plane to evacuate its residents, Ida took the flight home.

Would the Chinese government massacre more citizens if similar protests happened again? “I don’t know,” Ida said. “In 1989, they claimed not to have water cannons or plastic bullets. Maybe they do have now.”

Denounced as “black hands” (subversive criminals) by the authorities, most of Ida’s interview subjects fled to the United States and can’t return. “They still co-operate with each other, but they miss home very much,” she said. “They still love China.”

Ida interviewed a former Communist-TV documentary writer, Yuan Ziming, who later became a Christian and now preaches in San Francisco. Considering China’s deep corruption, he believes its people sorely need Christian beliefs.

Another interview subject, Wang Juntao, received a 13-year jail term for his part in the protest movement. Freed for medical reasons in 1994, he lives in New York.

There’s also an interview with 77-year-old Bao Tong, the former secretary to ousted premier Zhao Ziyang whose secret tape-recordings, when smuggled out of China, turned into another enlightening book, Prisoner of the State. Zhao sympathized with the protesting students, opposed a military crackdown and spent his final years under house arrest.

For helping his boss, Bao remains under house arrest in Beijing. “Three shifts a day – each with six people – watch and guard him,” Ida said. Unable to visit Bao, Ida relied on an interview he did with documentary-makers before the 2008 Beijing Olympics when media restrictions eased briefly.

“One-party rule is a big problem,” Ida said. “Bao Tong says that living with one-party rule is like having AIDS. You lose all immunity.”

In addition, Ida interviewed Wu Yenhua, Jane Mok, Chan Tat Ching, Chen Yizi and Pu Zhiqiang. Many exiled dissidents work as academics or writers. Some are business people.

“The younger ones who left China as students had an easier time,” Ida said. “Most of those who departed when older don’t have good lives. They had more trouble with language and new surroundings. They didn’t get good jobs. Some even tried to survive by delivering pizza.”

Despite passing time, these dissidents can cling to righteousness, to the knowledge that they chose virtue and stood courageously against injustice. This attitude deters regrets, but changes little in Beijing.

Still, brute force has its limitations and can’t prevail forever. But will a more democratic and fairer China emerge in time for Ida and her interview subjects to see it?




ARCHIVES