Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I heard a story once. In Beijing, in the small hours of June 4, 1989, as the tanks and troops surged into Tiananmen Square, students and citizens went to block their way. Among them was a university student who dashed forward and hurled a stone at soldiers in a military vehicle. They replied with a fusillade of bullets, and he died in a pool of blood. His body was left among a pile of corpses, waiting to be claimed by relatives.

Several days later, his father, who happened to be a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, arrived and wailed at the sight of his son’s body. A sympathetic army captain asked him softly, “Was he a victim of friendly fire? Or was he a rioter?” In the political environment of the times, if the son was a victim of friendly fire, there would be no impact on the colonel’s army career. But if the son was deemed a rioter, the colonel’s promotion prospects would suffer. Wiping away his tears, the colonel declared firmly, “He was a rioter.” Attributing the killing to friendly fire would be an insult to his son’s memory. The father hoped that one day his child would be rehabilitated as a hero.

(PHOTOS: Remembering Tiananmen Square)

Why am I telling a story from more than 20 years ago? It’s because Tiananmen has had a profound impact on China since. Before Tiananmen, China had been going down the track of “reform and opening up” for 11 years. The reforms were not only economic but also political. Political change may not have kept pace with economic liberalization, but it was in progress. After Tiananmen, however, high-level cadres realized that political openness posed a threat to the rule of the Communist Party. Political reform was halted while economic reform accelerated.

Despite its opaque political system, China has given birth to a remarkable economic miracle. During the 1990s in particular, people were brimming with optimism as the nation went through boom times of high growth and low inflation. A few supporters of the 1989 protests even professed a grudging sympathy with the official response to Tiananmen, conceding that the blood of a few hundred students was the price of material progress for a billion-strong society.

Yet behind the veneer of prosperity, crises are lurking. Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has paid a terrible price for its lopsided development as its widening wealth gap, environmental degradation and ubiquitous corruption intensify social conflict. The authoritarian development model has proved to be highly efficient in the short term but extremely problematic for the long run.

Over the past 20 years, China has produced as much pollution as the West did in the century or more since the Industrial Revolution. But environmental scandals — toxic water, poisoned crops, lethal air — hardly ever make headlines because the lack of political transparency has undermined the public’s sense of entitlement. Cowed citizens have no faith in their right to be informed or even to manage their health and surroundings.

(PHOTOS: Tank Man Revisited: More Details Emerge About the Iconic Image)

The fall of Chongqing police boss Wang Lijun and party leader Bo Xilai reveals that a sense of entitlement — to be informed and consulted — is lacking even within the party. High-level officials cannot find out about the cases of Wang and Bo through normal means and therefore resort to online rumors, just like the general public. If American politics is a soap opera, then Chinese politics is a murky, suspenseful thriller.

When economic development takes place under a murky political system, the result is widespread corruption, and the government tends to deal with it in an equally murky way — leading to yet more corruption. When a government official is detained for graft along with several businessmen involved in the case, often someone close to the prosecuting authority will visit the businessmen in prison, promising to get them released — if they agree to sell a few properties at a low price.

Today, what impedes China’s development is no longer its economic system, but its political one. China’s progress has become more and more difficult because every single forward movement runs the risk of hitting a stumbling block and is thus, more often than not, aborted.

A French friend of mine was told that during the Cultural Revolution, everything became its opposite — that green meant stop, and go was signified by red, the glorious color of socialism and the party. He asked me for my opinion of China today. Here is my reply: In China, both green and red lights flash at once. You can neither proceed nor halt — but are simply left to stare at the pile of June 4 dead in the rearview mirror.

Yu is the author of China in Ten Words

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