Dirlik June 4
International Journal of China Studies
Vol. 5, No. 2, June/August 2014, pp. 295-329
__________________________________________________________
June Fourth at 25:
Forget Tiananmen, You Don’t Want to Hurt the
Chinese People’s Feelings – and Miss Out on the
Business of the New “New China”!+
Arif Dirlik*
Independent Scholar, Eugene, OR, USA
Formerly University of Oregon/Duke University
Abstract
Twenty-five years ago, in the early hours of June 4, the people’s government in Beijing turned its guns on the people of the city who had risen in protests that spring to express their frustration with Party despotism and corruption. The refusal to this day to acknowledge the crime is matched by continued criminalization of those who still live under the shadow of Tiananmen, and with courage continue to pursue the goals it had put on the political agenda – some from within the country, others from exile. The Tiananmen democracy movement brought to a head the contradictions of “reform and opening” that had acquired increasing sharpness during the decade of the 1980s. The successful turn to global capitalism in the aftermath of the suppression has been at least as important as the censorship of memories in the
“forgetting” of Tiananmen among the PRC population. In historical perspective, Tiananmen appears as one of a series of popular uprisings around the globe that have accompanied the globalization of neo-liberal capitalism. The discussion throughout stresses foreign complicity – including that of foreign China scholars and educational institutions – in covering up this open sore on so-called “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. 295
296
Arif Dirlik
Keywords: Tiananmen, democracy movement, “reform and opening”,
“socialism with Chinese characteristics”, global capitalism, China fever, Confucius Institutes
JEL classification: A14, H12, P16, Z13
I vividly recall the shrill voice of the announcer commenting on the scrawny youth standing in front of a column of tanks in
Vol. 5, No. 2, June/August 2014, pp. 295-329
__________________________________________________________
June Fourth at 25:
Forget Tiananmen, You Don’t Want to Hurt the
Chinese People’s Feelings – and Miss Out on the
Business of the New “New China”!+
Arif Dirlik*
Independent Scholar, Eugene, OR, USA
Formerly University of Oregon/Duke University
Abstract
Twenty-five years ago, in the early hours of June 4, the people’s government in Beijing turned its guns on the people of the city who had risen in protests that spring to express their frustration with Party despotism and corruption. The refusal to this day to acknowledge the crime is matched by continued criminalization of those who still live under the shadow of Tiananmen, and with courage continue to pursue the goals it had put on the political agenda – some from within the country, others from exile. The Tiananmen democracy movement brought to a head the contradictions of “reform and opening” that had acquired increasing sharpness during the decade of the 1980s. The successful turn to global capitalism in the aftermath of the suppression has been at least as important as the censorship of memories in the
“forgetting” of Tiananmen among the PRC population. In historical perspective, Tiananmen appears as one of a series of popular uprisings around the globe that have accompanied the globalization of neo-liberal capitalism. The discussion throughout stresses foreign complicity – including that of foreign China scholars and educational institutions – in covering up this open sore on so-called “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. 295
296
Arif Dirlik
Keywords: Tiananmen, democracy movement, “reform and opening”,
“socialism with Chinese characteristics”, global capitalism, China fever, Confucius Institutes
JEL classification: A14, H12, P16, Z13
I vividly recall the shrill voice of the announcer commenting on the scrawny youth standing in front of a column of tanks in
Cited: February 1995). Xiaoping and Shenzhen) (Shenzhen: Haitian Publishers, 1992), p.9. Deng’s comments prompted the sending of a high level delegation to Singapore in July 1992 to investigate the secrets of social order there. See, Zhongguo Fu Xinjiapo Jingshen Wenming Kaochatuan, 1993 postrevolutionary China (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2011), pp discourse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). IJCS Vol. 5 No. 2 (June/August 2014) 324 inquiry into the fate of Chinese socialism, 19781994 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996). 23. David Harvey, A brief history of neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) 2001):1-33, and, Guobin Yang, The power of the Internet in China: Citizen activism online (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pp socialism (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1989), pp. 362-384. Revolution and cosmopolitanism: The Western stage and the Chinese stages (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971). media’s impact on deliberative politics in China”, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43.4 (2013): 678-708 325 “Searching for the Union: The workers’ movement in China, 2011-2013” (February 2014). If I may add an anecdote, in the fall of 1993, I happened to share a train ride from Shanghai to Nanjing by Party cadres from contemporary China (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2009). Yu himself is a “graduate” of the ferment surrounding the Tiananmen