Defying China
The world must fight the Tiananmen legacy
As China brutally cleared demonstrators out of Tiananmen Square 30 years ago, the world understood that the setback for democracy there was huge.
Little did anyone know. In the three decades since the end of the demonstrations, an anniversary marked this week around the world but not in Beijing where the bloody events unfolded, China has become more authoritarian, less tolerant, increasingly militant and less flexible.
The formerly insular society has turned aggressively outward. Once a threat mainly to its own repressed citizens and Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, China now has tentacles reaching around the world.
There was a time when Westerners thought that trade would pull China into the liberal order. But U.S. efforts to link most-favored-nation trading status to human rights issues didn’t move the needle. De-linking them hasn’t either. China has done what seemed unlikely — boosting the standard of living in the world’s most populous country without granting the political and civil freedoms that generally trend with individual economic improvement.
China has gone in the opposite direction, all but perfecting the surveillance state while cracking down on dissidents and perceived threats in ways that conjure memories of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. More than one million Uighurs, a Muslim group, have been detained for what ludicrously is called “re-education” in concentration camp-like conditions in the western part of the country. President Xi Jinping has set himself up as president for life, earning another comparison to Mao.
Instead of functioning as a liberalizing influence, trade has enabled China to hold course. As dissident Harry Wu documented even before Tiananmen Square, a vast network of prison labor camps supports the economy. China’s huge market enables it to dictate terms to foreign companies wanting to do business there. Greedy and craven U.S. tech companies have helped China
control the internet and police its citizens.
Through Mr. Xi’s brilliantly conceived Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested or agreed to invest in the infrastructure of dozens of countries.
China says the projects enhance “global connectivity,” but they’re also a way for China to spread its influence — and gain intelligence and military advantages — throughout the world. What happens when some nation can’t repay Chinese investment in a strategically located seaport? Will Chinese forces occupy it? Gone are the days when Western powers worried mostly about Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
Adding insult to injury, China cheats. Its dumping of under-priced goods in U.S. markets prompted the current waves of tariffs. Its military hackers have compromised U.S. companies. It blatantly pirates intellectual property. Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes have attempted to influence learning on U.S. college campuses. There is no end to the ways that China’s corrupt leadership will attempt to advance its interests.
In one of the most enduring images of the Tiananmen Square protests, a lone man — dressed in dark pants and a white shirt, satchel in hand — faced down a column of tanks leaving the square. His defiance is a lesson for the rest of the world, which must resolutely stand up to China’s crimes, repression and chicanery and nurture democracy there whenever, however, it can.