Xiaorong Li and Lun Zhang
International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2005
PARIS June 4 marks the 16th anniversary of China's bloody repression of pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square. The legacy of the massacre has been put sharply in focus by the current debate over lifting the arms embargo imposed by the European Union in response to that event.
The debate is not only about the meaning of Tiananmen in the context of rapid changes in China, but also the will of the EU to assert its values as it fashions coherent policies toward an increasingly influential China.
China has evolved in important ways, but not in its authoritarian political structure. Its dynamic economy has brought prosperity to many, fostered social pluralism and forced the state to scale back its totalitarian intrusiveness.
Yet those citizens who demand participation in decision-making or who criticize government policies risk retaliation, arbitrary detention, unfair trials or torture. The official verdict on Tiananmen as "counterrevolutionary" stands firm. Public commemorations and demands for an accounting remain punishable offenses.
Chinese leaders underestimate the potency of Tiananmen. After the "SARS doctor," Jiang Yanyong, earned international acclaim by disclosing official cover-ups of the epidemic, he joined the "Tiananmen Mothers" to demand an official re-evaluation of the massacre.
Mourners poured out their hearts for former Party Secretary General Zhao Ziyang, who died last January after spending 15 years under house arrest for having shown sympathy for the students in Tiananmen.
In April, the government hastily banned the anti-Japan demonstrations that it had tacitly permitted after demonstrators extended their focus from the atrocities committed by Japanese troops half a century ago to those committed by the Chinese Liberation Army in 1989.
By holding Tiananmen political prisoners, refusing any reckoning with what happened and burying the memories, it is the government that keeps the spotlight on the massacre.
China finds it humiliating to be classed with countries like Myanmar and Zimbabwe, which are also under EU embargoes for the violations of human rights.
Of course, China is worlds apart from these impoverished and woefully mismanaged states. However, like Myanmar, China harasses democracy activists and imprisons many for their ideas and convictions. Myanmar may have conscripted the most child soldiers, but China executes the largest number of people each year. Despite food insecurity and political violence, Zimbabwe has, unlike China, a functioning opposition, albeit tightly constrained.
Just as European leaders are not about to lift embargoes on Myanmar or Zimbabwe without real rights improvement, so they should keep the embargo on China until there is measurable progress.
The free world must reject the convenient assumption that the Chinese prefer prosperity to political freedom.
The explosion of independent reporting and information has been accompanied by the deployment of an estimated 50,000 cyberpolice who block Web sites, patrol cybercafes, monitor the use of cellular phones and track down Internet activists.
Enhanced economic performance has not meant better protection for those whose lives and interests inconvenience those in power. When China ratified the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, for example, it entered a reservation explicitly rejecting the right of workers to form independent unions. Workers who produce the products flooding European markets are powerless to fight hazardous sweatshop conditions and low wages.
International pressure after Tiananmen in the form of trade sanctions did some good, until the argument prevailed that they punished ordinary Chinese. That argument hardly applies to the weapons embargo, since it is the Chinese state and its military that benefit from the arms trade.
China threatens to retaliate by withholding business contracts and cooperation in other areas if the EU stands firm on rights conditions for lifting the embargo. Heeding these threats only encourages further use of this tactic.
The ball should be in China's court. It can have the embargo lifted by making concrete and structural progress on civil rights.
Even if a proposed "code of conduct" is applied to future weapons sales, the symbolic act of lifting the embargo would signal triumph of business interest over human rights, sending the wrong message to people in the region who aspire for what Europe stands for.
(Lun Zhang was a student leader during the Tiananmen protests and now lives in Paris. Xiaorong Li is visiting at the Center for International Study and Research in Paris.)
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