Interview with Ezra Vogel
By Cheong Suk Wai, The Straits Times, 5 Jun 2012
THE day was June 4, 1989. American Sinologist Ezra Vogel was, as he puts it, 'furious' as he watched on television Chinese soldiers firing on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
Beijing's crackdown on the student-led protesters was a 'terrible tragedy', says Professor Vogel, an emeritus don in social sciences at Harvard University.
The man many blamed for the bloodbath was paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who had ordered the crackdown.
He says Deng, already 84 years old in 1989, had to quell a 'perfect storm' of factors that threatened to derail his 10-year effort to modernise China. The storm had started two months earlier with the sudden death of widely respected former Communist Party of China (CPC) chief Hu Yaobang.
Deng sanctioned no public unrest and reviled anyone he felt was disloyal to China and the CPC. He had fallen out with Hu, whom he considered too liberal on political and economic reforms.
The paramount leader's stance angered Hu's many admirers, who were mostly students and poorly paid workers. They were buckling under soaring inflation, which Deng felt then Premier and CPC general secretary Zhao Ziyang had failed to manage. Deng's differing views with Zhao on reforms hastened their split in May 1989.
Prof Vogel, 81, shared these views with The Straits Times last week, on the eve of the 23rd anniversary of the June 4 incident. Chinese officials say about 200 people, including many soldiers, were killed. Prof Vogel, was here for two weeks as the Singapore Management University's Ho Bee Professor in Chinese Economy and Business.
After more than a decade of research, Prof Vogel published his 745-page book in September last year. Titled simply Deng Xiaoping And The Transformation Of China, it received mixed reviews.
Many praised his even-handed approach to the steely, taciturn pragmatist who set China on the path to economic supremacy. But critics found him too sympathetic to Deng. They were riled most by Prof Vogel's conclusion on the June 4 events: 'What we do know is that in the two decades after Tiananmen, China enjoyed relative stability and rapid - even spectacular - economic growth... than at any time in Chinese history.'
Of his critics, Prof Vogel says: 'Many... were reporters in Tiananmen Square on June 4 and Deng did such a horrible thing that they see anyone who explains why he did it, and how China has grown rapidly since, as soft and dumb.'
Deng, a thrice-married Sichuanese and father of five, went in 70 years from leading a small county to steering south-west China and then the entire country. Along the way, he was purged twice from the CPC, first for supposedly being a capitalist and then for being a counter-revolutionary. But Deng, who Mao Zedong once likened to a needle in a ball of cotton, rolled with the many political punches.
Ironically, Prof Vogel learnt none of this from Deng himself.
The closest he got to the leader was seeing him from across a crowded room. Also, Deng wrote almost none of his thoughts down, having learnt from his days in the underground not to leave paper trails that might damn him.
Does all this not leave his book wanting? Prof Vogel responds: 'I don't think I missed that much. Even if I had met him, he wouldn't have told me all the answers to the key questions, such as 'What were you thinking on June 4?', 'What did you really think of Mao?' and 'How did you take power?''
Still, he allows, he is 'not 100 per cent sure' about his interpretation of Deng, even after having interviewed Deng's youngest daughter Deng Rong, China's former president Jiang Zemin and Singapore's former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, among others.
Prof Vogel says Mr Lee, in particular, helped shape his reading of Deng's controversial 1979 invasion of Vietnam. Many had charged that Deng did that just to gain control of China's army; at that time, many of the country's high military officials were still in thrall of the late Mao and were resisting Deng, who they believed would betray China by making it embrace capitalism.
But Mr Lee, who discussed Deng only once with Prof Vogel some time in 2002, gave a clear-eyed account of Deng's 'intense worries' that the Soviet Union, with Vietnam's help, would encircle China - with a view to conquering South-east Asia.
Deng not only told Mr Lee all this when he visited Singapore for the first time in November 1978, but also asked the Singapore leader to stress to the United States how imminent that threat was. Mr Lee did so. A year later, China invaded Vietnam, staunching the Soviet tide in Asia.
Prof Vogel first met Mr Lee in the early 1970s, when he hosted the then Prime Minister at Harvard's East Asia Centre on the latter's official trip to the US. The Harvard don found Mr Lee 'extremely bright, vigorous and a real intellectual as well as a confident leader'.
And, he adds, although Mr Lee was 19 years younger than Deng, the latter respected Mr Lee for what he had done with Singapore. 'Deng was learning more from Mr Lee than vice versa,' says Prof Vogel, 'because by then, Singapore's leaders had a more settled political structure and learnt how to keep their city attractive'.
With such lessons in hand, Deng steered China to economic success. Who might be its next Deng, then?
Prof Vogel says: 'Nobody - and it's not just a question of talent; it's structural.
'Deng was a revolutionary and war hero who came to power in an unstructured time, so he had a special authority. But people in office in peacetime are not war heroes. It's a natural development.'
Is China's often corrupt nouveau riche a natural development of Deng's reforms too?
'Well, you could say that,' he allows, 'but just before he stepped down in 1992, somebody asked him about a corruption case and Deng said, 'We must move with two fists - one for pushing reform and the other for improper behaviour'.
The most notorious example of that today is the CPC's former top official in Chongqing, Bo Xilai and his lawyer wife, Gu Kailai. Prof Vogel says that with the hard-to-handle Bo gone, China's top and emerging leaders will now work together more closely to weed out corruption in their ranks and speed up political reform.
Prof Vogel is now in talks with China publisher San Lian to release a Chinese language version of his book in China.
He says: 'Many intellectuals in China would like to talk about the background to Tiananmen, but they would have more trouble than a foreigner would in doing so. So my book would hopefully increase the range of freedom they have to write about it.'
Beijing muzzles talk of Tiananmen
Tight security means 23rd anniversary of incident passed almost unnoticed
By Kor Kian Beng, The Straits Times, 5 Jun 2012
BEIJING - The 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen incident, China's most politically sensitive event, came and went almost unnoticed yesterday as a result of efforts by the Chinese government.
Like a well-rehearsed army drill, Beijing tightened security online and offline to suppress any talk or event marking the 1989 pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square, which ended on June 4 in a crackdown that killed possibly thousands of people.
Police on Sunday reportedly beat up and detained activists commemorating the June 4 incident in south-eastern Fujian province while protesters from eastern Zhejiang province were detained at a Beijing railway station last Saturday and forced to return home.
China's censors went into overdrive yesterday, blocking access to pages containing terms related to the anniversary, such as 'six four', '23', 'candle' and 'never forget'.
Hong Kong, which enjoys special freedoms, was the only Chinese territory allowed to hold anniversary events. About 150,000 people held a candlelight vigil (right) held last night to mark the incident.
The clampdown quashes speculation that Beijing was going to reassess its verdict on the Tiananmen incident as a 'counter-revolutionary rebellion' and a 'political storm', said Hong Kong-based analyst Willy Lam.
Talk that China might do so this year started swirling after Premier Wen Jiabao in March stressed the need for political reforms and warned against another Cultural Revolution.
A protest in south-western Guizhou province last week - allowed by local police to go on for several hours though the protesters were detained the following day - had also given the impression that China was taking a different approach.
But Dr Lam said change was unlikely to take place so soon as stability is key in the next few months before the leadership transition, which is set to see Vice-President Xi Jinping take over from President Hu Jintao.
'The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) won't want anything to rock the boat,' he added.
China also wants to prevent further potential social unrest amid a slowing economy, rising inflation and a widening income gap, said Singapore's East Asian Institute research fellow Chen Gang.
The government is also extra careful after having to deal with the fallout from the Bo Xilai scandal and Chen Guangcheng saga in recent months, added Dr Chen.
Mr Bo, the former Chongqing party chief, was sacked in March over corruption charges, among others, while Mr Chen, a blind activist, escaped from house arrest in April and sought refuge at the American embassy in Beijing.
'Bo Xilai represents the conservative left and Chen Guangcheng represents the liberal right,' said Dr Chen. 'Both events were widely reported, which could reflect strong competition between the two factions. It also shows that the political development in China is at a very unstable stage.'
The June 4 crackdown remains a taboo subject and its occurrence never officially recorded as it is the only instance when the People's Liberation Army aimed its guns on the people. The student-led protest lasted six weeks before the army moved in and crushed it.
Since then, China has refused to admit any wrongdoing or consider compensation for those killed. It also bans the mention of Tiananmen in state media and still keeps some participants in jail.
Rights groups are refusing to let the CCP get away so easily.
Tiananmen Mothers, a group of relatives of victims of the 1989 crackdown, has called for the end of communist rule and for the government to reassess its official verdict on the protests. 'So long as the Tiananmen Mothers exist, our struggle for justice will not cease,' said the group in an open letter to the government, signed by 121 members.
Dui Hua, a non-profit human rights advocacy group, says there are fewer than 12 Tiananmen participants still in jail - down from a total of 1,602 individuals convicted and sentenced to prison after the 1989 protests.
The United States on Sunday urged China to free the jailed Tiananmen participants and to stop harassing protesters and their relatives. This prompted Beijing to express 'strong dissatisfaction' with Washington yesterday.
But the younger communist leadership under Mr Xi might be open to reassessing the Tiananmen incident, given the possible benefit in boosting China's international image, said Dr Lam.
It could also make the US and the European Union consider lifting the embargo on sale of arms to China, he added.
But change is possible only at least two years after the new leadership has taken over and consolidated power against the old guards, said Dr Lam. 'The new leaders also don't want to send the wrong signals that they are willing to start real political reforms before they are ready to do so,' he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment