Revisiting Tiananmen

[Update: For related posts, go here.]

Several items came up today that have a bearing on the compound threat of China and terrorism I recently discussed.

First, in the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland discusses something that may turn out to be welcome news. The West might finally begin pressuring China to begin recognizing the rights of its own citizens. How?

Chinese officials made a quiet but insistent request [last fall] to European Union leaders: You have changed. So have we. Lift the arms embargo imposed after the 1989 "events." The Chinese request seemed to be, well, another geopolitical slam-dunk.

Except suddenly it isn't. The United States and Europe have stumbled into an increasingly bruising dispute over the efforts of E.U. leaders to remove one of the few remaining symbols of international condemnation of a human rights atrocity.

Score the fact that the dispute has broken out as a good thing. It delays a decision that should not be taken lightly.

That last sentence is not just an understatement: We're talking about something that shouldn't even be on the table! This is the silver lining on the cloud of China's recent "anti-secession" law aimed at Taiwan and other recent behavior. Hoagland points out that the E.U. embargo is largely symbolic with Russia undermining it. However, it is the purpose for which the embargo was placed that makes this interesting: China's suppression of the uprising of 1989. With other tyrants being toppled or threatened around the world, this is not something China's tyrants really want on the minds of its inmates -- I mean, citizens.

The Chinese leadership has provoked exactly what it could not have wanted: renewed international attention to the meaning and legacy of the Tiananmen protests. That is the first useful purpose the U.S.-E.U. embargo tiff serves. Because China's government hides the truth about June 3 and 4, 1989 -- and the six weeks of protests that preceded the use of brute force -- those events live on in China's political present and future.

So while not removing an embargo is what we're ostensibly doing, this little reminder might be ultimately more useful. The rest of the article makes much of the many contradictory faces China presents to the world, but ends on the right note.

[T]ime has not wiped away the essential truth the Chinese government continues to deny: The 1989 protests were among the greatest acts of mass valor and decency in that or any nation's history. Millions of people living in impoverished circumstances went to the streets to defend the lives and reputation of idealistic students, civil servants and workers who were seeking democratic change. The essential meaning of "Tiananmen" is one of Chinese glory and not shame, as the government's secrecy suggests.

Strategic dialogues, or arms embargoes, will not produce much change until there is a government in Beijing that sees what happened almost 16 years ago that way.

In the meantime, in China's own back yard, the Tulip Revolution has toppled a Putin crony in Kyrgyzstan. (Spelled it right on the first try!) Publius Pundit has the full report with pictures.

Besides the basic human drive for freedom that is comparable in each revolution, each has had a flower and each set of protestors has given them to the security forces. Even in the recent Tulip Revolution!

Those riot police kind of lose their ferocity after receiving bouquets from pretty revolution babes!

Why is it that hot babes make dictators impotent? This isn't just a bad pun. While it is obviously true that the troops do not morally accept their role in enforcing tyranny, I think that the babes do two things: (1) They remind the troops that it's human beings they'll be killing if they repress the revolt. (2) They remind the soldiers that they're men. Real men do not bully women around or pick unfair fights with them. And all these women ask is to be allowed to live freely.

The leaders of China might try reconsidering Tiananmen in that light, if they've the guts to look at their past failings. But if they don't, we can hope that her people do, and then become China's leaders themselves.

But the news is not all good. As I discussed earlier this week, China poses a bigger threat to us from the south than Russia ever did, and its lapdog, Hugo, barked at us today.

Venezuelan troops, seeking 'gas smugglers,’ actually crossed the border into Colombia and occupied a little Colombian village for several hours, abusing the villagers. This is no bounty hunter incident, this is a bona fide military invasion. And probably a practice run for a real invasion, because Colombia is a country that Hugo Chavez, along with Fidel Castro, has long had designs on.

It’s also a strike against Colombia’s ally, the U.S.

Hugo Chavez’s policy of rhetorical confrontation has been a failure. Now, he hopes to confront the U.S. through Colombia - right when Donald Rumsfeld is on tour in South America.

I was discussing Chavez with a Colombian acquaintance of mine recently, and he was concerned that something like this might happen eventually.

-- CAV

Updates

3-25-05: Fixed a typo, courtesy of Adrian Hester.
4-17-05: Added reciprocal link to index post.