Turmoil Fascinates Chinese-Americans : Beijing Protests Watched With Worry

Chinese-Americans who live in Orange County and Chinese nationals visiting here are watching the student demonstrations in Beijing with fascination and worry.

The fascination, some said Thursday, is with the determination of the young people of the People’s Republic of China for more freedoms. But they worry that the Communist government ultimately will respond with massive crackdowns and repression.

John Liu, an assistant professor of comparative culture at UC Irvine, said: “I have graduate students from the People’s Republic of China on campus, and they are definitely concerned with what is going on.”

“Generally, these visiting Chinese students are interested in seeing more democracy in Chinese society, but they all express deep concern that events in Beijing may be going too far and that the exact opposite consequences may result.”

For the past week students in Beijing have staged street demonstrations, demanding more freedoms and a more open society. On Wednesday, more than 1 million demonstrators flooded the streets of the Chinese capital city.

“I think China needs to open up and I’m glad it’s happening,” Liu said, “but the students may be going to the point where government may decide to take harsh action. . . . I’m concerned about the possible side effects. It’s not clear that there is a unified student leadership or even a single student leadership over there.”

Although student protests in the United States might not be “quite comparable,” he said, “I remember in the 1960s that the student New Left in the United States had many commendable reforms, but the leadership of the student New Left became fragmented, and a nihilistic element took over.”

Danny Pang, 22, a UCI senior and president of the Asian Pacific Students and Staff Assn. on that campus, said he was “glad to see this happening, because I’d like to see China develop into a more democratic country.”

Born in Taiwan

Pang, who was born in Taiwan but has lived in the United States since 1981, also said he worries that the Communist government ultimately might retaliate.

“I think that could happen, but I also believe the size of the demonstrations, with so many students involved, may keep something like that (repression) from happening,” he said. “I wasn’t really surprised at the size of the demonstrations in Beijing, because in a country like China students are always involved and China is a high-population country.”

Chang-Lin Tien, executive vice chancellor at UCI, called the demonstrations “very positive; it’s a mass movement to put more democracy into the system.” The government may hesitate to crack down too much, he said, “because of world opinion and because there is a broad spectrum of support from different segments of society.”

A visiting Chinese student at Golden West College in Huntington Beach said he has firsthand experience with a similar situation, “because I was a leader in a demonstration 3 years ago.” Han Chen, 23, of Shanghai, said that in 1986 he was a law student at the East China Institute of Politics and Law when students demonstrated “to get freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We also wanted a crackdown on the bureaucrats in government and a better economic situation. The economy is kind of screwed up.”

Chen said that after the demonstrations the law school forced him to leave.

“After that, I was sponsored by a friend, an American, and I came to the States to go to school,” he said. Chen is studying business administration at Golden West. He said he is unsure if he will return to mainland China.

Crackdown Feared

Although Chen also worries about a potential crackdown, he said, “I’m still positive about the outcome.

“If China wants to exist in this world, it will have to understand how to play its part in the world. If it tried to crack down too much, it would look bad to the rest of the world. It would look like a real dictatorship.”

Mai-Ying Woo, a professor of management at Golden West College, said: “This has been a long time coming, and I’m delighted to see more democracy emerging over there.” Woo, who lives in Fountain Valley, said her parents are from China.

Woo said she shares other Chinese-Americans’ worries about a government backlash. But, she said, “I think any setback would be temporary, because I believe the millions of people over there are not going to be held down much longer.”