Kissinger’s View of China Crisis

Two months have passed since the June 4 Beijing massacre. Although the exact figure of slaughtered victims may never be known, the world will not forget the courage and restraint shown by the peaceful Chinese demonstrators whose only demands were to be allowed to live like self-respecting human beings. Amid the protests from all parts of the world, executions and arrests, both open and secret, are still going on all over China. In the meantime, the butchers of Beijing residents are trying to convince the world that no one died in Tian An Men Square and the whole incident was the work of a few so-called “counterrevolutionaries.”

Behind this background it is perhaps not surprising that a few voices calling for sympathy for the perpetrators of the human carnage would appear in the American media. What is surprising, however, is that such attempts at whitewashing should come from people who consider themselves experts on Chinese affairs.

(Former Secretary of State Henry) Kissinger’s article (Opinion, July 30) contains most of the major themes of the few voices sympathetic to the Chinese regime:

1. The Chinese government showed great restraint in using tanks, machine guns and gasoline against the peaceful demonstrators because it waited seven weeks (Kissinger said eight weeks). However, the delay of the worst human carnage against unarmed civilians in modern Chinese history was not due to government patience but the result of factional disputes within the Communist Party leadership itself, the timing of (Soviet President Mikhail S.) Gorbachev’s visit, and the break needed to get more loyal troops to the capital.

2. After the butchery of thousands of students and civilians, it is unfair to depict Deng Xiaoping and company as brutal tyrants. In fact, Kissinger and some like-minded politicians and scholars would rather call the whole incident a personal tragedy for Deng, who is 84 years old. (They) seem to ignore the broken dreams of those Chinese youths whose bloodstains are not yet totally cleansed from Tian An Men Square.

Throughout Chinese history there were many reformers whose goal was to strengthen imperial autocracy. Even the last Qing empress dowager knew the importance of Western technology. It is quite consistent to be both a reformer and xenophobic. Deng Xiaoping is typical of the Chinese reformist officials during the end of Qing dynasty whose motto was “Chinese learning as essence, Western learning as function.”

3. For Kissinger, the demands of Chinese students, who were pleading to be granted some minimal human rights, were so outrageous that their success would only bring civil war and unleash warlordism.

Yet, most native Chinese familiar with Chinese politics believe that the students’ unrealized success was the only hope to bring a peaceful solution to the social crisis. In the 20th Century, the real threat to China’s national unity has been autocracy. Only democracy with rule of law can bring peaceful reform and social tranquility.

4. According to Kissinger’s reasoning, “since no government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied, a crackdown was therefore inevitable.” Ergo, the Chinese people should be perfectly content to be docile subjects under totalitarian rule.

It seems that for some enlightened Westerners, free speech, free press and free assembly are only fit to be enjoyed by their own countrymen. As for the Chinese, they do not deserve such luxuries. According to this logic, 1 billion Chinese should be denied basic human rights in order for China to act as counterweight to the influence of the Soviet Union and Japan. But this is a price which the Chinese people may no longer be willing to pay. The truth is only a democratic China can be a reliable moderating force for world peace.

ZHENGYUAN FU

Irvine

Zhengyuan Fu is a visiting associate professor at UC Irvine, a former fellow of the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford and senior research fellow of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.