PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES : Protest Winds Will Gust Again : Has oppression killed the democracy movement? Despite surface signs of its demise, it is alive and strong.

Foreigners, whose unenviable task it is to fathom China, are reduced to studying what they see and hear, without means to gauge the true feelings of the people, who even on the sunniest days resort to rituals and masks.

And nowadays, the skies over Beijing are dark indeed. The square is empty. The voices are silenced.

The 1989 outpourings of citizens in the Communist world occurred first in Tian An Men Square, then spread, toppling one dominion after another, reaching toward the heart of the Soviet Union, stirring even Mongolia. Similar forces were at work: Communism’s endemic failure to meet either material or spiritual needs; wanton corruption; economic woes; the devastating contrasts with lives in the Free World; a stultifying atmosphere where the party, right and wrong, knows best.

Why, then, has China remained a country apart?

For Confucian ages, Chinese were taught to kowtow publicly to elders and authority, however unreasonable. For Maoist decades, individuals had to submit meekly to the will of the party or they and their clansmen suffered dire reprisals. Throughout the vast, populous and poor land, harmony was exalted above equity. Thus the students sought to work within the system, petitioning for dialogue and respect as patriots. Also, unlike their foreign counterparts, the spontaneous Chinese demonstrators lacked experience, organization, unified tactics or popular leaders like Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel.

Why then did the demands of the Chinese students--infinitely more modest than the radical ones of East Europeans--elicit such a brutal response?

Not as well-educated or informed as Mikhail S. Gorbachev and others, China’s first-generation rulers were Long Marchers whose political instincts were akin to those of Mao and Stalin. They played on traditional Chinese fears of chaos. They painted hunger strikers, who harmed only their own health, with the terrifying images of youthful Red Guards who overturned heaven and earth during the Cultural Revolution. They called in extensive debts of personal loyalty owed by a legion of underlings. They drew on credits earned through a decade of bold economic reforms and relative openness.

As the demonstrations persisted and amassed broad support, Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang, as well as others in high places, urged moderation. Some key generals petitioned for nonviolence. But the feudal patriarchs, fearing even modest gestures would thrust them on a slippery slide out of power, ordered the People’s Army to shoot at its own people. Blinded by pride and ignorance, they underestimated reactions at home and abroad to the indelible image of one lone man braving tanks.

This mistake only intensified their paranoia. Ever since, they have reverted to Maoist tactics that can only destroy the road to modernization they themselves had so arduously paved.

Has oppression killed the democracy movement?

Despite surface signs of its demise, it is alive and strong. The Chinese people recognize the Big Lie and know that the bloody climax last spring was hardly inevitable. It took Deng Xiaoping seven weeks to marshal sufficient consensus to unleash the soldiers. Splits that opened in the political and military ranks then are widening still. Many party and provincial officials defy or dilute directives from the Politburo. Many in the army are shamed by its inglorious role and resent elevating politics over professionalism. The regime, clearly uncertain about the loyalties of even the police, recently replaced their top leaders. An underground that protects political fugitives and allows them to flee can only exist with the connivance of authorities and popular support.

Last spring’s demonstrations, the largest in China’s history, broke out in virtually every major city in the nation. Students led, but intellectuals, workers, entrepreneurs, ordinary citizens, government and party officials followed. The myriad economic pressures that fueled discontent multiply as austerity measures have smothered growth and spread unemployment, raising the specter of larger numbers of workers joining the ranks of the disaffected. Much of the opposition, once willing to settle for gradual change, has been radicalized.

Though China appears tranquil today, it is seething with anger, cynicism and passive resistance. People lie in wait. They know that octogenarian patriarchs must soon leave the stage. They ask: If the legendary Mao failed to anoint a successor, how could lesser men succeed? No longer do Chinese regard their leaders as the keepers of an unerring faith, but as wardens of temporal powers shorn of ideals. Even the despicable Gang of Four in 1976 only sprayed water, not bullets, at Tian An Men crowds wishing them ill.

Thus, while public obeisance continues, it is forced and does not reflect legitimacy. The elders know this, too. So they have forbidden citizens to stroll in the square, have even outlawed black armbands and white flowers to commemorate the dead, any dead, on the day marked by the ancients for mourning.

But anniversaries abound. And derisive laughter is more infectious than tears. A leadership that fears above all its own people cannot last.

In this era, sooner or later, through takeover by reformers at the top or new demonstrations from below or both, the global winds of change that first gusted in China will return ever stronger to Tian An Men Square.