Death Penalty Beijing-Style : * So Little Difference Has a Year’s Time Made

It has been a year since tanks and troops stormed through Beijing’s streets, crushing those who were demonstrating for a less corrupt and more responsive government. But the fears and suspicions of the men who ordered the brutal foray into Tian An Men Square have abated little in that time. This week, on the eve of the massacre, the executions of 20 more alleged criminals were announced, among them a man accused of burning a military vehicle last June 5. The executions were ostensibly carried out to “guarantee the safety of the Asian Games,” scheduled for Beijing next September. More plausibly, they were intended as a timely reminder of the regime’s refusal to tolerate protests of any kind.

The reminder probably was unnecessary. From all appearances, overt political dissent has virtually disappeared in China. Those who a year ago participated in the most defiant challenge to the Communist regime’s legitimacy in the 40 years of its existence have paid a heavy price. Many are dead, others are in prison, some lucky few have found safety in exile. Most have simply been cowed into silence.

For all that, China’s rulers remain anxious and mistrustful. Last year’s demands for a freer press, an end to nepotism and a government more willing to listen to popular complaints seem to have produced genuine shock. Certainly they intensified divisions within the hierarchy between advocates of continued reform and those who would hold fast to discredited orthodoxies. The compromise that seems to have emerged is that cautious economic liberalization is still possible, but only under rigid authoritarian controls.

Nothing, though, is final. It’s obvious that an intense succession struggle continues to be fought as contenders for power wait for mortality to catch up with Deng Xiaoping and other ancient survivors of the revolutionary movement. That struggle’s outcome will determine China’s course for years to come. For what is at stake is not just an answer to the universal question in politics of who gets what. Far more fundamentally, what will be decided are questions touching on China’s ability to function in the 21st Century.

What happened in Tian An Men Square last year was not a spontaneous release of political energy. It was instead the outcome of a decade of officially directed reform, an expressed sense that if economic liberalization can produce a better material life, then a lessening of political controls might produce a more rewarding intellectual life. Is the Communist Party prepared to relax its jealous grip on power? For now, obviously, it’s not. But in time the leadership--a different leadership, no doubt, from the one that rules today--will have no choice if China is to avoid falling ever farther behind in its efforts to modernize. Last year’s Tian An Men Square demonstrators didn’t fail; they were simply tragically premature heralds of inevitable change.