Contact: Jim Geheran
Initiatives for China
202.290.1423
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Initiatives for China President Condemns Violence Against
Uyghur Workers At Chinese Toy Factory

The following statement by Dr. Yang Jianli, Harvard Fellow and President, Initiatives for China, condemns the violence that resulted in deaths and injuries to innocent workers. Dr. Yang also condemns the ongoing campaign of hatred and mistrust conducted against the Uyghur people by the Chinese government that is behind this violence.

Washington, DC June 30, 2009.

I am both saddened and outraged by the reports of mob violence conducted by my fellow citizens against innocent Uyghur people at a factory in Guangdong Province on June 26. My sadness turns numb as I watched the videos of young men mindlessly and mercilessly beating young Uyghur women.

I apologize to my many Uyghur friends that these disgusting actions were perpetrated by my Han Chinese brothers and sisters. Ethnic violence can never be condoned and it must be vigorously condemned and prosecuted wherever and whenever it occurs.

My sadness turns to outrage as I realize that the government of China, rather than protecting its citizens, has instigated and encouraged this violence through its longstanding campaign of hatred and vilification against the Uyghur people. Even as this violence unfolded, credible reports reveal that local police took more than two hours to arrive at the scene of the attacks. Furthermore, reports of the violence initially posted on the local government website, have been removed.

I call on all peace loving peoples to vigorously and publicly condemn this violence and the divisive policies of the Chinese government that have demonized the Uyghur people and enabled this violence to occur.

Yang Jianli
Harvard Fellow
President, Initiatives for China

Washington, DC. June 30, 2009

Liu Xiaobo’s arrest for inciting subversion is simply standard operating procedure for handling high profile dissenters. This very predictable process of detention, interrogation, intimidation, arrest, sentencing, and incarceration is not about any real or contrived transgressions by Mr. Liu, Hu Jia, or any number of Chinese patriots. Rather,  It is about how the Chinese Communist Party maintains it absolute power over a nation of one billion people despite its well documented record of abject corruption and disregard for the rights and dignity of its citizens.     

Most observers associate Mr. Liu’s arrest with his authorship of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for political reforms in China. This assumption is exactly what the CCP wants its citizens to make. The only problem for the Chinese government is that there is nothing in Charter 08 that violates any Chinese law. The truthfulness and the reasonableness of Charter 08 , endorsed by so many prominent Chinese citizens, has terrified the Chinese Government.  It will not dare use it to  build its case against Mr. Liu. Instead, the actual charge of “inciting subversion”, as reported by the state run Xinhua news agency, makes no mention of Charter 08, and is decidedly vague. The vagueness  of the charges serves two purposes: 1) It gives the CCP the liberty to put Mr. Liu in jail for a long time while hiding behind a sham of judicial process.  2) The vagueness of the charges and the lack of an independent judiciary, sends a chilling message to the Chinese people that they can be arrested and jailed at will if it crosses a deliberately ambiguous line.  This fear and unknowing creates a well cultivated self censorship among the Chinese people.  Over time this fear-induced self censorship precludes all but the bravest citizens from questioning the actions of the government.  This climate of fear also relieves the Chinese government of the PR stigma and logistical burden of maintaining an overt police state that characterized the tyrannies of Stalin and Hitler.  This strategy of control through self censorship is well articulated and documented by the scholar Perry Link in his article The Anachonda in the Chandilier.

So, the issue at hand is not about Liu Xiaobo, or even Charter 08, it is about a calculated strategy of maintaining illegitimate power by replacing the rule of law with the rule by fear. This approach to governance is a cancerous repudiation of the body of enlightened covenants regarding the rule of law and  the fundamental rights of human beings so painstakingly crafted in the wake of the second World War.  This cancer  is already metastisizing  beyond the borders of China.  It exists in Iran, Vietnam., and most egregiously, in North Korea.  Its DNA has already infected several still overtly democratic societies.  For instance, last February, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate,  was refused entry into South Africa, in clear violation of international norms and presumably at the instigation of the Chinese government.  On a more immediate level, The government of New Zealand failed to provide me a visa so I might  participate in  events in Aukland commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Democracy Movement.  It even had the audacity to demand to see the speech I intended to deliver while in New Zealand.

This rule by fear of a major world power is not a matter of internal affairs as the CCP claims.  It is a legtimate cause of concern for the security of all free societies.  To paraphrase the prophetic words of Nobel Laureate and Soviet era dissident, Andrei Sakharov, the world community should not rely on governments who do not rely on their own people.. A society organized around fear and repression of truth is inherently unstable and untrustworthy.  It actions must be held to international standards of behavior.  Its repression must be challenged with truth.  Truth is the most effect antidote to  tyranny.  This axiom is evident in the recent turmoil in Iran where the blogs and videos carried through the Internet held the worst inclinations of the Iranian rulers in check.  America and western societies should learn from this example.  It should empower the forces of democracy  by unabashedly supporting efforts to tear down the Internet firewalls that prop up these regimes by blocking the free flow of ideas and information.  Such concerted action will be the best tribute to the towering bravery of Liu Xiaobo and the legions of other patriots on the frontlines of democratic change in China.

Later this month, here on Capitol Hill, the NED will honor five brave Cuban activists, three of whom are in prison, by presenting them in absentia with a replica of the Goddess of Democracy, the statue that was dramatically unveiled in Tiananmen Square and stood for five days, before it was destroyed by a tank 20 years ago today. The statue embodied the democratic aspirations of the people who gathered in Tiananmen Square, many hundreds of whom were killed in the crackdown, and of countless other Chinese citizens who had risen in protest in over 370 cities across China, from Urumchi in the north-west to Canton in the deep-south. And it has since become a universal symbol of democracy, which is why we have given it as our Democracy Award since 1991 to brave people in all regions of the world who are fighting for democracy.
As you all know, there are some people today who think the United States and other countries shouldn’t be pressing China on issues of democracy and human rights, either because they think there other more important things to talk about with China, or because the Chinese people in their view are somehow unfit for democracy and require a dictator. And so the Chinese government today is being coddled and appeased, as a result of which there are surely some Chinese democrats who feel forgotten and abandoned. But they should not be discouraged, any more than the others are right to think that democracy in China is not important or realistic; and for the same reason – for what is being over-looked by both disheartened democrats and so-called realists is the extreme vulnerability of the Chinese system of government.
Certainly the Chinese government feels vulnerable, if one is to judge by its behavior. Otherwise, why would it go to such lengths to erase all memory within China of the Tiananmen uprising and crackdown? Indeed, it has removed any mention of them in textbooks or the media. It has arrested journalists who intend to write about the events and anyone who even speaks to such journalists. It has blocked websites and jammed broadcasts. Just yesterday government censors blocked access to Twitter for the first time, after it had already blacked out BBC broadcasts, blocked all videos on YouTube, and detained more dissidents, all to shield the population from any hint of today’s anniversary.
When Zhao Ziyang died four years ago, the regime took drastic precautions to prevent any rallying of dissidents and people with grievances, remembering how the death of Hu Yaobang in April 1989 had been the spark that ignited the Tiananmen uprising. It declared a period of “extreme sensitivity,” put the armed police on special alert, and ordered the railways to screen all travelers going to Beijing. These are not actions of a regime that feels secure. On the contrary, they are the actions of a regime that thinks it’s sitting on top of a volcano about to erupt or at the center of an earthquake hazard zone.
The reason for this insecurity was clearly spelled out last month in a lecture in Beijing by the well-known Chinese scholar and sociologist Yu Jianrong. The Chinese system, he explained with deep and obvious concern, is characterized by what he called “rigid stability” — stability that is based on closed and coercive power, where there is no rule of law to protect people’s legitimate interests or to prevent the rulers from abusing the people and lining their own pockets. The dominant feature of social governance in such a system, he said, is “dichotomized, black and white thinking” in which the “expression of people’s legitimate interests” – land issues for peasant, wages for workers, homeowner rights for urban residents, minority rights for Tibetans or Uyghurs – becomes a threat to the social order.
A rigid system is by definition brittle. It lacks resilience. It can break under stress. And there are many sources of stress in China today. People have grievances because their rights are being denied and they have no recourse to the courts which are controlled or to the political authorities who are distant, unaccountable, arrogant and defensive. And they are angry about many things beyond their immediate economic interests, such as massive corruption and environmental degradation. Given the widespread use of the Internet and the fact that over half the population has mobile phones, citizens are also more aware of their rights, and more connected with each other, than ever before. On top of all this, as Yu Jianrong observed, the regime has lost its only source of legitimacy, which was the revolution. “Revolutionary discourse has distanced itself from us,” he said, “revolution is long longer legitimate.”
The only source of real legitimacy, of what Professor Yu calls “resilient stability,” is in his view “democracy within the framework of the Constitution,” a system where the government is in constant dialogue with society through elections and independent media, where its authority comes from the people and its governance is subject to popular review, where conflicts are resolved lawfully, and where people are treated fairly. Such a system will not break apart because it is able to bend. It is not threatened by sparks because it’s made of the inflammable material law, democracy, and respect for rights. Such resilient stability, or democracy, is the only way Professor Yu feels that China can escape from what he calls “the tragic fate of two millennia of the cycle of alternating chaos and order.”
He is not hopeful that the Chinese leadership, having violently rejected a dialogue with society in 1989, has the wisdom and the will to make the transition from rigid to resilient stability. And so he is gloomy about China’s future.
But there is an alternative, and it has been offered by the Charter 08 Declaration that was issued last December 10 by more than 300 prominent Chinese citizens and has since been signed by many thousands of others. It affirms democracy as a system where “political power begins with the people and the legitimacy of a regime derives from the people,” where political leaders are chosen “through periodic competitive elections,” where the will of the majority is honored and the rights of minorities are protected – in short, “a modern means for achieving government that is truly “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Last Tuesday, at a conference that the NED sponsored with the Laogai Research Foundation, the dissident Xu Wenli repeated these very words. He said that he had taken a walk to the Lincoln Memorial, at the other end of the Mall from where we are now, and read on the monument those famous words from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address – government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He said that at that moment he had made a promise to President Lincoln that “China will be a free country.”
I believe he’s right. So let us remember those who died in Tiananmen Square as Lincoln remembered the heroes of Gettysburg, and let us “take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion” and “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,” and that China, “under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”
Thank you.

 Washington, D.C.— Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Members and human rights activists participated in an event on the West Front of the Capitol this afternoon to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  Below are the Speaker’s remarks:

“Good afternoon.  Thank you very much Yang Jianli and the Initiatives for China for bringing us together this morning and this afternoon.

“Words fail me to adequately tell you what an honor it is to be on the same stage and in the presence of so many of the heroes of June 4 — to have a message at the same time from His Holiness the Dalai Lama in solidarity for more openness in China and Tibet.

“We stand here in front of the Capitol of the United States, a beacon of freedom to the world, with a great history of free speech and open discussion.

“On this side of the Capitol, here on these grounds, we stand with people who took to heart and to mind, the words of our Founders. In our Declaration of Independence, in our Constitution, our words talked about every person being equal and ‘endowed by their creator.’  ‘Endowed by their creator,’ not by the state,  but ‘endowed by their creator’ of certain rights like liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  And it was for life and liberty — and some people paid that price in Tiananmen Square. They paid with their lives and their liberty to speak out for freedom.

“It’s interesting to me that this week there are also observances in Eastern Europe about freedom emerging there at this time 20 years ago. And for those of you who are old enough to remember Tiananmen Square, you would have seen that the students gathered in the square in May in the days leading up to June 4th were an inspiration to the world, to the entire world.  They inspired others to have the courage and they had a drumbeat of liberty and freedom that was felt around the world.

“What they wanted was dialogue with their government on openness and freedom and freedom of speech and religion and ending the corruption in China. They wanted that dialogue, they wanted that conversation — what they got was crushed.  Crushed.  Some of those people crushed in the square and other streets of Beijing.  But they could not crush the spirit of Tiananmen.

“And that’s why it’s important these 20 years later — I remember meeting Chai Ling in Paris. She was newly escaped from China — we are so proud of her, she is so courageous, and so many others, so many other heroes of that movement. Many of them, when they got out of China, signed my man before the tank poster in my office, which is getting old now, but I’m very proud of the signatures that are on there. They are the signatures to a declaration of freedom in China and what this freedom means is openness, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, accountability, rule of law according to the Chinese Constitution.

“So what is important for us to do now? Who would have ever thought all of you here who are gathered with great leaders for democracy?  Who would have ever thought that 20 years later, we would still be in this situation? That the same cowardice that inspired — I don’t know if inspired is the word — that insisted that the regime crush the people in the square — to clear that square at such and such a time. The same cowardice that did that — that same fear of the people exists in China today.

“We were told 20 years ago that peaceful evolution and economic reform would lead to political reform. Indeed, the economic reform has occurred. And I was so pleased that Secretary Clinton said in a statement that China has made enormous progress economically. I saw that last week in China. But she also said that a China that had made all that progress should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed at Tiananmen Square — both to learn and to heal.  We need to do that as we go forward.

“I also want to reference a speech made by President Obama in Egypt today.  President Obama made a very excellent speech in Egypt and this is what he said there: ‘But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things. The ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed, confidence in the rule of law and equal administration of justice, a government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people, the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.’  That is what the President said in Egypt, looking out to the Muslim world.

“I have said over and over again: if we do not support human rights in China and in Tibet, we lose all moral authority to speak about human rights any place in the world. So here we are in front of the Capitol, a building symbolic of the core values of our American independence and our Constitution, in solidarity with those who, using our words, modeling the Goddess of Democracy after the Statue of Liberty, having those aspirations — people carrying those aspirations crushed in Tiananmen Square.

“Twenty years later, the spirit is still alive. In Hong Kong in the observance of Tiananmen Square, over 150,000 people turned out last night.  150,000 people — the biggest crowd since the one-year anniversary of Tiananmen Square.  So I know that the long arm of the Chinese government will be reaching out to the media all over the world to suppress reporting on what’s happened in China, and also restricting communication from China through the Internet and the rest, but the fact is that here we are at the Capitol, there they were in Hong Kong, a drumbeat of activity across the world, an echo of the voices of the heroes of Tiananmen. We will never forget.  We want a record of what happened, and we will continue to work for more openness and improvements in human rights in China and Tibet.

“Thank you for your courage to turn out here today, to stand in front of the Capitol, to hold us accountable to our own values, and to continue to work together to remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to get a public accounting of it

“And let me say just one thing in closing that was shocking to me. On the way there — perhaps you’ve seen the Frontline documentary on Tiananmen Square?  And they have a picture of the man before the tank, this picture, an icon that is seared in the minds of people throughout the world. And they had in this documentary that they showed it to some students at Beijing University just a couple of years ago and those students had no idea what the photo was.  They said, ‘What is that? Is that art? Did you put that together?’  This is an indication of how the Chinese government has suppressed what happened on June 4th and the days leading up to it.

“So our work is large.  It’s work that many of us have been involved in for 20 years.  In 1991, I stood in the square and unfurled a banner remembering those who sacrificed so much in Tiananmen Square.  I wear white today to signal to the families a sympathy for what they have lost.  I did that in 1991 as a Member of Congress, an individual Member, to express my views and the views of my constituents.  It was a bipartisan group of us on the square that day, Democrats and Republicans.

“Eighteen years later as Speaker of the House, I had the opportunity to sit across from the President of China, the Premier of China, the Chairman of the People’s Congress, and to express to them the bipartisan concern in the Congress of the United States about China’s human rights record both in China and in Tibet.

“Whatever our roles in whatever stage of our involvement, we have to use everything at our disposal so that they know that we have not forgotten, and that we will not rest until there is freedom of speech and expression and assembly and openness in China and in Tibet.

“So thank you all very much for coming out today. Thank you for what you have done, thank you for what you are going to do, thank you for giving me the privilege of being associated with this very important historic movement for freedom in the world.

“Thank you all very much.”

source http://speaker.house.gov/newsroom/speeches?id=0195

“You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.”

After the passage of twenty years, there are those who wish to cloud the legacy of Tiananmen by saying that democracy has many faces and Western style democracy is not for China. Some even say that the Chinese people do not want democracy. Some say that for the sake of stability China needs a strong single party government. Any logical analysis of this reasoning quickly reveals it as self serving rhetoric designed to rationalize the illegitimacy of absolute power. If one accepts this logic, then one must also accept the concept of slavery. The some people actually desire to be slaves. That one human being actually has the right to tell another human being how to think, how to pray, and how to associate. The absurdity of this logic is quite evident.

Freedom and democracy may indeed have many faces. But freedom and democracy in whatever form, have a common foundation. That foundation is truth. We are today to call for truth. Without truth there is no basis for any relationship between people or between nations. We are here today to ask why the Chinese government is so afraid of truth. We are here today to call on the government of China to confront the truth. To acknowledge what happened on the morning of June 4, 1989. We call on the Chinese government to end the blacklist of people who participated in Tiananmen. We call on the Chinese government to end its persecution of its best and brightest citizens who dare to speak the truth. In particular we call on the Chinese government to release Liu Xiaobo, signer of Charter 08, and democracy patriot Wang Bingzhang, who as we speak is in solitary confinement for life for his lifelong advocacy for democracy.

But most of all we call on the U.S. government and likeminded defenders of freedom to support truth by supporting an open and free Internet for all peoples. The technology exists to bypass the firewalls constructed by tyrannies to block the truth from their people and enslave their minds. With a modest investment the democracies of the world can open the Internet to millions of people in China, Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, Burma and North Korea. Such a large scale access to the truth will destroy these firewalls and strike a blow to tyranny much in the same way the collapse of the Berlin Wall brought an end to communism in Europe.

We are here today to remember but we are also here to call for truth. It is truth that tyrannies fear most. It is truth that builds stable societies and creates international stability. We must demand truth from the government of China. We must take up the call of our fallen brothers as they brought the goddess of democracy into Tiananmen Square, “Chinese people, arise! Erect the statue of the Goddess of democracy in your millions of hearts! Long Live Freedom! Long Live Democracy!”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Statement on the 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Students’ Democracy Movement

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square students’ democracy movement, along with others who take an interest in Chinese affairs, I respectfully honor those who died expressing the popular demand for the government to be more accountable to its pepole.

The students involved in the Tiananmen Square movement were neither anti-communist or anti-socialist. Their speaking out in defence of the Chinese people’s constitutional rights, in favour of democracy, and taking a stand against corruption, truly conformed to the underlying beliefs of the Chinese Communist government. This was confidently stated by the then party chief Zhao Ziyang. Therefore, the forthcoming 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China presents a great opportunity to review the events of June 4, 1989.

Great changes have taken place in the People’s Republic of China since 1989. Today, it is a global economic power poised to becaome a superpower. It is my hope that the Chinese leaders have the courage and far-sightedness to embrace more truly egalitarian principles and pursue a policy of greater accommodation and tolerance of diverse views. A policy of openness and realism can lead to greater trust and harmony within China and enhence its international standing as a true great nation.

THE DALAI LAMA

June 4, 2009

Click here to read the original letter

Fight for Freedom – The Commemoration of 20th Anniversary of the 1989 Democracy Movement in China

Rebiya Kadeer, U.S. Capitol, June 4, 2009

I am very proud today to be in the company of a group of human rights activists and Members of Congress, organized by Dr. Yang Jian Li and Jim Gerehan, to express the voices of the people in China who are oppressed, who are silenced.

We gather together here today to remember the tragedy of the many innocent people who were killed or injured during the tragic events of June 4, 1989 in Beijing. We gather to commemorate the calls for freedom and justice that were made by so many in the spring of 1989, many of them young people, even high school and college students. Many of these young men and women lost their lives, and today their mothers and fathers still grieve their loss. Even today, many of those involved in the June 4 protests remain in prison, simply for expressing their political views. Even today, the Chinese government refuses to acknowledge the wrongs that it committed against its own citizens on June 4.

We gather together here today, Chinese, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians and many of our supporters, united in our struggle to bring about freedom and human rights for all people living in the People’s Republic of China. We must continue the struggle that the Tiananmen protestors engaged in until one day everyone in China is free -free to express their beliefs, practice their religions, and live without fear of persecution.

My people are the Uyghur people, and the name of my homeland is East Turkestan. We have been under the rule of the Chinese Communist government since 1949. They named us the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; they gave us promises, such as self-determination.  Since 1949, we have lost the right to speak, and the right to publish our own literature. We have lost the right to prosper, and the right to gain an education. The Chinese government has even banned our right to give birth.

However, since the massacre at Tiananmen Square, the challenge to the existence of the Uyghur people has only intensified. The Chinese government’s thirst for energy to drive its booming economy and its growing dominance in global affairs has made the Uyghur presence in East Turkestan an inconvenience. The Chinese government is undertaking methodical long and short term measures at this very time to solve the “problem” of the Uyghur people’s presence in East Turkestan. It is happening in every area of Uyghur society, including its politics, economics, and culture.

Wang LeQuan, the “Xinjiang” Communist Party Secretary has called the subjugation of the Uyghur people a “life and death” struggle. This language is reflected in the endemic political repression in East Turkestan. Since 9/11, the Chinese government has used our faith against us and labeled Uyghurs as terrorists to justify crackdowns and security sweeps as part of the “war on terror”.  However, the Chinese government has not produced any credible evidence which links Uyghurs to global terror networks.

Nevertheless, this has not stopped the Chinese authorities from producing a catalogue of human rights abuses. Detention, torture and execution represent the short-term measures the Chinese government has used to silence the Uyghur people. At the same time, the Chinese government has also committed economic, social and cultural human rights abuses to undermine Uyghur society long-term.

A new policy recruits young Uyghur women from majority Uyghur areas of East Turkestan and transfers them to work in factories in urban areas of east China. Under the policy, thousands of Uyghur women have been removed from their families and placed into substandard working conditions thousands of miles from their homes.

Already, hundreds of thousands of young Uyghur women have been transferred from East Turkestan into Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Qingdao, Shandong, Zhejiang, and other locations. There were 240,000 transferred from the Kashgar Region alone to China’s eastern provinces in 2006. The eventual goal of this policy, as part of the 11^th Five Year Plan, is to transfer some 400,000 young Uyghur women to China’s eastern provinces.

Chinese authorities are implementing a monolingual Chinese language education system among Uyghurs in East Turkestan that undermines the linguistic basis of Uyghur culture. Since the mid-1980’s China’s government has moved in stages towards making Chinese the only language of instruction in East Turkestan’s schools. Over the past five years, government efforts at eliminating Uyghur language schools have accelerated dramatically as compulsory Chinese language education has been expanded at every educational level and every township in East Turkestan. 

Uyghurs are not permitted to undertake Hajj, unless it is with an expensive official tour, in which applicants are carefully vetted for their “obedience to the law”. Confiscations of passports, to the point where very few Uyghurs have passports, ensures adherence to the ‘official tours only’ policy.

Today, the Uyghur people are unable to express their voice to the world; but, even the Han Chinese people are living under the same harsh violations of human rights. For example, although they are subjected to the death penalty at a lower rate than the Uyghur people, Falun Gong and Chinese democratic activists are also being thrown into jails as political prisoners. For the past 50 years, the Chinese government has also been rejecting His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s peaceful and patient demands for the very least of rights for the Tibetan people.

Because of our similar experience under the Chinese Communist regime, Uyghurs stand in solidarity with the Chinese, Tibetan, Mongol people and all people who suffer at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese government’s fierce repression of religious expression and its intolerance for any expression of discontent link us all. A Uyghur, Orkesh or Wuerkaixi in Chinese, was one of the student leaders in Tiananmen Square in 1989 who stood with thousands of people seeking freedom, democracy and human rights.

We ask the Chinese government to respect the rights of the Chinese people, and to respect the rights of the Uyghur, Tibetan and Mongol people and not eliminate their ethnic identities. We hope the Chinese government will not forget that the foundations for peace and harmony are based on equal relations, freedom and true friendship. Without freedom, there can be no real peace.

Join distinguished leaders of government, faith, human rights groups and leaders of 1989Tiananmen Square student democracy movement. Stand by the people of China in their struggle for democracy, justice and the rule of law. Show the world America still cares.

20th Tiananmen Commemoration
Remembrance and Truth

June 4, 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Capitol Hill, West Lawn
Washington, DC

Sponsored by Initiatives for China and more than 30 other human rights groups
Music by Colie Williams, Micheal Greene, Wilson High School Choir, and others

Contact: Jim Geheran
Director, DC office
Initiatives for China
202-290-1423
jgeheran@initiativesforchina.org

Posted May 28, 2009

The memoirs of Zhao Ziyang provide insight into what China would be like today if the 1989 democracy movement had prevailed.

Last democratic words: Zhao Ziyang speaks through a megaphone to striking students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 just weeks before the government used force to put down the protests. We must establish that [the] final goal of political reform is the realization of this advanced political system. If we don’t move towards this goal, it will be impossible to resolve the abnormal conditions in China’s market economy.”

One of the most sincere advocates for an “advanced political system” in China — a system that included an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, and the right of citizens to organize (in a word, democracy) — was not a disenchanted dissident or an armchair academic. Writing at the most unlikely of times, the man was Zhao Ziyang, secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Zhao was toppled in 1989 after trying to peacefully negotiate with student demonstrators — like myself — in Tiananmen Square. His fall paved the way for hard-liners, under the leadership of CCP official Deng Xiaoping, to crush the demonstrations with soldiers and tanks on the morning of June 4, 1989. In one bold, violent stroke, the one-party regime, teetering on the verge of collapse, found reprieve. Zhao’s vision of a more moderate democratic future, one meticulously documented in his recently released memoirs, vanished from the scene, its author put under house arrest.

There could hardly be a better time for Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang to be published, as the memoirs will be in both English and Chinese this week. Early June marks the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square — a memory that will certainly remind China of the democratic ideals left behind in tragedy. Reading Zhao’s account, I — and no doubt other readers — cannot help but imagine what China would be like today if Zhao had prevailed in June 1989. What if the dissenters who stood firmly before the government in Tiananmen Square had gained Zhao has a powerful ally to their cause? Would China have devolved into political chaos? Or would it be a robust democracy, steeped in cultural freedoms, social justice, and economic vibrancy? In seeking to answer that question about the past, we can learn much about the present: a China that in terms of its political system and tendency toward authoritarianism has evolved little since 1989, and yet has become both the United States’ second-largest trading partner and its most significant competitor.

Looking back at the crucial moment in 1989, it is first important to keep in mind how easily things might have turned in a different direction. China’s movement toward democracy in 1989 was not as far-fetched as it might seem today. In fact, support for the democratic movement was so great that it caused an unprecedented split within the CCP leadership. A quarter or even a third of the officials in Beijing joined the protesters. Most of the rest were sympathetic toward the students. The degree of dissatisfaction within the party was very high, and many agreed with the protesters that the CCP had lost any pretense of being a “people’s” party and had become a self-serving elite.

That disillusionment came from a series of market-oriented reforms begun a decade earlier, in 1978. Although the changes produced rapid economic growth, they also led to contradictions: opening the economy negated the moral authority of the Communist revolution and unleashed unbridled corruption in its place. The 1989 democracy movement had two slogans. One was “Freedom and democracy,” and the other was “No official business dealings, no corruption.” After Tiananmen Square protesters were quashed and their government sympathizers, like Zhao, sidelined, corruption blossomed just as much as China’s GDP (the fastest-growing among developed states over the last 25 years) has.

It didn’t have to be this way. If the democracy movement had succeeded, the CCP would likely still be the ruling party. But its policies and goals would have evolved more democratically under Zhao’s leadership. In the last chapter of his memoirs, the former general-secretary of CCP praises the Western system of parliamentary democracy and says it is the only way for China to address corruption and inequality. He would no doubt have led the country down this path.

Zhao’s reforms, one might imagine, would have proceeded at a purposeful but amenable pace, beginning with an opening of partial freedoms of assembly and demonstration. Student organizations would have become lawful, eventually precipitating a lift on the ban on political parties. The press would likewise feel a weight lifted, and the country’s National People’s Congress would have become more than a rubber-stamp assembly. Public participation would have followed, with public debate emerging on difficult questions from ethnic relations, to foreign affairs, to government corruption, to HIV/AIDS and the environment. In other words, China would have embarked on a peaceful transition to democracy. A democratic China — one that followed Zhao’s model — would have prospered economically, too.

Instead, today China feels the consequences of rejecting this path of reform. The same corruption that motivated the opposition 20 years ago is today an open sore on the face of Chinese society. Eighty percent of China’s wealth is thought to be controlled by the top 10 percent of party officials. And it’s visible. Corruption distorts every aspect of Chinese society, from the shoddy workmanship of the elementary schools that collapsed during last year’s earthquake (while the homes of party officials stood firm) to the summary displacement of more than 300,000 Beijing citizens in the name of “beautification” to prepare for the 2008 Olympics. No wonder, then, that corruption is still the largest source of alienation between the CCP and the population. Endemic corruption is the grievance cited in an estimated 100,000 major protests each year in China.

To the outside world, Chinese society has prospered. But internally, it has atrophied morally and socially. China maintains its competitive edge through a base exploitation of its workers, who labor without rights or avenues of recourse. Even the most advanced free market economies find it hard to compete. The Chinese government becomes rich, but ordinary people do not. The average Chinese citizen contributes less to the country’s GDP today than he or she did in 1988.

One of the most famous slogans for China’s reforms has been to “cross the river by feeling stones.” Surely, Deng Xiaoping meant to infer a gradual notion of change. Instead, the metaphor today mockingly describes a society at odds with itself, lacking direction to support its ever-looming one party structure. The contradiction will not easily go away — and will likely flare again, just as it did two decades ago. Zhao Ziyang foresaw this perpetual confrontation years ago, arguing that unless the Chinese government moved toward real democratic reform “it will be impossible to resolve the abnormal conditions in China’s market economy.”

They were prophetic words, indeed. Today, even as China’s leadership has moved further from Zhao’s vision, the Tiananmen ideals never left the political dialogue. More than at any time in the last two decades, people might just be willing to protest to bring those ideals back again. Until then, we are left to confront the equally predictive words of the Soviet-era dissident, Andrei Sakharov: “The world community cannot rely on a government that does not rely on its own people.”

Jianli Yang is president of Initiatives for China. He was a member of the democracy movement that protested in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Emotional press conference hears testimony of athlete Fang Zheng whose legs were crushed by Chinese army tank during crackdown of June 4, 1989

Pictured: (In wheelchair) Mr. Fang Zheng, (right) Ms. Grace Wang, Translator, (background) Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey.

(Washington, D.C. May18, 2009) — Mr. Fang Zheng, a victim of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and world class athlete gave an emotional recount of his ordeal on the morning of June 4, 1989 as Chinese tanks and soldiers plowed through Tiananmen Square indiscriminately killing and injuring thousands of peaceful demonstrators, most of them students like Mr. Fang. Fang legs were mangled under a Chinese tank as he pushed a fellow student to safety “What kind of government would tell people in tanks to run over their own citizens?” Mr. Fang asked.

Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, spoke passionately about the ongoing repression of the Chinese government. “China’s human rights record is getting worse not better. Our silence enables their behavior” said Mr. Smith.

Hudson Senior Fellow and former Reagan Administration official, Mr. Michael Horowitz, spoke of his confidence that democracy will come to China “sooner rather than later because of brave patriots like Mr Fang and Dr. Yang.” He said a major step toward democratization is to break the firewalls that the Chinese government has erected to keep truth and freedom of expression from the Chinese people. “These firewalls are the Berlin Walls of the 21st Century. Once they are torn down, freedom will pour into China” said Mr. Horowitz.

Dr. Yang Jianli, Tiananmen Survivor and Former Political Prisoner, Calls for Action Initiatives for China president and also a survivor of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Dr. Yang Jianli, echoed the calls for action. “It is up to the Chinese people to drive democratic reforms, but the moral and political support of the American government is vital” said Dr. Yang. He said that he was delighted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, outspoken supporter of human rights, would be traveling to China around the time of the 20th Anniversary of Taiananmen Square Crackdown. “I urge Speaker Pelosi to take concrete actions to show the Chinese government that advancement of human rights in China is critical to the development of America’s relationship with China”. Dr. Yang went on to recommend specific actions for Speaker Pelosi to take on her trip including a meeting with the Mothers of Tiananmen, a group of mothers whose children were killed, wounded, or imprisioned as a result of their presence in Tianamen Square on the morning of June 4, 1989. “This would be a great signal to the Chinese government as it has never acknowedeged that the Tiananmen massacre ever occured” said Dr. Yang.

Thursday, May 12, 2009 8:57 AM
By David Abel, Globe Staff

For the second time in less than a year, Chinese dissident and Harvard fellow Yang Jianli was refused entry into his native country.

His latest effort to enter Hong Kong was stymied Saturday night, he said in a telephone interview today after returning to Boston.

Yang, a permanent US resident with a valid Chinese passport who was released in 2007 after five years in a Chinese prison, was denied entry after flying to Hong Kong from Taipei, Taiwan. He said he was hoping to meet with democracy activists to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

“They gave me no explanation why they wouldn’t let me into my country,” he said, noting his passport remains valid until June 2017. “They said, according to Hong Kong law, they had made an assessment on my case, and they could not let me in. They refused to answer my questions.”

When he told them they were violating Hong Kong law, he said, they kept repeating, “No comment.”

“I told them that they must have a black list,” he said.

His last effort to enter China came last August on the eve of the Olympics in Beijing as part of a coordinated effort to test how China would react to the return of dissidents at a sensitive time.

“The refusal of Hong Kong authorities to give any cause for denying Dr. Yang’s entry into Hong Kong strongly indicates that they were operating under direct orders from the government in Beijing,” said Jim Geheran, director of Initiatives for China, which promotes democracy there, in a telephone interview.

Yang said he was provided rice and tea and held for two hours before Chinese authorities put him on a plane back to Taipei.

“They treated me OK,” he said. “They just wouldn’t answer any questions.”

He said he plans to keep trying to return, but he doesn’t expect anything will change until the government changes.

“If there’s a black list, I’m on it, and I don’t think I’ll be off it until the overall situation changes in China,” he said.