Why the protests resulting in the June Fourth crackdown ended in failure has once again become a subject of discussion among some people living overseas recently? The reason, they say, was that the student protesters were misguided, and did not “stop it while the going was good”. Such an argument is seemingly wise but in fact muddled. It even leaves me with the impression that someone is trying to defend the CCP’s crackdown.

What kind of “good” did the CCP offer the students? When student representatives were in talks with Li Peng, how were they being treated by Li? When university students had knelt their way to Zhongnanhai and were holding up their petition, did anyone in the government say anything to them? After a million people had taken to the streets in Beijing, did the government made any response to their demands?

According to the memoir of Zhang Sizhi, a renowned lawyer on the mainland, he was in Wuhan on May 14, 1989, when Ma Liang, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Hubei National People’s Congress, told him in private that Deng Xiaoping was convening a military meeting of the highest level in Wuhan to discuss how to deal with the protests. Deng was a seasoned politician unflustered by the most volatile of situations. He knew early on that the situation in China would be uncontrollable if the student protests were not suppressed heavy-handedly. After all, in the traditional playbook of Chinese emperors, “desperate times call for desperate measures” is a central tenet.

What would have happened had the students left the square “while the going was good”? No doubt Beijing would have become calm again had they disbanded and returned to their universities and had students coming from all over the country returned to their hometowns. But the demands of the people had already spread across the nation like a bush fire. Would Deng Xiaoping have been that stupid?

Tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square. Guns were shot in quick succession, producing the sounds of beans being scrambled. Dead bodies were scattered everywhere on the street. Only such bloodthirsty pictures could have shocked one billion Chinese people into submission. Hence the saying “200,000 people must be killed in exchange for 20 years’ stability”. Bloodshed would still have happened even if the students had left.

Would Zhao Ziyang and his side have fared better had they stopped it while the going was good? Purges in the central and local governments would still have brought the reformists to their knees.

What “good” would the students have got had they disbanded? When the CCP’s hands were no longer tied, it would have punished these students one by one after they returned to their universities. All the political demands would have come to nothing, and these students would have been put before a firing squad, imprisoned, or expelled. There would have been suffering for a lifetime. After all, the CCP has a lot of ways to suppress popular uprisings.

In the square, the students let their passions and freedom-loving nature run riot. They embodied the familial and national attachment, ideological enlightenment and spiritual refinement of Chinese intellectuals. They read and debate in the square. They sang and danced, and held weddings. In no other times in history has there been a display of such overflowing passion and positivity in the land of China.

The students were unarmed. They lost, but they remain on the moral high ground in history. The CCP had tanks. They won, but they will go down in history as sinners.

(Ngan Shun-kau is a veteran publisher and writer. His publications and works are award-winning.)

This article is translated from Chinese by Apple Daily.

Click here for Chinese version

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