A discussion with Dr. Sonika Gupta on “China: Thirty Years After Tiananmen” at ORF, Chennai, on 3 August 2019, questioned whether the ongoing Hong Kong protests could be seen as a continuation of Tiananmen?
“China has transformed itself in the last three decades. While this is not to say that the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 are solely responsible for this transformation, they are an important landmark for understanding China,” according to Dr. Sonika Gupta, Associate Professor, Chinese Studies and Global Politics, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Initiating a discussion on “China: Thirty Years After Tiananmen” at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai, on 3 August 2019, Dr. Sonika Gupta asked, “whether the ongoing Hong Kong protests can be seen as a continuation of Tiananmen?” and “what has changed from 1989 to 2019?”
While a majority of protestors were students, there were also steel workers, farmers and women among them.
In this context, Dr Sonika Gupta said, “There are differences about some aspects of the Tiananmen protests between popular literature and academic writing on the subject.” Popular literature often, if not always, refers to the protests as “a student-led democracy movement”. Dr. Gupta explained that in reality it was not a democracy movement. “The protesters were not making any radical demands, nor were they looking to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They were merely demanding institutional reforms within the party,” she said. While a majority of protestors were students, there were also steel workers, farmers and women among them.
“Since there was no serious threat to the CCP, it becomes important to ask, why the brutal crackdown? Why did the government react the way that they did to the Tiananmen protests?” According to Dr. Gupta, “organised strength makes the CCP nervous”. Recalling the protests, she said they were organised to the very last detail. There were travel, food and accommodation arrangements, including organised speeches and press coverage.
Dr. Gupta also explored the question, “what do protests mean in China, both in the past and also given what is happening in Hong Kong?” More crucially she asked, “do these protests matter?”
According to Dr. Gupta, analysing international response adds another layer to our understanding of the Tiananmen protests and how they mattered, both in 1989, and now in Hong Kong, 2019. The international response in 1989 was swift, she recalled. Then US President H.W. Bush condemned the crackdown publicly and the US Congress enacted what is known as the “Tiananmen sanctions”, suspending arms sales, military and high-level government exchanges, export licenses, and support in international financial institutions for loans and grants to China. It also suspended export licenses for crime-control and detection equipment. The EU placed an arms embargo and prohibited military cooperation with China.
The Obama Administration in the US, for instance, allowed the sale of C-130 military transport aircraft and in 2011 Cisco sold over 500,000 cameras to the city of Chongqing specifically to watch its citizens.
“The EU embargo was fairly ineffective. It was and still is country-specific, which leaves every member-country to decide how they wish to interpret the embargo in the context of their own national laws, regulations and decision-making process,” reflected Dr. Gupta. The ‘Tiananmen sanctions’ have been watered down over the years, she further noted. The Obama Administration in the US, for instance, allowed the sale of C-130 military transport aircraft and in 2011 Cisco sold over 500,000 cameras to the city of Chongqing specifically to watch its citizens.
“China’s spending on domestic security outpaces its military spending,” Dr. Gupta pointed out. China has the largest camera network in the world, with 200 million units of AI-enabled facial and gait-recognition systems, and also the largest credit surveillance network with online payment platform Alipay. “China’s Social Credit system encourages hegemonic compliance,” explained Dr. Gupta. It gives citizens a credit score and then offers rewards or alternatively applies penalties for social behaviour. Rewards could range from getting discounted tickets to better rates on a loan, and this could be affected by whether you litter, park illegally, or even in theory, whether you criticize the government on social media. “It could even be affected if you are questioned by the police, let alone found guilty,” Dr. Gupta added.
Drawing parallels to Jeremy Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’, Dr. Gupta said this kind of surveillance creates an environment of self-censorship, particularly when there are ambiguities about what is acceptable or not. In the Chinese city of Foshan, bike-sharing schemes are now looking to punish disorderly bike-riders by integrating bike rental blacklists into the Social Credit System. “Such schemes will create a caste system of its own, where people are encouraged to network with those who have similar social credit ratings,” observed Dr. Gupta.
The Tiananmen sanctions themselves, though they made a strong political message at the time, have not been effective.
Looking at the protests currently taking place in Hong Kong, Dr. Gupta talked of a video released by the Chinese Army’s Hong Kong garrison on the South China Morning Post website earlier in August, which showed anti-riot drills featuring tanks. She believed that “using tanks is not strategic, this is signalling. This echoes the government’s handling of Tiananmen…”
The US response to the Hong Kong protests has been varied and contradictory while the UK’s response has been ineffective, said Dr. Gupta. “The Tiananmen sanctions themselves, though they made a strong political message at the time, have not been effective. The message is that human rights matters. However, since 2001, business relations are on the path to being normalised, these sanctions now serve only as a general comment on human rights,” said Dr. Gupta.
The international environment and the economic context in 2019, is a completely changed one. China is now the second largest economy and one of largest trading partners of both the US and the EU. “It is no longer in their interest to impose sanctions on China. Further, given US ambivalence in matters related to trade under the Trump Administration, China is now seen as the defender of free trade, which would have been unthinkable in 1989,” said Dr. Gupta.
Looking to the future, Dr. Gupta said the CCP has the organizational strength and political capital to use greater force within its own boundaries. “China is likely to export its model of politics, economy and foreign policy as its strength grows. Reports have shown that the ‘surveillance state model’ has been exported to countries like Bolivia, Venezuela and Angola,” concluded Dr. Gupta.
This report was prepared by Dr. Vinitha Revi, Research Associate, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai
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