4th of June 2005 marks the 16th anniversary of the 六四天安門事件 (June 4th Tian’anmen Square Protests). Of the various new sources I’ve been looking through today, it would appear the now customary candle vigils at 維多利亞公園 (Victoria Park) were the only ones to have taken place on Chinese soil. 香港 (Hong Kong)’s twin “Special Administrative Region” 澳門 (Macau) seems to have decided to tow the line and not appear to be an unruly child.
I was pleased to see in 香港 (Hong Kong) the 中華民國 (Republic of China) flag was allowed to fly freely (image © 2005 AFP), though I would like to slap the various Western journalists whom called it the “Taiwanese flag”. It isn’t, as the Republic of Taiwan exists currently only as an extinct (25th May, 1895 to 21st October 1895) and proposed state, namely by the Pan-Green Coalition.
The People’s Republic of China still take very much a “no nonsense” view on things and indeed just this week arrested correpondant from the Straits Times in Hong Kong for spying. Turns out the papers journalist Ching Cheong (程翔) were trying to obtain were manuscripts from the purged PRC Premiere Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) detailing his own pleas for Democracy, having in 1989 visited the protesting students, pleading with them to abandon their vigil on the square.
He apologising that he had come too late though admitted he was old and didn’t care what happened to himself, he told the students they were young and should look out for themselves. That was the last time Zhao was seen in public till his death on 17th January, 2005 and subsequent muted funeral.
China is going to have to face up to it’s outstanding issues if it wants to be percieved as a legitimate authority both at home and with the International community at large. Admitting how things went wrong in the past need not undermine authority. Indeed it could strengthen it, particularly with the people it governs as it expresses humility and able to tackle the not so illustrious things of the past. This virtue would build trust as opposed to bottling-up resentment & suspicion which will at some point rear it’s ugly head and bite you hard on the arse.
Japan is a democracy, yet it’s history of whitewashing of it’s recent WWII imperialistic past that still leaves many bitter feelings in South-East Asia. Protests in China were sparked with the approval of textbooks which still had the Nanking Massacre as a mere “incident”, though Japanese politicians do seem to be rather gaffe-prone anyway. Now those protests weren’t quickly snuffed out with force, possibly hinting at the fact China has learnt it’s mistakes and better handled them this time. However one can’t expect Japan to “come clean” when one doesn’t also do likewise.
The economic reforms China has been nothing short of a miracle, though as it develops the people will expect greater freedoms as they better see how the rest of the developed World lives. I think the greatest test of this will be the XXIX Olympiad, to be held in 2008 at 北京 (Beijing). 香港 (Hong Kong), 臺灣 (Taiwan) and Singapore show a number of ways of how predominantly Chinese populations can flourish, as shown by their growth in the last century (sounds odd saying that!) as economic freedoms were matched with Democratic freedoms. The bit of giant panda diplomacy to 臺灣 (Taiwan) post 連戰 (Lien Chan)’s visit, the first in 40 years by the 國民黨 (Kuomintang) to the mainland, is a good step and perhaps peaceful re-unification would come about some day.
Isn’t the root of many Chinese problems overpopulation (the cheap workers, the extremely strict government, etc.)?
In FireFox the Chinese characters are question marks, in IE they are squares. Interesting minute difference.
Browser versions I used: FF v1.0.4, IE 6.0 SP1
Comment by Justin — 01:34:14 UTC on the 5th of June, 2005
For the former, China has a huge population, though it doesn’t even make the top 50 in the World are far as population density goes. A country is only overpopulated is it has problems sustaining the population, which China doesn’t… indeed, as it develops, it may even be underpopulated and be in the same situation as the West with it’s greying population and forthcoming pensions crisis.
As for the latter… a bit difficult for any web browser to display text it doesn’t have fonts for.
Comment by Jonathan Stanley — 02:13:09 UTC on the 5th of June, 2005
I must admit it is really depressed when I tried to find some source about June 4 Massacre,and all the links except Western guys’ cannot be browsed,thanks to the damn Chinese Govt.But I was lucky to find here,you offer a clear vision among Westerners.China is not overpopulated,but too huge,that means either to be a great power,or to be sustained empire caused by its own inner problems.You had mentioned the identity of Taiwan.Being a P.R.C. citizen,I extremely for your opinion,while AFP and Reuters always misleaded Western readers.
Comment by Ralph — 05:54:16 UTC on the 8th of June, 2005
1.3 Billion! Imagine if the USA had 275 states! Or if Canada had 2,500 provinces!
That should give some perspective.
Comment by Justin — 22:28:27 UTC on the 8th of June, 2005
Ralph: The whole Internet censorship issue in mainland China is something that concerns me though as you may know in Hong Kong and Macau, that law isn’t the case. Indeed, some Hong Kong websites are blocked in China! Still, when I visited Hong Kong earlier this year, I was told by my relatives where previously mainland Chinese had to visit Hong Kong in government approved tour groups or business visas with the state effectively controlling what they did or didn’t see, the laws have been relaxed in this sense since 2003 and individuals can now visit on the “Individual Visit Scheme”. So in that sense, it’s one of the things the mainland government is doing in terms of “opening up” and hopefully something that will be sustained. How this will all play out is something I think unfortunately no crystal ball is good enough to foretell.
Justin: I’d hate to disappoint you with the fact your perspective is rather skewed. Curiously, China, the USA and Canada are pretty much the same size as far as landmass is concerned. In terms of population density, they rank 77th, 176th and 222nd respectively… which really says more how unpopulated they are overall. In fact, the population density of the European Union is comparable to China. As I said, it’s the ability to feed a population that is the metric if a place is overpopluated. You could have someplace the size of Russia (it’s really, really big), yet if it wasn’t able to sustain a population of 10 people, then it is overpopulated. Conversely, take someplace like Hong Kong which is about the size of London or New York in land area and has a population of 7 million, yet able to sustain for the sake of arguement, 10 million people… then Hong Kong would not be overpopulated. It would be very densely populated, however high density doesn’t mean overpopulation is true, or vice versa.
Comment by Jonathan Stanley — 23:31:18 UTC on the 8th of June, 2005
Thanks for the highly educational comments! I think I might have been one of the people believing that dense population equals overpopulation. But your example of Hong Kong does make it clearer. One could also suggest looking at the Netherlands and Monacco, as these are also well to do countries very densly populated….
Comment by spoxy — 14:07:33 UTC on the 9th of June, 2005
I was a bit naughty in using Hong Kong as an example as it never really has been self sufficient regarding food or water, which it has to import, though that is true of any city-state like entity which includes Vatican City, Monaco, Singapore, Macau and so on. However, Hong Kong does have a very well developed infrastructure for transports, healthcare, and so on, which is also another way of measuring if a place is overpopulated.
The Netherlands is indeed a place which has (I guess converse to intuition… one thinks windmills, fields and clogs… *ducks*) high population density, and other developed coutries of similar densities which aren’t sesame-sized include the Republic of China (Taiwan), South Korea, Japan and Belgium.
Comment by Jonathan Stanley — 14:28:22 UTC on the 9th of June, 2005