Democracy movements of China

The Chinese democracy movement was and is a loosely organized movement in the People's Republic of China against the Chinese Communist Party. The movement began during Beijing Spring in 1978 and was important in the Tiananment protests of 1989. In the 1990's, the movement underwent a sharp decline both within China and overseas, and is currently fragmented and not considered by most analysts to be a serious threat to power to the government.

The origin of the movement can be see with the brief liberalization known as Beijing Spring which occurred after the Cultural Revolution. The founding document of the movement can be seen to be the Manifesto, the Fifth Modernization authored by Wei Jingsheng, who was sentenced to fifteen years in prision for authoring the document. In the document, Wei argued that the holding of power by the laboring masses was essential for modernization, that the Communist Party was controlled by reactionaries, and that the people must struggle to overthrow the reactionaries via a long and possibly bloody fight.

Throughout the 1980's, these ideas increased in popularity among college educated Chinese. In response to the growing corruption, the economic dislocation, and the sense that reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were leaving China behind, the Tiananmen protests erupted in 1989. These protests were put down by government troops on June 4, 1989. In response, a number of pro-democracy organizations were formed be overseas Chinese students, and there was considerable Western sympathy for the movement.

In the 1990's, the Democracy movement underwent a sharp decline both within China. Part of this decline was due to repressive measures taken by the Chinese government against the movement, but there were a number of other reasons for the decline. The difficulties that the Soviet Union had in converting to democracy and capitalism convinced many that slow gradual reform was a wise policy. In addition, there began to be a generation gap among students as persons born after the [[Cultural Revolution]] began entering college campuses. These students were far less distrustful of the Communist Party and tended to be more nationalistic. Internecine disputes within the movement over such issues as most-favored nation status for China crippled the movement, as did the preception by many within China that overseas dissidents such as Harry Wu and Wei Jingsheng were simply out of touch with the growing economic prosperity and decreasing political control within China.

Ideologically, the government's first reaction was a rather unconvincing effort to focus on the personal behavior of individual dissidents and argue that they were tools of foreign powers. In the mid-1990's, the government began using more effective arguments which were influenced by Chinese Neo-Conservatism and Western authors such as Edmund Burke. The main argument was that China's main priority was economic growth, and economic growth required political stability. The Democracy movement was flawed because it promoted radicalism and revolution which put the gains that China had made into jeporady. In contrast to Wei's argument that democracy was essential to economic growth, the government argued that economic growth must come before political liberalization.

While the Democracy movement attracts considerable western sympathy, most Chinese do not consider it a viable alternative to the current government, and most protest activity now is expressed in single-issue demonstrations, which are tolerated to a degree by the government, and in religious outlets such as Falugong. Some of the ideas of the movement have been incorporated in the Chinese liberal faction who tend agree with neoconservatives that stability is important, but argue that political liberalization is essential to maintain stability. In contrast to Democracy movement activists, most members of the liberal faction do not overtly call for the overthrow of the Communist Party nor do they deny the possibility of reform from within the Party. As a result, members of the liberal faction are generally enjoy more official tolerance than persons who identify themselves as members of the democracy movement.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7288/fifth.htm - The Fifth Modernization by Wei Jingsheng