The anxieties of the Chinese regime

...It made an effort to limit its interference in the private lives of ordinary people, and it gave signs that it was willing to tolerate various oppositional or at least nonconformist activities, so long as these did not directly threaten the CC P's main policies or overall political dominance...

...It also helps explain why the ensuing publicity drive placed such emphasis on linking leaders of the regime to patriotic symbols and insisting that it was foreign leaders, not Chinese ones, that had no respect for the people of China...

...and in 1985 some official support was given to campus rallies decrying perceived Japanese slights to China's honor...

...I will begin with the two main unexpected incidents of 1999...

...One of the main monuments in Tiananmen Square is dedicated to the memory of May 4 activists, and the anniversary of this struggle is celebrated with considerable fanfare each spring...

...And Solidarity is less of a threat than it was in 1989...

...Small-scale protests by workers or farmers with very specific grievances were allowed, intellectuals were given the freedom to publish literary reviews that veered far from the Party line on cultural affairs, hotlines were set up so that urban residents could voice complaints about local issues, and so on...

...In the long run, however, things look very different, and only the most naive CCP leader imagines now that the regime will have a smooth ride to the end of the decade—or even feels confident that the year 2000 will conclude without some new crisis occurring...

...What made the responses of the regime to the anti-NATO protests and to Falun Gong surprising, therefore, was not their novelty within the overall sweep of the regime's history, but rather their break with 1990s patterns...

...yet it has been attacked...

...Even though the Treaty of Versailles ultimately went into effect unchanged, the pro20 • DISSENT / Spring 2000 testers achieved many of their central goals...

...The efforts made during the anti-NATO protests to limit the involvement of angry workers who wanted to join the students shows that there is still great concern with cross-class alliances linked to mass movements...

...JEFFREY WASSERSTROM teaches Chinese history at Indiana Universiy...

...only the faithful will be ideally positioned to take their place in the new cosmic order...

...This result was especially likely if, as in the fourteenth century when the sect leader who founded the Ming Dynasty was gaining power, members of the bureaucratic class threw in their lot with the rebels...

...China as well as Japan had fought on the side of the allies in World War I, so this territory, the students claimed, should rightfully be returned to Chinese rule...

...Is it safe until 2009 when another round of tense anniversaries will be marked...

...Throughout early May in these years, official newspapers are filled with editorials and stories extolling the heroism of the students of 1919, as well as calls to contemporary youth to show that they too are committed patriots...

...This helps explain why the relative quiescence of the sect has not been interpreted by the CCP leadership to mean that they need not worry about Falun Gong...

...Nonetheless, she claims, many of the people she spoke with in China looked at the campaign to discredit Falun Gong as driven by fear of what I have dubbed the religious revolt specter...

...In addition, now as a decade ago, it must contend with a populace that is skeptical about the official ideology, doubtful about the moral character of top government leaders, and has recently been reacquainted with a potent repertoire of political street theater...

...Nineteen ninety-nine was no exception...

...Nineteen ninety-nine was not the first year in which Chinese Communist Party leaders had encouraged anti-imperialist demonstrations by students...

...Members of the regime were, again in part because of the anniversary, thinking about moments in the past when leaders viewed as corrupt, as they know they are by many citizens, fell from power for failing to act decisively to protect the national interest...

...The turning point quality of 1999 lies in the extent to which this watchword was overruled...

...Particular attention is paid to it in years that end with a nine...

...In the 1950s, they called on students to hold "Resist America, Support Korea" marches...

...In addition, playing on the American president's sex scandal, which was well known in China, both student wall posters and official publications made much of the fact that Clinton was someone who cared only about satisfying his own desires—whether for power or pleasure...

...Most famously, in 1989, student activists gathered at Tiananmen Square on the seventieth anniversary of the 1919 struggle to call for a "New May 4 Movement" to challenge the latest group of corrupt officials endangering the nation...

...And also by the "religious revolt specter"—recalling the many times in China's pre-revolutionary era when a change of dynasties was associated with the rising influence of spiritual sects led by charismatic figures...

...I've named the former for the upheaval of eighty years ago that began when students in Beijing, and soon in other cities too, took to the streets to protest terms of the Treaty of Versailles transferring sovereignty over parts of China formerly under German control to Japan...

...Accompanying this crackdown was a media campaign, involving everything from political posters to comic books, designed to discredit Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong's China-born but now New York-based leader...

...Finally, though Falun Gong shows no signs of emerging as the central focus of a nationwide rebellion, its members have demonstrated a willingness to take great personal risks to resist efforts to disband the sect and destroy Li's credibility...

...In the short run, the 1999 change in strategy seems to have defused the threat of the May 4 specter...

...The power of the May 4 anniversary is one reason that years ending with nines, like 1999, are anxious ones for Chinese regimes...

...There was nothing novel about the CCP mounting an intense publicity campaign to discredit a group it deemed dangerous to stability and to socialism...

...Looking at the surprises of 1999 and how official responses to them diverged from post-1989 patterns can be useful to us as we enter the second decade of the "New World Disorder" and the CCP starts the second decade of its ongoing legitimacy crisis...

...It is very possible, indeed likely, that at some point in the near future another series of student demonstrations will take place, which will not be as easy to control...

...The crackdown on Falun Gong has even more precedents from earlier periods in the regime's history...

...The CCP is in much the same predicament now that it was in at the start of 1990: struggling to reposition itself so as to hold onto power at a time when few Leninist regimes remain on the world scene...

...In a typical illustration, he is pictured standing next to a fancy car with big denomination bills—presumably contributed by hoodwinked followers—falling all around him...

...So the Solidarity specter still hovers on the horizon...

...The second important, unexpected event came in early May when NATO missiles destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing a trio of China journalists...

...And the negative traits projected onto them are precisely those that, in recent years, have often been projected onto the CCP leadership by its domestic and international critics...

...This helps explain why a quick decision was made to leap ahead of the movement, rather than run the risk of suppressing it—and so give protesters cause to combine anger at NATO with anger at the CCP...

...The same thing happened during the anti-rightist purges of the 1950s and in the weeks following the June massacres that took place in Beijing and Chengdu in 1989...

...22 n DISSENT / Spring 2000...

...In each case the CCP leadership took risky moves to minimize a potential threat to its legitimacy...

...THEsE CCP responses suggest that the regime lives in fear of specters that, if allowed to materialize, could end its rule...

...To counteract any notion that the end of Communist Party rule was an inevitable and good thing for the citizens of the nations involved, the Beijing leadership made much of the political and economic devastation that had come to Russia and Yugoslavia...

...The 1999 decisions to support the anti-NATO demonstrators, to arrest members of Falun Gong, and to carry out intensive publicity campaigns to celebrate the student activists and denigrate Li Hongzhi's followers were all similarly motivated...

...In times of crisis, however, sectarian leaders sometimes put more emphasis on the millenarian side of their beliefs and encouraged their followers to rise up in rebellion to usher in the new epoch...

...There are novelties about the group—the use of Web sites and other new technologies of communication, for example—but it is easy to understand why CCP leaders would see Falun Gong as comparable in many ways to sects that rose up against weakened dynasties...

...It provides a link between the responses to protest in 1989 and in 1999...

...These groups often had charismatic leaders who promised adherents, as Li Hongzhi has promised his, that they would feel better physically and more fulfilled spiritually, if only they agreed to do certain things...

...The first, which occurred on April 25, was a sit-in staged by some ten thousand members of Falun Gong, a spiritual group that extols the virtues of special breathing practices and physical movements that are said to have curative powers, and that incorporates into its creed beliefs derived from a variety of Chinese folk religious traditions...

...In most periods, these sects were quiescent and the state could take a live-and-let-live attitude toward them...

...Where does all this leave the CCP in the year 2000...

...In sum, the regime is still haunted...

...One student poster reprinted in an instant history of the protests has Monica Lewinsky suggesting to Bill that it was dangerous to bomb the Chinese Embassy...

...So, we come back to two basic questions: Why the sudden break last year from the established pattern of treating all forms of student activism as potentially dangerous...

...in the 1960s, student demonstrators gathered, with Chairman Mao's blessing, to protest imperialism...

...These organizations and individuals were described—in the case of Li and Falun Gong still are being described—as serious threats to the well-being of the Chinese nation...

...It also became, after students were arrested and beaten up by police, a fight for the right of protest itself...

...This was done even when the students involved wanted to hold anti-imperialist rallies to protest presumed slights on China's national pride...

...In fact, the greatest danger for the current regime lies in this possibility—that elements of two or three types of movements and sources of discontent will create a hybrid menace to the regime...

...Years ending with the numeral nine have often been trying ones for Chinese regimes, the fall of the Nationalist Party in 1949 being the most famous case in point...

...Video disks were produced containing television footage of state-sponsored funerals for the three "revolutionary martyrs" of Belgrade and of anti-American rallies outside consular buildings—the latter made to seem less rowdy affairs than the one I witnessed at close range in Beijing on the evening of May 9. DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 17 POLITICS ABROAD The Falun Gong sit-in and the destruction of the Chinese Embassy are usually discussed separately, which makes sense given the obvious differences between the events, one nonviolent, the other part of a war...

...Elizabeth Perry, director of Harvard's Fairbank Center, who was in Shanghai during the first stage of the campaign against Falun Gong, reported that a show celebrating the DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 21 POLITICS ABROAD founder of the Ming Dynasty was even shown on television this last summer in China...

...From time to time, however, new generations put a dissenting spin on the official commemorative line...

...This is because none of the three specters discussed here have been completely exorcised, and there are ways they could come together...

...WHAT THIS means is that the new decade is starting much as the last one did: with nervousness on the part of the regime...

...The regime fought the Solidarity specter throughout the years leading up to 1999...

...A combining of forces is especially likely if the high economic growth rates of the last decade do not continue into the new century, if the gap between rich and poor groups and regions continues to grow, and if novel challenges arise in the international arena...

...on the other, it had every reason to want to avoid a replay of 1989...

...On the one hand, the regime had no choice but to mark the occasion...

...The massive layoffs of the past few years—likely to be followed by still larger ones if China enters the World Trade Organization— have created an ever-growing pool of discontented workers...

...Much about Falun Gong remains mysterious to those outside the group, but there are important parallels between it and some of the popular religious sects that made an impact on political life during the imperial era...

...Students were, in part because of the anniversary, primed to do something to demonstrate their patriotism, and this helps account for the speed with which they took to the streets after the news reached China...

...THE CCP leadership also took positive steps to defuse the power of the Solidarity specter...

...We saw many departures from what seemed to be settled post-1989 patterns...

...In addition, though the CCP leadership succeeded in keeping student outrage at NATO from spinning out of control, the change of course regarding campus activism has served to provide a new generation of young people with hands-on training in the mounting of a mass movement...

...The May 4 Movement soon developed into a multi-class alliance, with workers and merchants joining the struggle...

...Taken together, these incidents and the reactions to them made 1999 the most confusing year of the decade for China specialists to figure out...

...This 18 n DISSENT / Spring 2000 time, however, the specters haunting the regime came from China's own past...

...This is because popular uprisings like the one that brought the Ming Dynasty to power are celebrated as great moments in the nation's past, even though efforts are made to downplay the religious and emphasize the economic bases of imperial-era upheavals...

...Thus the regime refused to allow campus rallies to protest Japanese claims to the disputed Diaoyu Islands, fearing that, once gathered together, students might bring up other grievances...

...Publicizing the sufferings and loss of power in the international arena of these countries, and saying little about the smoother transitions taking place in Central Europe, the CCP made a new kind of case for itself...

...So, too, was the sense of relief when the day passed with only minor incidents, such as the China Democratic Party's proclamation, issued from hiding, that it, not the CCP, had the best claim to continue the May 4 tradition...

...When this did not work, the CCP leadership turned to brute force, most notably in Beijing's June 4 Massacre, an event that took place, ironically, on the very day that Solidarity was winning the first free Polish elections in decades...

...Aware of the role that shortages of material goods and a perception of economic backwardness played in bringing down communist regimes in Europe, Beijing put a great deal of energy into achieving (and drawing attention to) high growth rates...

...You may have lost faith in our ideology and you may question the morality of our leaders, the regime argued, but the alternative to our rule may well be even worse for you and for China...

...This is not to say that the Solidarity specter has lost its power to frighten China's leaders...

...The fact that the Chinese Embassy was destroyed just a few days later—when the POLITICS ABROAD events of 1919 were still fresh in the minds of CCP leaders and students alike—should be remembered when we try to make sense of what followed...

...And right up to May of 1999, the CCP routinely denied permits to students requesting permission to hold mass political gatherings of any sort...

...The key question then is how to explain the recent change of course—and it is here that thinking about specters is most valuable...

...And, especially after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it highlighted the problems encountered by the former Leninist states in Europe...

...Millenarianism was often a feature of these sects, as it is in Falun Gong: the current age is corrupt and will be followed by a purer one...

...In anti-Falun Gong comic books, for example, Li is shown as a charlatan who cares only about maximizing his own power and wealth, not about the welfare of his followers or even his sect's creed...

...Similarly, Clinton was presented as someone who paid lip service to human rights but had no qualms about treating his enemies brutally...

...And the two publicity campaigns have even more in common...

...The watchword became, as one person put it to me DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 19 POLITICS ABROAD in 1996, "As long as it is not a movement, anything goes...

...Answering these questions brings us back to the May 4 and religious revolt specters, and the way each haunts the regime...

...In 1999 as opposed to 1989, however, the Solidarity specter was not the main one feared by the regime...

...The May 4 Movement is enshrined in CCP official history as one of the most sacred moments in the long revolution that culminated in the founding of the People's Republic in 1949...

...Falun Gong has never been a clearly defined movement, after all, and many of its followers see its main impact in affecting the way they act in private...

...The regime reversed its nearly decade-long policy of discouraging all forms of student activism and allowed, even encouraged, students to take to the streets to express patriotic outrage...

...The President responds that there is nothing to worry about because there are no traces of his DNA on any of the missiles...

...The two publicity campaigns represent parallel efforts to shore up the regime's position by criticizing the ethics and motivations of a particular group (Falun Gong, NATO) and a specific individual (Li Hongzhi, President Clinton...

...A concern with the first of these was a key factor in motivating the regime to support the anti-NATO protests, and understanding this helps make sense of the publicity campaign aimed at denigrating Clinton and linking the CCP leadership to patriotic protesters and martyrs...

...More panic was inspired by what might best be called the "May 4 specter," named for a 1919 student-led movement that targeted government ministers viewed as corrupt and insufficiently patriotic...

...The government tried as well to do specific things to alleviate the discontent that triggered the 1989 protests and allow citizens to let off steam...

...Though directed against the nations involved in framing the Treaty of Versailles, Japan in particular, this movement was also from the beginning an attack on the corrupt warlord regime in Beijing that students accused of failing to protect the nation's interest...

...The decision to use force ten years ago and then mount a propaganda campaign that justified all acts of repression can be seen as responses to the specter of the Polish workers' movement Solidarity...

...The familiar cycle of official suppression leading to increased militancy, and vice versa, is playing out once more: the religious revolt specter is still threatening...

...His Human Rights and Revolution, co-edited with Lynn Hunt and Marilyn Young, is forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield...

...In this case, too, a mass media publicity campaign was launched...

...The surprising response to the sect's sit-in came only in July when the CCP announced a ban on Falun Gong gatherings, and then began to arrest members of the group...

...Throughout China's imperial period, popular sects that made use of religious traditions, including Buddhism and Taoism, were continually being formed...

...AYEAR AGO, two unexpected incidents, one involving an international crisis and the other a domestic one, each associated with protests, sent shock waves through China and provoked surprising responses by the Beijing regime...

...It lives on borrowed time...

...It prohibited all forms of student activism, punished swiftly and harshly anyone who tried to organize a formal opposition organization, and banned autonomous labor unions that brought together workers from more than a single factory or district...

...The anti-NATO protests, on the other hand, certainly constituted a movement of sorts—a student-led one at that—and yet it was endorsed...

...Before describing the specters in more detail, let me clarify a point: though my argument is that the CCP's reactions to the anti-NATO protests and the Falun Gong sit-in were surprising, this does not mean they were unprecedented...

...The uneasiness with which the CCP leadership awaited the arrival of this anniversary day—I was in China at the time, invited to Beijing University to take part in a May 4 commemorative conference—was almost tangible...

...IF THE May 4 specter's power to influence official behavior is the main thing to keep in mind when thinking about the anti NATO protests, worries relating to the religious revolt specter are the key to making sense of the crackdown on Falun Gong...

...The surprising response in this case came immediately...

...A concern with the second specter, on the other hand, was a key factor behind the CCP decision to move against Falun Gong last July...

...The regime still has to worry about the May 4 specter...

...Alternately, the state might fear this possibility and launch a kind of pre-emptive strike against a religious group, declaring it heterodox and illegal, and moving to disband it...

...This ban on student demonstrations was periodically coupled with moves against dissidents who tried to form political groups, such as the China Democratic Party...

...According to Perry, a political scientist whose insightful essay on Falun Gong, "Reinventing the Wheel," is slated to appear in the Harvard China Review, the regime did not explicitly draw attention to the parallels between Li's group and millenarian sects of imperial times...

...And why the rhetorical and physical attacks on Falun Gong—attacks of a sort that, since the crackdown of 1989, had been reserved for groups that explicitly opposed a major CCP policy (such as its stance on Tibet) or openly attacked the regime's authority...

...As we start the year 2000, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) shows no sign of following soon in the footsteps of its erstwhile rival, but recent events show that the CCP is still dealing with the legitimacy crisis that both caused and was exacerbated by the demonstrations of 1989...

...Unfortunately, the regime's responses to the two are also treated as unrelated...

...Before 1999, the decade had been unusually free of officially sanctioned "campaigns...

...Officially sponsored instant histories detailing the horrors of the bombing raid and celebrating the demonstrations by Chinese students were issued...

...It was no accident that workers, who the government feared might soon form more effective alliances with protesting students, were the main victims of state violence in Beijing and also in Chengdu, nor that labor leaders received some of the longest prison terms handed out in the immediate aftermath of the killing...

...It also seems to have managed, for now, to keep the religious revolt specter at bay...

...Faced with massive gatherings on the streets of many cities in May of 1989, one of the first moves the regime made was to impose martial law, hoping that this would stem the tide of revolt as similar moves had in Poland in 1981...

...The students singled out for special criticism the "Three Traitorous Officials," government ministers who, they claimed, showed a consistent willingness to make concessions to Japan in order to line their own pockets and retain their hold on power...

...These included everything from photographs of campus wall posters mocking President Clinton to reprints of emotional speeches by CCP leaders decrying NATO's abuse of human rights...

...Here, again, the awareness of historical precedents for contemporary protests is not an abstract thing...

...And this is POLITICS ABROAD not the first time that such a war of words and images has been accompanied by mass arrests...

...But in the new situation of post-1949 China, it is said, the way to do this is not by holding protests but by studying hard to help build socialism...

...The very unpredictability of the year, however, conformed to a long-term pattern...

...Often, these two things would occur in tandem: fear of being suppressed could inspire a sect to become more militant, and moves to militancy could convince officials to take a less laissez-faire attitude toward it...

...I N LIGHT of this, it is easy to see why the coming of the eightieth anniversary of the 1919 struggle generated a good deal of nervousness...

...It also helps explain why there has been such deep concern generated by the discovery that Li's followers include not just a broad cross-section of citizens but even some CCP cadres and officials...

...In fact, however, they were part of the same dynamic...

...All arrested students were released from jail, and each of the "Three Traitorous Officials" was dismissed from his post...

...The end result in several famous instances—but by no means in every instance of this cycle of repression and militancy— was the fall of the dynasty at the hands of chiliastic rebels...