In Search of an Archetype
TUNG, TIMOTHY
In Search of an Archetype Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing By Ian Buruma Random. 367 pp. $27.95. Reviewed by Timothy Tung Former research professor and China...
...His is the idealism that has not died...
...He earned an MBA and law degree from Columbia University...
...And he spread a wide net, as if he were trying to determine the archetypal characteristics of the "Chinese rebel," ignoring the fact that in places like Singapore and Taiwan "bad elements" are not necessarily anti-Communist...
...Dai Qing, a highly regarded moderate joumalist who came to Tiananmen to support the students, eventually urged them to leave the Square while they were ahead...
...Nobody believes in Communism anymore, the young seem to say...
...Even young Tibetans express a yearning to go to the U.S...
...in 1996, and he is currently studying at Harvard...
...Not all the students, however, went from rebellion to the good life...
...In a chapter entitled "The Last Colony," Buruma takes up an altogether different sort of dissenter...
...He is running a petition campaign on the Internet to pressure Beijing to revise its verdict on the events of 1989...
...Like Hong Kong's Martin Lee, he holds that only under the rule of law can people be safe from official bullies...
...in 1997 after 15 years of imprisonment, was at one time the unofficial spokesman for his compatriots in bearing witness to Communist brutality...
...Allowed to go to the U.S...
...One is thejournalist He Qmglian, whose best-selling critique of the new China, The Pitfalls of Modernization, struck a chord with a vast readership before the book was banned...
...But the stars of Buruma's investigations, not surprisingly, are those made famous during and since the 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy (known to the Chinese as the June 4 Affair...
...All three are successful, speak colloquial American English, and are described by the author as "slick" or "smooth...
...Reviewed by Timothy Tung Former research professor and China specialist, City College, City University of New York The title of Ian Buruma's new book is intriguing...
...Chia Thye Poh, a Socialist member of Parliament accused of being a Communist, was virtually "buried in a tomb" for 26 years —a "narrow cell, about the size of a toilet cubicle" without any light...
...Twelve years down the road their heroic image has not only faded but China has undergone many changes...
...He was forced to flee after June 4 and now lives in Brooklyn in relative poverty...
...Another hero is Zhou Litai, a Shenzhen lawyer who risks his life and livelihood to press the cases of abused workers, often free of charge...
...This brings me to the two true heroes of Bad Elements...
...An observation by Wu'er Kaixi may bare a striking truth: "It is hard to kill idealism...
...Zhou's specialty is workers' rights...
...Then there was an older generation of Chinese dissidents...
...But Uncle Sam helped by rewarding extreme pragmatism...
...Wang Dan, who did not flee China after Tiananmen, was jailed for seven years...
...He is the author of A Memoir of Misfortune, recounting his wife's memory loss in a 1993 car accident...
...Han Dongfang, one of the few nonstudent leaders in Tiananmen Square (he organized China's first worker's union), was jailed until 1992...
...Wei Jingsheng, who became perhaps the most famous of all exiles when he arrived in the U.S...
...She is under constant watch in Beijing, but has been able to retain her passport because of her powerful family connections...
...Their disaffection may explain why one finds a significant number of Party members and military officers in the ranks of the outlawed Falun Gong...
...The green card is the best way to kill idealism...
...His reputation was challenged when his testimony at a Congressional hearing provokedjealous irritation from fellow witnesses that was recorded by C-SPAN cameras...
...Despite his meager income, he also gives shelter to the homeless and unemployed...
...In this analysis of the revolutionaries and democrats of greater China his facility in Chinese was invaluable, for it enabled him to engage almost every important political dissenter wherever he visited...
...frequently to give lectures and receive awards...
...Anyone prepared to "work his butt off," she says, can succeed in the United States...
...Criticized for fleeing to the U.S...
...Are we then to equate the politically disfranchised in Singapore and Taiwan with those silenced in China or exiled in the West who command the bulk of his attention...
...Their blend of inherent Chinese patriotism with an understanding of Western democracy is a rare find among the rebels, not least among the Tiananmen crowd...
...Yuan Zhirmng and Xie Xuanjun, two of the three writers of the 1988 television series River Elegy, which played an important role in stimulating student discontent, have similarly turned to Christianity...
...Today, neither is the influence of the Tiananmen demonstrators...
...She is now the CEO of an Internet company in Massachusetts...
...Refusing to live in exile, she travels to the U.S...
...In the Special Economic Zone Shenzhen, Buruma notes, a new generation has begun to openly declare that its sole aim in life is to make money and get rich...
...Neither cynical nor opportunistic, Wang is perhaps the most admired of all the Tiananmen leaders...
...Today, under democratically elected President Chen Shui-bian, who inspires the Taiwanese independence movement, "bad elements" would refer to the aging Nationalists still yearning to return to the mainland...
...to study computer science...
...Where they are and what they are doing now is indeed illuminating...
...Nobody could argue with her thesis that "China's capitalism is a dangerous hybrid of politics and criminality...
...Others opposed to Lee's autocracy, like Chee Soon Juan, an activist neuropsychologist, and Teo Soh Lung, a lawyer accused in 1987 of involvement in a "Marxist conspiracy to overthrow the government," had similar experiences...
...The third and best known of River Elegy's writers, Su Xiaokang, reached these shores shortly after the June 4 Affair and lives in Princeton...
...Su has tried Christianity, too, but was unable to find solace in religion...
...For health reasons he was permitted to go to the U.S...
...She remains convinced that tragedy could have been avoided if not for irresponsible leaders like Chai Ling, whose "criminal" exhortations persuaded the students to stay put...
...At present he lives in Hong Kong and hosts a call-in program for Radio Free Asia aimed at workers on the mainland...
...Here are but a few notable examples...
...Furthermore, as Buruma's designation indicates, the influence of these democrats is largely confined to the former British colony and is not significant in greater China...
...for medical treatment, he joined many Chinesehere in converting to Christianity...
...Li Lu, Chai Ling's "deputy," who urged fellow student leaders to reject the advice of Beijing's intellectuals to avoid a bloody confrontation, is now a wealthy hedge fund manager with a 28th-floor office on Manhattan's Madison Avenue...
...He professes to be neither an activist nor a rebel...
...But his subtitle suggests a broad range of Chinese "rebels" both inside and outside China...
...He and his wife wrote the first detailed account of the Cultural Revolution...
...In Taiwan Bo Yang, an author wellknown for his best-selling The Ugly Chinaman, a scathing portrayal of the Chinese qualities he and many other intellectuals loathe, was imprisoned on a desolate island for many years by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek for "defaming the leadership...
...Though the ideological roles were reversed, Buruma finds that under the authoritarian rule of Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew the treatment of political prisoners was no less harsh than in Communist China...
...Such pronouncements have not endeared her to the rulers...
...Wu'er Kaixi will be recalled by millions of television viewers as the pudgy youngster in hospital pajamas who wagged a finger at Prime Minister Li Peng at the Great Hall of the People...
...Astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, for instance, was instrumental in stimulating demands for political liberty among students...
...She also believes that with her Harvard MBA and her demonstrated "leadership skills' she could liberate China via the Internet...
...Chai Ling, the "commander in chief" of the student demonstration whose infamous call for self-sacrifice before quitting the Square received much press attention, is one of many protesters who have turned to capitalist entrepreneurship...
...A scholar and much-traveled journalist, Buruma has written extensively on Asia...
...The last I heard, she was forced to leave the country she loves...
...China's future may rest on the shoulders of such ordinary citizens...
...Liu Binyan, the former star reporter of the People's Daily who was expelled from the Party in 1987 for his fearless exposure of official corruption, has lived in Princeton, New Jersey since 1988...
...For some time he edited an English language newsletter offering inside information about China, but it failed to attract much attention...
...She estimates that under the banner of "socialism with Chinese characteristics," about 60 per cent of the country's wealth is owned by 1 per cent of the population...
...Embassy in 1989, he is now a professor at the University of Arizona and has largely withdrawn from the public arena...
...Surely he is aware that "bad elements" (buliangfenzi) is a Chinese Communist term applied to all kinds of social malcontents, from political dissidents to common criminals...
...Yuan, in fact, has become a pastor at a Chinese church in California...
...He describes lawyers Martin Lee, Emily Lau and others like them (well-traveled, fluent in English, educated in America or Britain) as "Hong Kong patriots...
...He married the daughter of a wealthy Taiwanese businessman and is a late-night disc jockey in Taiwan...
...Yan Jiaqi, once an adviser to the reformist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, was one of the few high level cadre to back the students...
Vol. 84 • November 2001 • No. 6
