For the citizens of the world’s most populous nation, today marks a day of hope.
On this day in 1989, Chinese students began a protest that would see a “Goddess of Democracy” raised right under the watchful portrait of Chairman Mao. It is the Chinese version of our Statue of Liberty.
Those students were young, they were naïve and they were crushed. But on that square they put forward a Chinese claim to the freedom that is every man and woman’s God-given right. The stand they took lives.
In the 25 years since, Beijing has tried to blot out the stain of Tiananmen in two main ways. First, it has opened markets further, so that its citizens might improve their lives — and be less inclined to rebel. Second, it has used censorship and bullying to try to erase the ugly memory of 1989.
In the first, it has succeeded. China is a global economic power, and its people enjoy wealth and opportunity their grandparents could not have dreamt of.
But try as it might, China can’t make Tiananmen go away.
Tonight in Hong Kong, for example, organizers are expecting record crowds for their candlelight commemorations — which will include tens of thousands who weren’t even alive in 1989.
China is betting the fruits of engagement with the global economy will lead its citizens to accept its authoritarian control, overlook its abuses and forget the past.
Our bet is the opposite. The Chinese people have indeed stood up, as Chairman Mao once proclaimed. But it is thanks to the free market and the inroads this freedom has made into the brutal system he bequeathed.
However long it takes, the legacy of 1989 will one day be manifest at Tiananmen when the portrait of Mao is finally replaced by a permanent Goddess of Democracy.