The Long Shadow of Tiananmen: Political Economy of State-Civil Societal Relations in the People's Republic of China Twenty-Five Years On
International Journal of China Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, June/August 2014 (Special Issue – June Fourth at 25: The Quarter-Century Legacy of Tiananmen), pp. 197-275
80 Pages Posted: 19 Jul 2014 Last revised: 30 Aug 2014
Date Written: July 16, 2014
Abstract
At the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations and June Fourth crackdown in Beijing, this article examines the legacy of the tumultuous episode unprecedented in the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and scrutinizes the prospects and challenges in the struggle of post-1989 Chinese dissent and nonviolent action (NVA), both exiled and domestic, in the context of State-civil societal relations. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Party-State domination has so far continued to be stable, with the NVA movements being disadvantaged by both a low degree of internal solidarity and organization as well as numerical weakness to effectively engage in concerted action, vis-à-vis the same factors on the side of the State. Without any impending national economic crisis, military defeat or internal power struggle severe enough to destroy the CCP’s ruling echelon from within and with no sign of the weakening of the State’s will and machinery to suppress those who dare to challenge the CCP’s self-justified legitimacy to rule without being elected to do so, the Party’s rule looks set to continue to stay strong and political democratization of China seems destined to be long in coming. Ironically, the CCP’s present consensus-based collective leadership, while supposed to prevent the rise of another disastrously strong leader like Mao Zedong, will count against quick democratization too. Against this backdrop, taking into consideration the divergence and convergence of the strategic and ideological approaches of the democracy movement and civil rights activism as well as the corresponding factors of instrumental activities, bargaining power and ideology on the part of the Party-State, the article analyses the conflict and reluctant symbiosis across the unfortunate State-society divide, assesses the tribulations and prospects of contemporary Chinese dissent and NVA, and ponders on the potential for political change.
Keywords: June Fourth, Tiananmen, Chinese Communist Party, authoritarianism, Party-State, dissent, nonviolent action (NVA), democracy movement, Weiquan activism
JEL Classification: H11, H12, K49, Z18
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation