[Xi used Saturday’s commemoration, and the specter of the much more sensitive anniversary the following month, to exhort China’s young people to rally around the Communist Party of China and lead a patriotic life focused on the collective.]
By
Anna Fifield
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Paramilitary
police officers march in Tiananmen Square after attending a ceremony
marking the centennial of the May Fourth Movement.
(Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)
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BEIJING
— Chinese President Xi Jinping celebrated the
anniversary of a student protest with great fanfare and an hour-long speech in
the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday. But it wasn’t the iconic student
protest that took place in front of that majestic hall in Tiananmen Square 30
years ago next month that he was commemorating.
It was, instead, the anniversary of a lesser
known student protest that took place in the same square seven decades earlier:
When students demonstrated on May 4, 1919 against a plan to give Germany’s
concessions in China to Japan.
Xi used Saturday’s commemoration, and the
specter of the much more sensitive anniversary the following month, to exhort
China’s young people to rally around the Communist Party of China and lead a
patriotic life focused on the collective.
“Chinese youth in the new era shall love
their great motherland,” Xi told the 3,500-odd young people gathered in the
Great Hall of the People, including students dressed in brightly colored
jackets from Beijing’s four most prestigious universities — the same
universities that were involved in the 1989 protests.
“For Chinese youth in the new era, patriotism
is the foundation for success,” Xi said. “Let the great banner of patriotism
fly high in their hearts!”
Communist Party organizations at universities
and workplaces around the country posted photos on social media of
20-somethings watching the speech live.
Although the Communist Party did not exist in
1919, the president is using the centenary to co-opt what he called a “great
patriotic revolutionary movement” in effort to instill a deep sense of
nationalism in the Chinese populace.
The next few months are extremely sensitive
ones for the Communist Party of China, with the May 4 anniversary this weekend
and the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown next month. That
crackdown led to the deaths of thousands of people in the square and across the
country.
This Saturday marks 100 years since students
flocked to the streets of Beijing after they learned that the post-World War I
Treaty of Versailles had passed the city of Qingdao from Germany to Japan. The
students considered the agreement to be a national humiliation and blamed
traditional Confucian values for China’s weakness in the world.
“The May 4th protests sparked a national
movement of questioning why was China so weak,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a China
expert at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. “The young people were
very frustrated with their political leaders, so the May 4th Movement is really
important in the consciousness because it led to the rejuvenation of the
Chinese nation.”
The student protesters of 1919 promoted
Western ideals of science and democracy, and their movement was later credited
with bringing about the successful reorganization of the Nationalist Party and
the creation of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
“The great historical significance of the May
4th Movement shows that student campaigns can be promising only when they are
integrated into a story of national rejuvenation and when they receive the
correct guidance,” Zheng Shiqu, professor of history at Beijing Normal
University, wrote in a commentary in the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the
Communist Party.
But the democratic ideals of 1919 seem very
at odds with today’s China, where Xi has abolished term limits, giving him the
ability to remain president for the rest of his life.
“The May 4th movement was quite an ambiguous
movement so it allows them to tick lots of boxes,” said Isabella Jackson,
assistant professor in Chinese History at Trinity College Dublin, noting that
on one hand it was anti-imperialist and nationalistic.
“The people were also calling for a form of
democracy, not necessarily on the Western model but something with much more
consultation with the public,” Jackson said, adding that the movement was
founded on anger toward the ministers of the day. “That kind of dissent against
the government is obviously not possible now. So they're just cherry picking
the aspects of the movement that suit their own purposes.”
Certainly, the authorities are going to great
lengths to make sure the youth of today don’t harbor any new ideas about
protesting.
The government suddenly announced an
additional three day holiday after May Day, giving Chinese workers four days
off in a row. The Beijing subway authority said trains will not stop at the
stations on either side of Tiananmen Square from Wednesday through Saturday.
A song called “The Path of Man,” which
describes the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, has disappeared from Apple
Music’s service in China and from the local QQ Music.
Authorities at universities across the
country are on high alert. Handan University in Hebei province told department
heads to “maintain a high degree of vigilance, be duty-bound, and never relax.”
Six members from the Marxist Society at
Peking University reportedly went missing on Sunday.
“In the speech, President Xi said we are
living in the best of times. But why would the government fear unarmed college
students in such a golden age?” said a 20-year-old Peking University student
and former Marxist club member, speaking on condition of anonymity for her
safety. “This is pure irony and a huge slap in the face of those who believed
in the May 4th Movement and the party state itself.”
Outspoken academics have also been forced to
be quiet. Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Tsinghua University who had very
publicly criticized Xi’s decision to scrap limits on his presidency, was
suspended from his position and has now reportedly been banned from leaving the
country.
In his attempts to strengthen the party and
his leadership of it, Xi has been harking back to the founding values of the
party: service to the party not the people, said Kerry Brown of King’s College
London. “He uses this nationalist message to refill the fuel tanks and give the
party more energy,” he said.
Wang Yuan and Lyric Li contributed reporting.
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