One 4th deserves another
Happy 4th of July from the US of A.
I spent last month reading about another special 4th. Today’s post is a two-for, reviews of two great books. Enjoy!
The People’s Republic of Amnesia, Louisa Lim, 2014
“Thus Chinese history loops endlessly in on itself in a Möbius strip of crushed aspirations, cycling from one generation to the next, propelled by the propensity to embrace amnesia.” (P. 207)
This year I decided that some of my China reading for the month of June would be centered on Tiananmen in 1989 (AKA May 35th, or 8 squared (6/4)). I’ve read many books on the subject before and I’ve collected a few more books since that I’ve not yet gotten to. The PRA by Lim is one that I should have read earlier.
The book is centered on Tiananmen in ’89 but really it’s about the collective amnesia directed by the CCP and passively accepted by the newly wealthy citizens in China since then. It’s about the wealth and power of the PRC specifically BECAUSE OF the events of June 4th and the policies in the subsequent months and years. “The Communist Party has rewritten its history, but it has not forgotten what it did in 1989, nor is at peace with it.”
The personalized histories of that time is the highlight of PRA—the remorse of the soldier, the pain of the mother, the conflict of the exile, the forgotten in Chengdu. Belying the book’s title, Lim puts faces and facts and personal memories to the events that most people are not able to or willing to talk about still.
My wife, from Jiangxi, is typical of so many Chinese that have lived through difficult times—forgetting the bad and only remembering the good; “there is too much bad to remember,” says one of the interviewees in Lim’s book. And remembering doesn’t help anyone anyway; unlike in Germany where the Nazis lost and history can be discussed openly, the CCP is still in power in China. “Chinese people are practiced at not dwelling on the past. One by one, episodes of political turmoil have been expunged from official history or simply forgotten.” (P. 5).
As my wife often tells me, “Don’t say bad things about China.” And in one family at a time the “bad things” are not talked about and in just a single generation they are forgotten. But in defense of the forgetful, ignorance is necessary, “…not dwelling on the past—has become a key survival tactic, perhaps the most important one. Young Chinese people have little idea of, or interest in, what happened [on July 4].” (P.6) And even if they did it would only serve to burden them with knowledge that is still potentially toxic to careers and social mobility.
One of the important points that Lim makes is that what happened in Tiananmen Square happened in more than sixty other cities in China at the same time. While Beijing was the largest of the demonstrations, it was not an isolated incident. It’s important that Tiananmen is remembered for what happened there, but it is likewise important that the significance of that singular event doesn’t cover up the reality (death and suffering) of so many in other cities across China.
That there were events across the country serves as testimony against not just the CCP but all those that have traded their memories for riches or even for some semblance of peace. This is not my condemnation of the survivors, I do not fault them for trying to move on in a system that would punish them mercilessly if they did not. But the collective amnesia orchestrated by the CCP is successful at least in part because of the acquiescence of the masses to the Faustian bargain—life and prosperity for a fake history. And this becomes all the more problematic as a new generation, who don’t know anything other than the CCP version of history, is more and more stridently nationalistic.
June Fourth: The Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989; Jeremy Brown, Cambridge University Press, 2021.
This is a new book and I’m glad that I prioritized it over others that have been on my shelf. This is the complete story. This is the history of the entirety of 1989 and not just a couple days or weeks or even months. This is the country-wide context that most of other the Tiananmen books are missing. This is the real-world context of the lives of citizens, officials, and students that were involved. This is the history of workers, activists, petitioners, leaders, followers, victims, parents—real people with real and different motivations and lives.
I don’t like historical fiction disguised as truth. I think that history and fiction need to be separated as clearly as possible. So when I realized that each of this book’s sections was going to conclude with a “what if” or “alternative histories” discussion, I was more than a little bugged. But I was wrong. Brown isn’t telling politically motivated or imaginative tales of what could have been if pigs could fly. No, he’s telling the stories of what was possible politically and personally via historical evidence and testimony. He’s deconstructing other events in China and lining up situations with similar contexts and players and highlighting the reality that 1989 didn’t need to happen like it did. It’s well done, and it focuses on historical events and centers the blame where it should be—at the top.
For me, probably the best use of these “what if” section-ending discussions was the discussion of the PAP and the PLA. Their (lack of) training and equipment as well as the varied responses by individual units and commanders. The contrast between events in recent Chinese history, most especially Lhasa just a few months prior, and actions in different cities at the same time provides realistic context to the sad reality that things could have been different.
Brown effectively and honestly frames the discussion of 89 in the opening by reminding us that he (and most of us) watched these events unfold on live TV. We are not blank slates (p.x), but our memories need to be more fully informed of the larger context—Brown’s historical approach does that.
For me it was the updating of texts that I had read but not been in a position to critique myself. The Tiananmen Papers, which I had previously considered authoritative, apparently are not, and much additional information has come to light in the years since its publication. Also, when I read this book in tandem with Lim’s book, the personal narratives of workers and people who were officials or students broadened my understanding of the public and governmental sentiments at the end of the 1980s.
Lim creates the narrative of a culture of amnesia foisted upon the Chinese people by an insecure government. Brown broadens that to include both passive participation and active resistance by so many to the governments efforts post-June 4th. This is only one of the deep cultural insights that is carried through to the conclusion and today; reverberations of action and policy that are felt today in business and personal lives, not just politics. Other insights include generational conflicts, geographic differences, and issues of class (money, education) and race that generally are not discussed in other stories I’ve read about Tiananmen.
This is a history book that isn’t dry. Brown is sometimes acerbic in his critiques of other sources and comments, but always with evidence backing up his position. And these criticisms do not seem to be personal attacks on other authors, rather they are directed at correcting a history that, in Brown’s mind, seems to have tilted to far in telling a student-centered (and student-blaming) history. This is a worthy, readable, enjoyable (as enjoyable as massacre-history can be), thought-provoking addition to my China library.
