25 Years since the Tiananmen Massacre

[Beet]

I'm not going to link to news articles there-- there are a flurry of them to be sure. Nor are the consequences of this event particularly mysterious. A look at the raft elections that we have seen in recent months around the world will give you an idea. I seek only to mark this moment and, perhaps, add a few comments.

First of all, it is often said that if you look at the chaos that has followed other revolutions-- notably the collapse of the USSR in 1991, that Deng and the CCP was vindicated in their crackdown on the students. Of course, everyone has an opinion about what would or would not have happened had Zhao Ziyang been listened to. But the point is, this relies on a counter-factual that can never be proven. The situation of China in 1989 was very different from that of the USSR. China's economy was at a much lower level of development, China did not have as many separate republics as the USSR, and China was not a superpower. It had much less to lose, and more to gain. Subsequent history has borne that out.

Secondly, it is often said that China's economic growth from 1989 to today is a vindication of the crackdown. Again, the problem is that this relies on a counter-factual that can never be proven. Northeast Asian economies ex-North Korea have proven uniquely adept at economic development since 1945, and the period since 1990 has witnessed rapid growth in developing countries as a whole. For the period 1996 to 2010 for instance, India's total factor productivity growth was not significantly below China's. Of course, no one can prove that China's economic growth has come in spite of, rather than because of, the CCP's rule over China. But it is never even discussed as a possibility. If not the CCP, the credit goes to the Chinese people. You figure out which one is more "patriotic."

Third, the question today is not looking backward but looking forward. 1989 is significant only insofar as without June 4, we would not have the CCP in its present form, whereas with June 4, we do. So the significance of this date is only to reflect on what role the CCP has in China's development, and what unique policies and directions the CCP is undertaking. Is the CCP's monopoly on power a constructive force or an impediment to the future of China?

Fourth, Chen Yun. Upon thinking on the various spheres offered on my third comment, I was reminded of his noted economic analogy. He thought an economy was like a bird in a cage, where: "the bird represents the free market and the cage represents a central plan. Chen proposed that a balance should be found between 'setting the bird free' and choking the bird with a central plan that was too restrictive." By the 1980s, Chen Yun had turned against reform. Apparently the cage became too big for him. But Chen's analogy can be perhaps applied to the comprehensive development of a nation, in all of its aspects-- civil, cultural, and political. In this application the Chinese people dreaming the Chinese Dream are the bird, and the CCP is the cage. Within the cage, they are nominally free to fly to one end or the other. But what if the dream requires flying out of the cage?