CHINA: Patriotism Replacing University’s Liberal Tradition

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, May 26 1998 (IPS) - It is China’s most prestigious university, and is known for being the breeding ground for significant movements that have shaped most of this country’s turbulent modern history.

Indeed, it was here in Beijing University that the May 4 Movement of 1919 began, calling for the introduction of democracy and development of science to modernise a China then emerging from more than 4,000 years of feudalism.

It was also from its lecture halls and dormitories that the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement started.

But when Beida – as the university is fondly called – marked its centenary this month with high-profile state celebrations, few of its students dared to speak out even when it was obvious that its traditional emphasis on science and democracy was being changed into “patriotism and progressiveness”.

Presiding over the celebrations, Chinese President and Communist Party Chief Jiang Zemin spoke of patriotism as a sense of responsibility to the Party and as a unifying point for Beida students.

He also took pains in trying to fit what was once listed as a “heavy disaster region” because of its rebellious stance with the Party’s latest slogans of “reviving the nation through science and education” and “cultivating creativity”.

The university’s officials and alumni lauded the government’s recognition of the importance of Beida as China’s highest academic institution. That the government failed to mention Beida’s formidable liberal tradition, however, did not prompt much comment.

Oddly enough, it has taken a professor – and not students, who traditionally initiated the movements — to point out that Beida has often been defiant to China’s rulers and a nurturing place for democratic campaigns.

Beida, after all, has long been known as the home of the country’s intellectual, and often non-conformist, elite. Unlike Qinghua, which breeds top technocrats and where Premier Zhu Rongji did his studies, Beida has educated great philosophers and scholars, as well as student movement leaders like Wang Dan.

Not to be forgotten, though, is one of the darkest moments in Beida’s history — the Cultural Revolution, which started here with the unveiling of the first “big character poster” on revisionism in June 1966.

The poster fiercely condemned revisionism in the university and the movement later spread to the whole country. During the decade of chaos that followed, more than 60 professors of Beida were persecuted and died.

But economics professor Shang Dewen says the school’s liberal spirit is best illustrated in the May 4 Movement for political democracy in 1919 and again in the 1989 democratic movement launched by students.

“The political movements after 1949 (when Communist China was founded) — from the total Sovietisation in the 1950s to the anti- rightist struggle in 1957 and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) were all blasphemy to Beida’s spirit,” adds Shang.

Shang hints, however, that Beida lost much of its militancy after June 4, 1989. On that day, tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square and scores of students who had gathered there calling for democracy either ended up dead or disappeared.

“In those days of blood,” recalls Shang, “Beida’s president was sacked…and the whole campus was shrouded in horror.”

Afterwards, Beida students were forced to take military drills to instill discipline, and political debates on campus were suppressed. Chinese leaders have since insisted that the 1989 political disturbances were not about democracy and anti- corruption but “a counter-revolution” aimed to overthrow the government.

Invoking the late Chairman Mao Zedong’s teaching that “anyone who suppresses student movements would never have a good ending”, Shang retorts that “the right and wrong of the Tiananmen incident is very clear”.

“The so-called fire-fighters all rushed to Beida to clear up the mess and staged a big club of persecution around Beida,” he says. “How could there be any democracy in such circumstances?”

Still, the state’s tactics seems to have worked on recent Beida alumni, with few of those who took part in the school’s centenary celebrations interested in talking about democracy and Beida’s ideals.

Jane Wu, a 1992 economics graduate who now works for a foreign equities company, shares that all her former classmates were interested in “their careers and how to make money out of the economic reform”. She adds: “When we met we didn’t talk about things like democracy but about how well everyone was faring.”

Beida Vice President Chen Zhangliang told the media earlier this month that “students were thinking, but not for the same issues as before”.

“They want to enjoy life, enjoy the chances of reform,” he observed. “They are calling for more economic freedom. They want to be free to do things in business. Intellectuals are asking to be paid more than non-educated people.”

Shang, meanwhile, is apparently worried over Beida’s future. He says despite its reputation, it still lags far behind a world- class university in terms of funding, equipment, faculty and especially teaching methods.

“Though Beida has many advantages, it also has many disadvantages,” says Shang. “Beida people should have a sense of crisis instead of extolling its accomplishments or feeling elated.”