Hong Kong and the Tiananmen Playbook (original) (raw)
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Tiananmen: The Politics of US-China
2005
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International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2019
The 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre marked China out as an exception in the chapter of world history that saw the fall of international communism. The massacre crystalized the mistrust between China and Hong Kong into an open ideological conflict — Leninist authoritarianism versus liberal democracy — that has colored relations between the two since then. This article tracks the hold that authoritarianism has gained over liberal values in Hong Kong in the past thirty years and reflects on what needs to be done in the next thirty years for the balance to be re-tilted and sustained beyond 2047, when China’s fifty-year commitment to preserving Hong Kong’s autonomy expires. Still surviving (just) as a largely liberal (though by no means fully democratic) jurisdiction after two decades of Chinese rule, Hong Kong is a testing ground for whether China can respect liberal values, how resilient such values are to the alternative authoritarian vision offered by an economic superpower, and the potential for establishing a liberal-democratic pocket within an authoritarian state. The territory’s everyday wrestle with Chinese pressures speaks to the liberal struggles against authoritarian challenges (in their various guises) that continue to plague the world thirty years after the end of the Cold War.
June Fourth at 25: The Quarter-Century Legacy of Tiananmen, 2014
Emile Kok-Kheng Yeoh (special issue editor) (2014), 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. 197-563 (367 pp. + xv). [Scopus - Q1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/1x335y8yf504anr/IJCS-V5N2-combined-text-cover.pdf
The Tiananmen Papers Revisited
The China Quarterly, 2004
Authentic Chinese internal documents matter greatly as historical records that illuminate our understanding of Chinese politics. Yet careful scrutiny shows that the Chinese book version of the Tiananmen Papers is part fiction and part documentary history based on open and semi-open sources and document collections. The alleged transcripts of top-level meetings are basically stitched together ex post facto (even by the admission of the editors) and then presented as secret documents. Furthermore, the English translation is a heavily retouched version of the Chinese with differences in claims of authenticity, translation, citation and style. There is little evidence that any real secret documents are in the hands of the Chinese author, and even if they were, the two books under consideration are really secondary sources steps removed from the originals. The editors strongly vouch for the authenticity of these two books, but their efforts are inadequate and unconvincing.
A Tough Challenge For Beijing: Hong Kong Demonstrations
Hong Kong Demonstrations, 2019
Harsh demonstrations in the following months in Hong Kong are still indicating high stakes for Beijing administration. Despite Hong Kong Government's withdrawal of extradition bill, massive protests has been taking place in the streets of the city. On the other hand, there are numerous national and international reflections of the protests and possible intervention of China toward Hong Kong and the consequences should be taken in the hand comprehensively.
Rhetorical Trajectories of Tiananmen Square
Diplomatic History, 2010
In April and May of 1989, the protest movement that began in Tiananmen Square, in the center of Beijing, became one of the most dramatic and defining episodes in the presidential administration of George H.W. Bush. Bush indicated that had he not kept the lines of communication open, it would have taken significantly longer for China-U.S. relations to heal. But understanding of the Tiananmen movement, and its diplomatic consequences, does not come easily. In the West, there is still a widespread incomprehension about why the Chinese government reacted the way it did and condemnation over the lengths it took to maintain its grasp on power. Moreover, in spite of the rapid economic gains of the almost two decades since the events, and the accompanying social and cultural changes that have radically altered so many aspects of Chinese society, the Tiananmen movement remains largely undiscussed in China. Younger generations of students across China know almost nothing of the events, beyond that a “counter-revolutionary group” sought to “overthrow the government.” This essay seeks to illustrate the vast gulf between rhetorical constructions of the event, and the impact of those constructions on subsequent foreign policy.
International Journal of China Studies, 2014
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. https://www.dropbox.com/s/c9pqfcf2wpmok3h/IJCS-V5N2-yeoh-intro.pdf