Exiled Chinese leader sees hope in ‘jasmine’ movement

BEIJING - China’s first small “jasmine” gatherings could escalate into widespread democracy protests that the ruling Communist Party would be unlikely to crush with military force, said an exiled former student leader of China’s 1989 democracy movement.

“I think the fear factor is fading out,” Wu’er Kaixi told DPA on telephone.

“You know, the Chinese government established its control not based on electoral legitimacy, it’s a totalitarian regime. But the only way they’ve been able to maintain their rule is based on people’s fear,” said Wu’er Kaixi, who is now an investment banker in Taiwan.

That fear of the government is balanced against a growing dissatisfaction with problems such as social inequality, corruption and injustice.

“When the dissatisfaction reaches a level of overcoming the fear, that’s when the Communist Party should be really worried,” he said.

Over the past 20 years of rapid economic development, China has become divided into “two kinds of people”, he said. Some two percent hold most of the wealth while the remainder face “exploitation” and “bullying” by the powerful, Wu’er Kaixi said.

“When people are given right to make money, they want to be able to make more money and be able to protect the money … and that is not the case in China. The economic growth is a myth, a miracle, it’s a fantasy. It has been working like a fairytale to hypnotize most of people,” he said.

“The dissatisfaction is obvious. And they (Chinese people) do want freedom,” he said.

Wu’er Kaixi believes that the current Chinese democracy activists were “encouraged by the Arab people” as news of the protests in Tunisia and Egypt helped to reduce their fear of the government.

Only a handful of people protested at last week’s gatherings in a dozen Chinese cities, but hundreds more went to “stroll around” the protest sites as advised by the anonymous organisers.

Wu’er Kaixi said the first events, which are scheduled to continue each Sunday, were a “baby step” designed to test the water.

“I believe people are encouraged. The small gathering is a success. Next time, it’s going to be bigger,” he said.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi earlier this week said the brutal crushing of China’s 1989 movement proved that national unity was more important than the lives of “a small number of protesters”.

The Chinese protests began in mid-April 1989 in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. They ended when troops with tanks and live ammunition moved through the city overnight June 3-4, 1989, reportedly killing hundreds of unarmed civilians and wounding thousands who allegedly blocked their route.

The Communist Party continues to claim that the 1989 crackdown was necessary to maintain social stability and safeguard the nation’s economic progress.

Wu’er Kaixi sees a “big similarity” in the way that the leaders of China and some Middle Eastern nations have appealed to “special conditions” that make “Western” democracy unsuitable for their cultures, and similarities in the defence of those appeals by some Western politicians.

“And one can easily think of the Chinese special condition being a billion people and the Arabian special condition as the religious, the long history of an ‘obedience’ culture.

“When it comes to democracy and freedom, as simply as I can put it, there is no special country. That’s the similarity of China and the Arab countries: that it’s been viewed as a special country by the Western democracies, that is actually not special at all.”

Wu’er Kaixi said he feels confident that the new protests will not be a repeat of 1989. The government knows that the “only chance they have is to eliminate any uprising within the first few moments”, he said.

“It is going to be much, much harder for the government to deploy tanks and machine guns, troops, again, like they did 22 years ago. The presence of the fear that has been established by the 1989 massacre will eventually fade out,” he said.

“So Chinese government are in a dilemma. On the one side, they want to maintain the control, and they want to have this fear factor present as much as they can. On the other hand, they cannot stir the situation (and have it) escalating to the next level.”

Wu’er Kaixi estimates that 99 percent of his 20,000 Twitter followers live in mainland China.

“I think most of people that follow me are eagerly waiting for something to happen,” he said.

“It is just like April 14th or 16th of 1989, before a few of us decided to take that step and become the one who shouts out a leading slogan.”