Mandate of Heaven by Orville Schell Simon & Schuster $250 IN Beijing today the crowds march again beneath Tiananmen Gate. But there will be no cries for democracy, no white head bands, no hunger strikes when the Chinese leadership celebrates the founding of the People's Republic 45 years ago. This is not 1989.
The events of that summer might as well have happened on a different planet for all the influence they seem to have on China today. As stockbrokers prepare for the Hong Kong listing of the third wave of mainland shares, what do they care what happened on June 4? As the workers from Sichuan bed down for the night at Guangzhou station, what difference does it make to them how many were shot, crushed and bayonetted that night? As Orville Schell sees it in his new book, subtitled 'A New Generation of Entrepreneurs, Dissidents, Bohemians and Technocrats Lays Claim to China's Future', it makes a great difference. The Chinese leadership have made a compact with their people: keep your mouths shut and undreamt riches shall be yours. But the price China and her people pay for that silence could be heavy indeed.
The reasons for that Faustian agreement and the startling economic boom it has brought, are the theme of this book.
Schell, a frequent visitor to China and a significant player on the American scene as a China watcher, combines a scholar's insight with a journalist's powers of description in a bold attempt to encompass in one volume the tumultuous events of the last five years.
Starting from the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, we get a blow-by-blow account of China's progress up to the early months of this year.
Scattered within the narrative are fine pieces of description. Schell recounts his visit to astrophysicist and dissident Fang Lizhi holed up in a storage cupboard in the American Embassy after Tiananmen, and then chillingly retells his own interrogation at the hands of the Beijing police.