June 4 has become an ideological prism
- The further along we are since 1989, the more complicated our stances have become in relation to the Tiananmen crackdown
You do have to appreciate the persistence of the pan-democrats, whose stance on the deadly crackdown almost three decades ago has not changed or wavered one bit. Meanwhile, the rest of Hong Kong and the country have moved on. Or rather, unlike the pan-dems, most of us don’t see it the way we did during that fateful time in 1989.
The crackdown gave birth to the Hong Kong democracy movement. For its old-timers, its horrors have induced something like post-traumatic stress disorder, as events which they could still recall vividly. That’s why they come back to it again and again – as both therapy and an act of patriotism.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, most friends of Beijing prefer to move on from June 4 and instead, focus on its positive outcomes, which accelerated economic reforms and put China on its current path to regaining its great power status.
The Communist Party is perhaps even more ambivalent. On the mainland, through a combination of censorship by the state and wilful forgetfulness by the people – a phenomenon examined by former Hong Kong journalist Louisa Lim in People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited – June 4 has become a non-event.
But for Beijing, Hong Kong people who remember it every year still consider themselves Chinese compatriots.
Far from becoming a symbol of resistance or subversion, it has become an expression of patriotism. Beijing may well prefer patriotic democrats over localist-separatists in Hong Kong.
