An interesting part in this analysis is "democracy", especially the one that should make you question the constant drumming in the mainstream (Western media) that the Tiananmen Square movement was about "democracy" as the Western liberals define it, inflating the role of students in the movement, and devoiding it from any class content.
A part which sounds weak for me is the first one about the scope of workers' control, as the writer has not backed his argument by evidence.
The part on the historical process from the 1960s until 1989 is illuminating.
The last part, post-1989, also sounds weak, for it does not take into consideration the industrial revolution China has embarked on since 1978 and its ongoing "tormented birth" in the passage to "modernity".
*****
Students constantly tried to exclude workers, seeing the movement as “their own,” and sought to maintain its “purity.” Walder and Gong pointed out that until the end of May, students had been adamant that workers’ organizations not be allowed to enter Tiananmen Square proper. Students had little interest in communicating or coordinating with workers’ organizations, especially the organization formed by construction workers who were mostly villagers from Beijing’s rural outskirts. Historian Maurice Meisner argued that “in the early weeks of the movement, student demonstrators often marched with arms linked to exclude workers and other citizens.” A student who participated in the movement also recounted that students took great care to ensure that the logistical supplies donated by supporters in Hong Kong went to themselves, not to workers.
Here lies the irony of the movement. Student leaders repeatedly said that they intended to use their actions to “awaken” the masses. But in fact, a significant part of the masses was already “awake” and actively participating in the movement, yet the students showed little interest in talking to them. Students’ inflated sense of superiority and self-importance was in part nourished by the elitism of China’s top universities, and also partly reminiscent of China’s traditional gentry-intelligentsia, which saw itself as the moral mainstay of society, the conscience of the people, responsible for articulating what is right and wrong on behalf of the masses. Indeed, sociologist Zhao Dingxin has pointed out that students in the movement used a combination of Western liberal vocabularies and China’s traditional moralist language.
The Forgotten Socialists of Tiananmen Square
A part which sounds weak for me is the first one about the scope of workers' control, as the writer has not backed his argument by evidence.
The part on the historical process from the 1960s until 1989 is illuminating.
The last part, post-1989, also sounds weak, for it does not take into consideration the industrial revolution China has embarked on since 1978 and its ongoing "tormented birth" in the passage to "modernity".
*****
Students constantly tried to exclude workers, seeing the movement as “their own,” and sought to maintain its “purity.” Walder and Gong pointed out that until the end of May, students had been adamant that workers’ organizations not be allowed to enter Tiananmen Square proper. Students had little interest in communicating or coordinating with workers’ organizations, especially the organization formed by construction workers who were mostly villagers from Beijing’s rural outskirts. Historian Maurice Meisner argued that “in the early weeks of the movement, student demonstrators often marched with arms linked to exclude workers and other citizens.” A student who participated in the movement also recounted that students took great care to ensure that the logistical supplies donated by supporters in Hong Kong went to themselves, not to workers.
Here lies the irony of the movement. Student leaders repeatedly said that they intended to use their actions to “awaken” the masses. But in fact, a significant part of the masses was already “awake” and actively participating in the movement, yet the students showed little interest in talking to them. Students’ inflated sense of superiority and self-importance was in part nourished by the elitism of China’s top universities, and also partly reminiscent of China’s traditional gentry-intelligentsia, which saw itself as the moral mainstay of society, the conscience of the people, responsible for articulating what is right and wrong on behalf of the masses. Indeed, sociologist Zhao Dingxin has pointed out that students in the movement used a combination of Western liberal vocabularies and China’s traditional moralist language.
The Forgotten Socialists of Tiananmen Square
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