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...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51