Tiananmen Memories and Olympic Dreams

Last night marked the 19th anniversary of the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. Today, Beijing is again a hot topic of conversation; as host of the 2008 Olympic Games, the world is looking closely at both China’s economic successes and its human rights failures.

Just in the past week, CSIS has held events concerned with China’s urbanization and China- Europe relations. The Carnegie Endowments for International Peace’s China Program has also embarked on a series of debates on topics ranging from human rights to the environment to the Chinese economy. As China sits in the world’s spotlight with the Olympics only two months away, global leaders need to decide if they will use this opportunity strategically to press for lasting change.

Providing a perspective that often is silenced, Wang Dan, a prominent organizer of the 1989 Chinese democracy movement (and the Tiananmen Square protests), wrote yesterday about his experiences as a political prisoner in China and his thoughts about what China needs to do in the wake of the Chengdu tragedy to correct its wrongs:

Last month's earthquake and the coming Olympic Games in Beijing should be seen as the most important events in modern China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the subsequent crackdown whose anniversary we mark today.

It is an issue close to Wang on both a national and personal level; after being arrested for (peaceful) political dissidence and subsequently freed during China’s 1993 Olympic bid, Wang was arrested a second time. He served 7 years in prison before being exiled to the US in 1998.

Now that China has successfully procured the rapidly approaching 2008 Olympic Games, Wang expresses his hopes that global leaders will hold China accountable and that the Olympics will be a catalyst to positive change and the development of a “strong civil society” in China. As a first step, Wang calls for pressure on Chinese leaders to grant amnesty to political prisoners and exiles.

Wang vividly expresses the deficiencies in China’s past and present Olympic bids, concluding, “Beijing must fulfill its human rights promises and potential if the Chinese people are to emerge the true winners of the 2008 Summer Games.”