Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - May 28, 1989, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press May Page issues the crisis in by Robert Benjamin Baltimore Sun last week the mandate of heaven appeared to be pass ing in and the whole world seemed to be the latest news from China was everywhere spilling off the front riveting us to television screens even when new film was scarce or professional China a patient Crew if there Ever was moved in triple time to comply with Media requests to explain the by Zantine machinations suspected in the higher reaches of the Church of chinese communism As one of the scholars confided the truth is its All very confusing to just As its very confusing for most even my 70yearold Friend in Beijing a quiet Type of research scientist who lives in a suburb no More than ten Miles from Tianan men Square says he would know Little about what is happening there were it not for the disparate re ports he has been receiving via state run television and broadcasts by the voice of what a show its been Beijing vowing to starve them selves to death for their notion of the capitals Resi dents turning out to Lay their bodies on the line in stirring Defiance of their totalitarian military commanders Balking As they try to determine which Way the winds of Power might plugs pulled on the bigwigs of Western hijacked a Blooming tent City on Tiana men Ever changing rounds of colourful ban As gripping a spectacle As it has what is it that we have been watching beyond the profound courage of Large numbers of people with Little Means speaking up for themselves in the pro at least temporarily holding their government hostage is this a revolution in the Mak ing the birth of a people Power movement a Power game played by old men whose names still defy accurate pronunciation by most Western commentators the vented frustrations of a mass of Mal contents with soured expectations because they cant acquire fast enough All they want by Way of Sony and competing sources of information and inde pendent avenues of expression Long history i came to Beijing and you have a soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev is said to have remarked to chinese officials Dur ing his overshadowed visit to China the week before despite the soviet leaders qualify ing As a revolution by the tradition Al canons of chivas Long history takes some Only three Are recognized the unification of China beginning two centuries before the toppling of the last Impe rial dynasty in 1911 and the Victory of the communists Over the nationalists 40 years at the same the right to popular rebellion is deeply embedded in the chinese heaven sees As the people goes the traditional version of the mandate of heaven by which the succession of emperors claimed the Imperial throne and by some would the communists also gained the concept was neatly self fulfilling any Success Ful rebellion against a tyrannical ruler provided sufficient evidence that the ruler had lost the mandate that legitimized his the current demonstrations have undermined the Rule of an already weakened chinese communist but if the mandate of heaven is on the move these Days in Beij it is passing within the party rather than away from still evolving some China such As Maurice Are not at All convinced at the moment that the still evolving situation will even turn out in retrospect to be that much of a turning what is unique Here in terms of the past 40 years in China is that theres been a purely spontaneous Defiance of authority by the sons and daughters of the elite of Chi Nese the children of the High ranking officials and intellect said of the univer sity of in the younger members of the ruling elite have defected out of moral disgust with the a system they perceive to be unfair and the Core of the students who initiated the protests came from chivas top Beijing univer where Only one in 500 passes the Entrance exams and whose graduates Are Well placed for relatively comfortable whats so very moving Here is these students willingness to Sacri fice their bureaucratic careers in some their lives to oppose Meisner some May think it comes from some sort of Mystic Oriental but it really is coming from their moral disgust and frustration with the sys profound Are ahead for the whose deep crisis of identity has been whether or not the hardliners pre Vail for China analysts believe that ultimately a structural shift will occur by which party leaders somehow will have to tolerate a Freer a Little More dissent and some institutionalized limits to their own if this is not exactly democracy As known in the it nonetheless would be a breath of democratic air for the chinese Stephen Uhalley a University of Hawaii notes Long before the current party leaders actually had been giving some lip service to democratize but he there eventually going to have to open up and ride this tide if there Ever to become credible such changes would have deep the mandarin word for China is literally Middle expressive of the ancient Assumption that China is the Centre of the Earth and first among All other woke up from its dynastic slumber in the 19th Century to find itself weak in the face of foreign gunboats patrol Ling its Interior Rivers and foreign interests carving up its thus was launched the chinese search for wealth and a search that grew progressively More desperate As the last dynasty fell and that propelled chivas first mass Stu Dent movement in 1919 to advocate the twin ideals of Western science and Democrat thirty years and a protracted civil War the chinese communists founded their Peoples re Public based on another concept borrowed from the with the aim of not Only creating a socialist nation but also building a modern often lost in popular considerations of Mao Tseung is the astounding fact Over most of the Quarte Century of his chivas Industrial output grew with Little outside help at a higher rate than that of any developed or devel Oping nation in the chaotic decade but maos last decade at chivas Helm was lost and with Many of chivas Best minds subjected to torture and political Deng himself resurrected Only after the cultural revolution to be chivas Paramount Leader since brought Back reopened the country to the West arid set a new economic ultimately infusing chinese social ism with some Western Freeman Ket Denis open has swung both ways As needed in vestment and technology have flowed in from the so the chinese have peered out at How far they still lag materially behind much of the rest of the but less immediately obvious chinese students demonstrate the Start of a revolution or just a spasm was that Denis economic reforms also set into play social forces in consistent with a ruling party founded on a base of poor peasants and an egalitarian ideology classes of Rich peasants and private entrepreneurs who can Transfer wealth Independent of the state an inflation rate hitting 30 per cent a year an estimated 50 million peo ple forced off the land and wander ing through chivas cities and an estimated 100 million peasants now facing what the chinese press Calls famine because of recent Grain these inequities Are at the Root of the student protesters demand for an end to Meisner what they mean by corruption is not just the simple use of political Power for personal he but the enormous Dis Satis particularly among chivas Urban with a system that helping some and not helping the broader nature of the corruption Issue and the attendant longing for a purer system was evidenced perhaps in the appearance of maos portrait Here and there among the banners held aloft during some of the recent but Many More of the student protesters appear to believe that the antidote to corruption lies among other a press that would be More free to Root out social forbidden such investigative reporting has not been unknown in China in re cent but it usually has been confined to Small time scams in far Flung As a Young editor from the new China news Agency bluntly put it in an inter View in january we cannot investigate anything in Beijing involving the Central its just not whatever the out come of the protests and the Power struggle at the chivas endemic problems go in recent it once again has been losing its population control its Grain harvests have been falling it must struggle to earn adequate foreign its cities Are sorely in need of modern China has so Many Uhalley you get this sense that the chinese need for every thing to go right in for them to keep their Heads above the even if its government would All of a sudden become fully democratic in a sense that we would recognize in the China would still have a tremendously hard Row to seeking a Beautiful something by William Pfaff special to the free press Paris the drama of China and the soviet Union today lies in the tension Between liberalization and the drama yet to come is the conflict Between the dream of democratization and its liberalization is what an authoritarian systems leaders concede to prevent the so Viet Union has undeniably liberalized in extremely important but the intent and effect of this have been to increase the Power of Mik Hail gone too far chivas and the others demonstrating in Beijing and other ask for and chivas situation has probably now gone beyond the Point where fur ther liberalization by the leadership could deflect these this pattern of events has been seen before mass demonstrations with idealistic but ill formulated Aims the collapse of authority the reluctance to resort to violence to break the it occurred in the May 4th movement in protesting territorial conces Sions to Japan imposed by the ver Sailles the results then included attacks on confucianism and and a turn by chivas intelligentsia to Ward foreign notably Marx it is Clear that the mandate of heaven has Well and truly been withdrawn from those who will the intelligentsia turn this time toward Western democracy what is Likely to follow is an if temporarily fragmentation of the the economic dynamism of China these last few years has come mainly in the provinces of fijian and Guang neighbouring Hong where special economic zones and most Light Industry Are these have profited from eco nomic Reform and opened com Merce with the outer the coastal even be fore this resisted the Central governments economic and fiscal policies and made the most of their own aloof from the Agri cultural provinces where Rural unrest and depopulation Are increase Hong Kongs businessmen and traders demonstrate their anxiety Over events in China with recent daily plunges in the Hong Kong securities the Colony saw the largest popular demonstrations in its history last weekend in sup port of the Hong after returns to chivas sovereignty in and would prefer a China that really is a democracy or else a China without effective Central what is democracy democracy ask the students what this democracy Xie wan a 21yearold hunger told the new York times that we must search for a perfect indeed but where and what is it the students condemn social political inequality and Compromise Are essential and corruption an inescapable in the reforms Deng Xiaoping has been carrying out in China to the extravagant Praise of the same foreign commentators who now celebrate the these Are the reforms which have made chivas economic Progress possible and presaged today Twenty years ago another generation of students was against just the same three things Compro they called themselves the red guard and demanded extermination of the devils and demons of revision they had a Leader they were driven by the messianism of the aging map there is no Mao thank but there also is no evident Force capable of taking the place of a ruined government and producing a constructive there is All that has happened is now to produce a marvelous a Beautiful it is wonder alluring but no one should be surprised if it ends angry tory minister reverses the usual roles because Manitoban decided they did not Trust any party to govern the province with a Clear the political scene has become a some what strange or is that weird variation of what occurs in More Normal for How often in the past did a Cabinet minister Call a news conference to demand an apology and the Resigna Tion of a critic opposition Calls for the Resigna of a minister Are de Charlotte Ole son and Harold Neufeld heard that suggestion at least a dozen times in the last but the current session has started with a shot from the other with Heri Tage and recreation minister Bonnie Mitchelson taking aim at Liberal Gwen at a news which was announced by the ministers office rather than information services which is responsible for notifying the Media about official government a Mitchelson demanded a Public apology from Charles and urged her immediate removal As under the dome Arlene Billinkoff culture critic because of what she had said the previous the comments were made at a news conference called by the Mani Toba intercultural and according to the ministers were personally imply ing she had not been fulfilling her negative comments about the ministers action or no action should have been expected at such a the Mic believes it has been victimized by the governments changes in lottery Mitchelson had presented it As a Way to provide better accountability for lottery Rev fairer Access to support by All nonprofit organizations and greater flexibility to meet future it also gave the government a More direct role in distribution of reve the new system did not reflect a change in philosophy of How funds Are but rather the manner in which revenues Are Mitchelson therefore distribution would be More handled by the finance department through a Community investment fund and Community distribution the latter process would involve four departments which oversee eight funding with All organizations which receive funds to be responsible to a designated most of the traditional transactions would continue with umbrella groups which existed under the for Mer funding but not a new the multicultural Grants advisory coun cil was to handle applications about Grants to the multicultural comm with the which had held that turning into an advisory group while the minister insisted the change was the Mic was not Happy to lose its the critics were equally with new Democrat Maureen hem Phill insisting the new Council was not the proper group to make Deci Sions about where funds should composed of political it is clearly said Liberal Leader Sharon while lot Tery critic Richard Kozak believed stripping the Mic of its decision making role and politicizing the sys tem was an lotteries have become a political i am very he so was the which wanted the government to change its As culture Charles was invited to the where she reportedly accused the minister of mislead ing the multicultural Community and not caring or Mitchelson was also told the critic had commented on her Lack of Atten dance at Many events and her apparent confusion about where she was when she did i find this Type of personal attack said it was More proof of the Liberal strategy to i maximize Media coverage by at tacking and attempting to personally discredit the she was disappointed to see How Low that party was willing to stoop in order to woo the multicultural the liberals have no right to play blatant political games with a gov nonpartisan Orga she the multicultural Community deserves More than political posturing they de serve the commitment of politicians who Are willing to put aside partisan interests in order to work for the betterment of the entire commune she called on car stairs to indicate whether Charles comments represented the party a Public apology for the personal attack and the removal of the la from her current the minister was obviously angry and that anger increased during the question period when Charles if the new Way of disbursing lottery funds would be any More account Able than the former in Stead of Mitchelson urged her to Stop playing blatant thus prompting guffaws from the Liberal and nip such you Are Desper and take the politics out of politics failed to deter the minister As she accused the critics of not taking multiculturalism serious they were merely bringing in pure partisan would make no apologies for being a she later said it was rather ludicrous for Mitchelson to turn the Issue into a personal while she had Dis credited her ability As a it was not i think she is Way out to it was All part of the the critic is but when a minister is there is no difference Between attacking the performance and the any attack is personal and the opposition is playing blatant political Mitchelson does not believe they should do such a dastardly perhaps she might recall what the tories did when they were on the other ;