Can China Learn Democracy?

Tiananmen Square, China, was the site of unprecedented protests back in 1989. The most iconic image of those days was a man with bags on both hands, in white shirt standing in front of a long line of chinese army tanks. Reports said he shouted "What are you doing to my city?". The tanks are moving to break protesters. The protesters are mostly high school students, young chinese but also labor and professionals. They want a democracy in China.

I don't know if the white shirt man in front of the tanks believe in democracy. Is he one with those who are protesting in the Square? His love of Beijing, his city, compelled him to stand in front and blocked a column of tanks.

The brutality of the authorities' response to the Tiananmen Protests was the frontpage news in every newspaper in the western world. China watchers noted that the Communist Party made some leadership replacements because of it. It is obvious to the chinese communists that those who ordered such repression cannot be seen as representing the whole of the Communist Party, not in the international scene anyway.

Tiananmen 1989

Can China learn democracy from the West? China certainly learned how to manage their economy very well. They learned it from the West. China is poised to be the biggest economy in the world. Nothing can stop this from happening, not a Trump Whitehouse or a European Union trying to handle Brexit.

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