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Experts have debated this week whether the Chinese people will be next to demand democracy. In fact, no expert predicted this year’s Egyptian uprising or 1989’s anti-communist revolutions that led to the fall of Berlin Wall and the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
When the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) comes, it will likely be a surprise. The real question is not whether the Chinese people will be next but whether the Chinese care about freedom and democracy.
For over 100 years, the Chinese people have demonstrated again and again their desire for freedom and democracy. This aspiration, though, has been denied by a difficult history, a history that must be known in order to understand the situation of the Chinese people today.
Two generations of Chinese have suffered a collective Stockholm syndrome.
From Republic to CCP
In 1911, the Chinese dethroned the last emperor and established the Republic of China. As the first freely elected president of China, Sun Yat-Sen promised a nation built on the principles of democracy, sovereignty, and welfare.
Such a program, however, was pushed aside by the fragmentation of political power as warlords resisted the republic and a little later by invasion as Japan moved into Manchuria.
The nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT) achieved a rough kind of national unity and resisted the Japanese. But the KMT’s leader Chiang Kai-shek ruled as a dictator, and his party’s corruption deeply disappointed the Chinese people.
That disappointment opened the door for a Soviet-supported CCP. The CCP promised Chinese people something that seemed even better than democracy: a communist society in which everyone is equal, and everything is available to meet the needs of the people.
Of course, the CCP’s editorial mouthpieces played on the Chinese people’s desires for freedom and democracy and constantly packaged the CCP as the party that would deliver these long-cherished hopes.
Lives were sacrificed to realize this dream: Millions died in the civil war between the KMT and the CCP, with Chinese on both sides believing their party offered the best chance for freedom.
In 1949, the CCP drove the KMT to Taiwan. Mao Zedong, then-chairman of the CCP, stood on Tiananmen Square and declared, “The Chinese will forever stand up.” The Chinese people heard this affirmation of China’s dignity and were moved to tears, believing a good life was ahead of them.
