CRAIG CALHOUN
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very widely their own version of events in Beijing. Though some student
groups, sensitive to the historic importance of these events, tried to keep
archives, the movement did not generate a mass of documentation.
Journalists and other observers, overseas Chinese, and activists who escaped
will play the most important role in recording what went on. This is a key
advantage to the government in its effort to rewrite history.
Ironically, it is perhaps easier to sum up the movement's accomplish–
ments than to note its weaknesses and limits. Certainly, it feels better. Future
movements will have to contend with the issues this one found difficult to re–
solve. But whatever its shortcomings, the student protest movement of 1989
did score startling successes.
It
will playa continuing role in Chinese history, I think, simply as an
inspiration. This will be augmented by the memory that workers, students,
and intellectuals found a sense of common cause. Moreover, the growth of
the movement and the failure of the government's initial attempt to impose
martial law combine to show that the Chinese government is not all-powerful.
Ideological and fuctional disunity, the imminence ofa succession crisis, and the
absence of a clear vision of where it should head all made it hard for the
government to take effective action. People
will
look for such opportunities in
the future.
The success of the movement also showed that however "totalitarian"
the Chinese government might aspire to be (and the label fit the first three
decades of the People's Republic better than it fit most of Eastern Europe), it
did not succeed completely in removing the distinction between state and so–
ciety. In 1989, after a decade of reform, the action was of enormous
magnitude.
It
is unlikely that all the institutions which have begun to emerge
as civil society'S basis for a public sphere
will
be
eliminated during the current
repression. Indeed, the dominant factions in the government seem intent
enough on pursuing economic modernization that it probably will not even
try.
Finally, the effects of repression itself should be chalked up to the his–
toric importance of the student movement. By finding it necessary to act with
such force, and to turn back much of the progress of reform, the government
revealed the weakness of its own position.
It
is quite likely that this weakness
stemmed largely from internal division. Whatever its source, it led the
dominant factions in government to abandon a decade's worth of image
polishing, not only abroad but at home. The ferocity of the massacre has
acted powerfully to delegitimize the Chinese government. Perhaps almost as
significantly, the People's Liberation Army has been tarred with the same
brush. Until the very end of the protest, students chanted "the People's Lib–
eration Army loves the people, the people love the People's Liberation
