Thirty years after China sent armed troops to crush pro-democracy protests in the central Beijing square, the party-state is cracking down on a new batch of youth activists, many of whom have grown up without any knowledge of 1989.
Zoe Chen heard her dad talk about theHe was discussing it with her uncle, and she overheard him say he’d graduated from a university only two years before the 1989 protests that ended in government forces killing hundreds or perhaps thousands of young Chinese activists in the heart of China’s capital.
They are students, feminists, social workers and labor organizers, pushing for social change through civil society and asking for implementation of existing laws. Most do notYet the government has increased pressure on activists of all stripes, threatening, silencing and detaining not only dissidents and critics but also social workers and students — some of whom don’t even know why June 4 is a particularly sensitive date.
“They are very pragmatic. They’re deliberately not calling for the overthrow of the Communist Party. They’re not calling for democracy. They’re very focused on practical, daily issues facing women,” said Leta Hong Fincher, a sociologist focused on Chinese feminism. At least 40 of the workers and their supporters remain in detention. This year, authorities also detained at least eight labor activists in Shenzhen and three social workers in Guangzhou, without public explanation.“I didn’t expect they could just take so many students all of a sudden,” said Jake Li, a 22-year-old recent college graduate from Zhuhai in southern China.
They found multiple violations of labor laws, especially with a lack of insurance for elderly employees. Li’s group published the results in an 11-page report online, gathering 4,000 views on the first day. Whereas 1989 was about democracy and top national party authorities; today’s workers’ movement is about capitalism and local authorities — a completely different focus, he said.
“A lot of the young activists are fearless because they don’t believe the government is capable of extreme brutality,” Hong Fincher said. “They don't believe that they would actually be killed for their activism.” Chen followed feminist social media for several years before becoming an activist herself. Her turning point came in 2015, she said, when five prominent feminists were detained in Guangzhou for planning to hand out anti-sexual harassment stickers on the subway.
Chen feels many of her peers live in a different world, where the Chinese internet promotes Korean dramas and celebrities while censoring Chinese activism. Chen thought her classmates’ mentalities were influenced by their parents, who lived through the Cultural Revolution. Activism isn’t necessarily a challenge to stability; it’s a way of holding power accountable for the public good, Chen said.
That sense of self-martyring patriotism wasn't always helpful. Interviewing participants who spoke of intolerance and divisions within the student movement showed Zhao another side to the Tiananmen tragedy: not just state brutality, but also the immaturity of some protesters.
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