Students and Change in China

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STUDENT DEMONSTRATIONS IN CHINA are always considered portentous because students are the future leaders of the country. In proportion to the total population they are about as few now as they were under the empire until 1912. So in comparison with the United States, the Chinese undergraduate student bodies are roughly as important as the graduate students in all our American professional schools of law, medicine, science and education, as well as liberal arts.

As the talent pool for future officials, the Chinese undergraduates are supremely political-minded. They feel it their duty to have political views, almost as though they were running for political office in local government or for Congress. Their education, much as in the old Confucian terms, has given them a responsibility to speak out on behalf of the national interest and the public welfare. In this moral sense they feel they "represent" the Chinese people at large.

THE STUDENTS' REVOLUTIONARY EXPERIENCE in recent decades has if anything increased this sense of responsibility. Individually they may now aim at professional, literary or artistic careers, but as a body they still feel self-consciously responsible for the social and political order.

The working of one faction against another in politics may lead to certain leaders catering to students or enlisting their support for factional-political ends. Since the Chinese Communist Party still tries, even if forlornly, to act as a united body in leading the country, all policy discussions are under heightened tension. The idea of a loyal opposition able to speak freely without being regarded as disloyal is not yet established. To support a minority view and be defeated can be a real disaster. Politics is highly personal, whether or not ideological.

This background leads to the thought that student demonstrations in favor of "democracy" are presumably in sympathy with and may be factionally allied with the reform wing of the Party that is pursuing political modernization under Deng Xiaoping. The reformers realize that new institutional arrangements are essential for China's modern political life. They may well feel that the majority of the Party are dragging their feet.

WHETHER OR NOT the student demonstrations are indirectly connected with the reform leaders in some fashion, the conduct of the demonstrations will be a factor in politics. If order is maintained and no violence occurs, the demonstrations may redound to the support of "democratic" reforms, however they may be defined. If on the other hand violence does occur, a life is lost and that Chinese bugaboo "chaos" is threatened, then the demonstrators may not have helped their cause. Obviously there is a great opportunity for dirty work.

The above paragraphs suggest some of the dynamics of student political demonstrations. It is up to sincere citizens in other countries to sift the meager news from China and push further in the effort to match in the thinking of us outsiders the sophistication that infuses Chinese politics. The first rule is, don't rely on "experts."

Lending vigor to student demonstrations are many factors: frightful crowding, unremitting competition, basic insecurity, frustration of aspirations for modernity, indignation at corruption and Party elitism, personal ambition to lead the new generation, patriotic readiness to sacrifice oneself for the cause of betterment. The best formula is to talk to Chinese students now at Harvard and to try to make your own mixture.

John King Fairbank is Higgins on Professor of History, Emeritus.