ShareThisA tableau of fireworks lit the skies over the world's most populous country on Sunday night, celebrating the arrival of the Year of the Ox. But despite the Chinese New Year festivities, many expect the next 12 months could be as difficult to manage as the famously stubborn beast for which the year is named.
If the 2008 Summer Olympics were China's coming-out celebration, 2009 could well be the year the new China is forced to fully define itself and confront corners of its recent past where light is rarely shone.
Three dates loom large on the calendar: the 50th anniversary in March of the Tibetan uprising and the Dalai Lama's flight into exile; the 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre, and the October celebration marking 60 years since the Chinese Revolution and the founding of the People's Republic.
Chinese authorities plan to celebrate the latter in spectacular style, with a massive military parade and a show directed by Zhang Yimou, who also oversaw the stunning opening ceremony of the Olympic. But the government seems worried that the other two dates could become focal points for unrest, as the global economic crisis takes its toll and discontent mounts over factory closings that have put as many as 10 million people out of work.
To highlight the economic and social progress made in Tibet during the past 50 years, and perhaps to head off a repeat of last year's violent protests in Lhasa, the Communist-controlled legislature in Tibet voted this month to name March 28 -- the day in 1959 that Chinese troops completed their takeover of the briefly autonomous Himalayan region -- as "serf liberation day." Before 1959, Tibet had been a Buddhist feudal society.
June 4, the anniversary of the government's bloody quashing of a pro-democracy demonstration on Beijing's central Tiananmen Square, is the most sensitive of all. The events of that day have festered for 20 years, with all public discussion forbidden by the government.
In the run-up to the 20th anniversary, Chinese authorities have cracked down harshly on political dissidents, taking particular aim at a group of intellectuals and dissidents who signed a petition calling for a new Chinese constitution based on federalism, multiparty democracy and greater freedoms. Charter 08, as the document is known, is modeled on Charter 77, the pro-democracy manifesto drafted by Vaclav Havel and his colleagues in the former Czechoslovakia that helped spur the Velvet Revolution that toppled its Communist regime.
The authorities in Beijing are obviously keen on avoiding a repeat. Of the 303 well-known people who initially signed Charter 08, at least 70 have been detained or interrogated by police. Liu Xiaobo, a human-rights activist who was one of the driving forces behind the charter, has been incarcerated since Dec. 8, two days before the document was made public.
"The reality of China is that ever since 1989, intellectuals haven't had a voice, as a group, in society," said Yu Jie, a writer and religious-rights activist who helped draw up the document. "Now, 20 years after 1989, we hope that intellectuals can again stand up and voice their opinion."
The government appears to be girding itself to be challenged in the coming months. Jia Qinglin, China's fourth-most senior official, called for party officials to strengthen their "ideological unity" and throw their weight behind the one-party state. "Build a line of defense to resist Western two-party and multiparty systems, bicameral legislature, the separation of powers and other kinds of erroneous ideological interferences," Jia wrote in an essay published this week in the party's main ideological journal, Qiushi.
The sense of anxiety over the anniversaries has been heightened by the global financial crisis, which has cut deeply into China's still-impressive pace of growth. Economic figures released this week revealed that growth the last quarter of 2008 was the slowest in the past seven years.
Millions of migrant laborers have lost their jobs as worldwide demand for Chinese products has weakened and factories have been forced to close. Exacerbating the problem, the downturn could leave as many as 7 million recent university graduates without jobs by the end of the year.
(E-mail Mark MacKinnon at mmackinnon(at)globeandmail.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
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