If Hong Kong did indeed host “China’s largest 25th anniversary Tiananmen remembrance rally” on June 4th, it was not, contrary to the South China Morning Post's headline, the “only” one on Chinese soil, and nor was it its first ever installment on the southern bank of the Pearl River. What was new though was the fact that it gathered more than 2,000 people in Macao, people who were on the steps of Saint Paul’s façade already in 1989 to demonstrate their dismay in the wake of the repression as well as younger participants, not even born at that time, concurring in the same aspiration to see the official verdict of “counter-revolutionary riot” be reversed. Desires to rectify the master narratives of historical events that are perceived as having been vastly distorted by an official truth are awfully enduring in any human community, and quite understandably so as this is the condition for collective memories to be soothed and united again.
Even though the figures seem pale in comparison with the 180,000 who amassed in Victoria Park on Wednesday evening, the very fact that more than 10 times the usual number of participants assembled in Senado Square, right in the middle of it, next to the fountain and up to the entrance of a popular cosmetics shop, is worthy of careful consideration.
Regarding the location, organizers of the event benefitted from two sets of distinct and yet converging factors: the cancelling of the traditional extravaganza celebrating “Children’s Day” because of the official mourning of one of Macao’s greatest Chinese patriots passing away, and two rulings of the Court of Final Appeal stating that not only did associations organizing the vigil have every right to apply for Senado Square but that the Public Security Police had no ground in deciding to restrict the vigil to the traditional small corner of Senado Square facing Saint Dominic’s Church.
As far as numbers are concerned, it is of course tricky to decide whether the importance of the turnout was mainly due to the particular significance of the 25th anniversary or to a broader social context that had seen some 20,000 Macao citizens, often very young ones, demonstrate on May 25th and again 7,000 on May 27th against a perceivably unjustifiable bill setting in place very generous packages for retiring officials along with unwarranted criminal immunity for the Chief Executive. If one looks at the past for an indication, it is true that the 20th anniversary did mark in Hong Kong a three fold increase between 2008—less than 50,000 people—and 2009—about 150,000. But for Macao, as far as one can remember, there was no such upsurge, as participants back in 2009 were in the 2 to 300, only marginally more numerous than in 2008. Thus, the constant references made by some of the organizers in Macao to the May 25th/27th demonstrations must not be taken lightly, as it is unquestionable that the 2014 June 4th vigil in Macao appears, if not yet as a turning point, at least as a landmark.
Party leaders in China, and especially Wang Qishan, the Politburo Standing Committee member in charge of Party discipline, are reportedly great readers of Tocqueville’s "The Old Regime and the Revolution" and have stressed the paradox that revolutions do not happen when things are worse, but rather when things have just started to change, thus making the need for deeper and yet incremental reforms somehow imperative if unnecessarily violent turmoil is to be avoided. Even if the China Daily says so.
Published in Macau Daily Times, June 6th 2014
