Club de Madrid: Financial Times: Paternalistic and damaging mistake that misses the point about democracy
Financial Times: Paternalistic and damaging mistake that misses the point about democracy
Letter to the Editor
Published: June 8 2009 03:00 | Last updated: June 8 2009 03:00
From Mr Sean C. Carroll.
Sir, James Kynge (“West still miscasts 1989 protesters”, June 4) writes that he and other journalists covering the Tiananmen protests 20 years ago, by referring to the student demonstrators as “pro-democracy”, may not have “got the narrative of those days quite right”. Actually, he got it right the first time and now makes two mistakes and misses the whole point.
The thousands of Chinese gathered in Tiananmen (and elsewhere) were of course both pro-democracy and demanding democracy, because their protest, and their inherent request to be able to protest, is democracy in action. The right to ask for change in government or governance, and the possibility of getting it, is the essence of democracy.
True, Tiananmen was not about asking for British or American, or French or Swiss-style democracy (all different, by the way). It is probably also true that “the students in the square had only the haziest understanding of western-style democracy”. But this is where Mr Kynge makes his second mistake – a common, paternalistic and damaging one among western media – and where he misses the point.
In referring to democracy as “western-style”, he demeans China’s democrats and gets the narrative really wrong. Because the desire for and the right to democracy is not western, but universal. And when China does enjoy democracy it will be both Chinese and universal and it will hail Tiananmen’s 89ers as its forebears.
Sean C. Carroll,
Programme Director,
Club of Madrid,
Madrid, Spain
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/
Published: June 8 2009 03:00 | Last updated: June 8 2009 03:00
From Mr Sean C. Carroll.
Sir, James Kynge (“West still miscasts 1989 protesters”, June 4) writes that he and other journalists covering the Tiananmen protests 20 years ago, by referring to the student demonstrators as “pro-democracy”, may not have “got the narrative of those days quite right”. Actually, he got it right the first time and now makes two mistakes and misses the whole point.
The thousands of Chinese gathered in Tiananmen (and elsewhere) were of course both pro-democracy and demanding democracy, because their protest, and their inherent request to be able to protest, is democracy in action. The right to ask for change in government or governance, and the possibility of getting it, is the essence of democracy.
True, Tiananmen was not about asking for British or American, or French or Swiss-style democracy (all different, by the way). It is probably also true that “the students in the square had only the haziest understanding of western-style democracy”. But this is where Mr Kynge makes his second mistake – a common, paternalistic and damaging one among western media – and where he misses the point.
In referring to democracy as “western-style”, he demeans China’s democrats and gets the narrative really wrong. Because the desire for and the right to democracy is not western, but universal. And when China does enjoy democracy it will be both Chinese and universal and it will hail Tiananmen’s 89ers as its forebears.
Sean C. Carroll,
Programme Director,
Club of Madrid,
Madrid, Spain
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/