Men vad var det de demonstrerade för, egentligen?

Via Danwei kommer en intressant artikel av James Kynge i Financial Times - West miscasts Tiananmen protests. Kynge, som bevakade demonstrationerna på Himmelska Fridens Torg 1989, menar att vi i väst missuppfattat och förenklat demonstrationerna och deras syfte.

I don’t deny the atrocity of the event, nor the repression after it. In common with other Beijing-based journalists, I had Chinese friends who were locked up or tortured in the aftermath.
I do question, however, the western media’s basic assertion that the demonstrations had been “pro-democracy”. Even now, a raft of editorials commemorating the event’s 20th anniversary repeat the mantra that the students were “demanding democracy”.
The reality was less coherent, [...] It was, above all, the unburdening of the hopes of a generation easing itself free of the strictures left from Chairman Mao’s rule.
[...]
The truth is that the students in the square had only the haziest understanding of western-style democracy. To the extent that the protests were directed at abuses of an existing system by an emerging elite, they were motivated more by outrage at the betrayal of socialist ideals than by aspirations for a new system. The mood in the square was at least as much conservative as it was activist.

Kynge gör också en intressant poäng av denna västliga missupfattning av händelserna visavi den kinesiska [över]känsligheten för kritik från västerlänningar:

We in the west convince ourselves that by criticising China for its human rights abuses, we are aiding an oppressed populace in its struggle for liberty. In a few cases this may be true. But mostly our censure feeds the central thesis of the Communist party’s propaganda that the Chinese people are rising in spite of the west’s efforts to hold them down.

Detta är ett perspektiv som det är nyttigt att ha med sig när man betraktar Kinas sätt att förhålla sig till omvärlden.