NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Premium
Home / Politics

Stuart Vogel: China and the ancient art of futility revisited 30 years after Tiananmen Square

NZ Herald
21 May, 2019 05:00 PM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

The Great Hall of the People at the western edge of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo / File

The Great Hall of the People at the western edge of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo / File

Opinion

COMMENT

"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room - especially if there is no cat." Confucius

This year is the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing on June 4 1989. Thousands of students were killed in the Square in a crackdown by the Chinese army. Their crime was to call for democracy in China.

It is futile to hope that there will be any official commemorations in New Zealand of the massacre. The pressure of the Chinese government's displeasure would be too great. The response will be to ignore the anniversary, or to suggest that we have all moved on – or even to deny it ever happened.

Nevertheless, the memorial stone on the grounds of St Andrews Presbyterian Church on Symonds St, Auckland, remains a silent witness to the dead of Tiananmen. It was placed there in 1989 at the request of students from China who were studying at the University here at that time. Many had friends among those who died in Tiananmen Square. The Church, to its credit, granted their request.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The stone has also become a silent protest against futility. It, and the students in Beijing, continue to inspire hope of change. Ma Jian, a Chinese dissident writer who took part in the Tiananmen protests, wrote: "my hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not in its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them".

However, futility, like limpets on a rock, clings on and on. Today it is futile to hope that the People's Republic of China (PRC) will allow Taiwan, the island across the strait, to be accepted as a full member of the international community. Taiwan is excluded from the United Nations and from a host of other international organisations. The PRC claims the island as its own, as its "sacred and inalienable" territory, which is interesting language coming from an avowedly atheist country.

But Taiwan has never actually been part of the PRC. Japan gained the island from China (that is, the Qing Dynasty) in 1895. After Japan was defeated in 1945, there was no agreement as to what was supposed to happen to the island, which has been self-governing ever since.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Over 30 years ago, when I first went to Taiwan, the island was ruled under the dictatorship of the KMT or Chinese Nationalists. The Presbyterian Church of Taiwan was under huge political pressure to change its languages of worship from the Taiwanese vernacular and the various indigenous languages of Taiwan to Mandarin, the "national language" of China, of which Taiwan was deemed to be part.

And in 2016 (yes, the year of Brexit and the election of President Trump) Taiwan held free, open and peaceful, democratic elections. The KMT were voted out. The new President of Taiwan, Tsai Ying-wen, is a graduate of the London School of Economics, one the first women in Asia elected to such a high office and is proud of her part indigenous Taiwanese heritage.

Discover more

Opinion

Time to adopt a law against ecocide?

19 May 05:00 PM
Opinion

Warner Cowin: Value businesses for investing in wellbeing

16 May 05:00 PM
Opinion

Andrew Little: No room for haze in vote on cannabis

20 May 05:00 PM
Opinion

Jo Cribb: Gender pay equity? The cheque's still in the male

20 May 05:00 PM

Taiwan is also important to New Zealand. It is the ancestral homeland from which our Māori people came. It is our eighth largest (and one might add, a very reliable) trading partner. Many Taiwanese have made New Zealand their home. In short, we owe them a break.

The German Minister of Foreign Affairs recently suggested that the Chinese government's refusal to renounce the use of force is unacceptable. Cross-strait tensions should be resolved, he said, by peaceful means and by mutual agreement. He got China's standard response, that he should not interfere in "China's internal affairs".

But futility can crack, especially in great countries like China. In the 1970s, Deng Xiaoping changed China. He did so by saying, "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice." China can do it again. They could do the world a favour and lighten up. What the world needs now is for Taiwan and China to catch a vision of doing new things together in new ways.

* Rev Dr Stuart Vogel works with the Auckland Chinese Presbyterian Church. Last year, he visited the DPRK to see a church-run bakery producing bread for kindergartens and old-age homes

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from Politics

Premium
Business

Emails reveal Willis wanted Budget lock-up to be more restricted

Politics

Health NZ hires thousands more nurses and hundreds more doctors – is it enough?

Premium
New Zealand

Editorial: Why the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection matters for Labour


Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Politics

Premium
Premium
Emails reveal Willis wanted Budget lock-up to be more restricted
Business

Emails reveal Willis wanted Budget lock-up to be more restricted

Treasury staffer also floated lock-up interview ban.

13 Jul 05:00 PM
Health NZ hires thousands more nurses and hundreds more doctors – is it enough?
Politics

Health NZ hires thousands more nurses and hundreds more doctors – is it enough?

13 Jul 05:00 PM
Premium
Premium
Editorial: Why the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection matters for Labour
New Zealand

Editorial: Why the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection matters for Labour

13 Jul 05:00 PM


Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

06 Jul 09:47 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP