A student taking part in the demonstrations in Tienanmen Square alluded to the title of a book from Taiwan called Why Aren't the Chinese People Angry? in telling reporters, "This time the Chinese people really are angry!"
In defiance of martial law and the threat of a military crackdown, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Peking in support of democracy while intellectuals, workers, and farmers from other cities joined the ranks of the protesters. At the same time, Chinese people in countries around the world also stood up and voiced their anger and indignation.
Our series over the past two years on overseas Chinese communities has increased our understanding of the history and present situation of overseas Chinese society. The first generations of Chinese workers, driven by poverty and upheaval, left their beloved native land for no other reason than that they could barely survive there. Laying roads, digging mines, and planting fields, the biggest motive behind all their labor was to send some of the money they earned to their relatives back home.
Nor were they any less generous in opening their purse strings in support of the Nationalist Revolution (see cover story), which overthrew 5,000 years of autocracy. But today, as overseas Chinese, now settled and prosperous in their new homelands, look back to the land of their forebears, they see that hundreds of millions of their compatriots there can still barely survive. The Chinese people, mild and placid by nature, are angry.
Yet, one asks oneself, after the protests and demon-strations are over and even should Li P'eng step down, can the mainland ever hope for democracy as long as it is still ruled by the Communist regime?
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