Standard & Poor's has sounded the alarm over the creditworthiness of some Asian countries, saying they are at risk of debt downgrades even if the global economy stabilises.
The credit ratings agency said yesterday that sovereign debt ratings were coming under pressure because of huge economic and financial rescue packages announced by governments that have led to spiralling budget deficits. Recent fiscal measures to fight recession and stabilise banking systems would weigh on the public finances of several Asian economies, S&P said. Rising national debts would put credit ratings under strain.
“The worst of the economic dislocation in Asia Pacific appears to be over, if recent indicators are to be believed, but fiscal deterioration resulting from stimulus and banking sector support measures will continue to put pressure on a number of sovereign ratings in the medium term,” said S&P.
The agency's comments follow its recent decision to lower outlooks on India and Taiwan from “stable” to ”negative”, a move that reflected the “fiscal deterioration associated with providing support for their respective economies”. Political unrest in Fiji, Sri Lanka and Thailand were also “important reasons for negative actions on sovereign ratings”, S&P said.
Its warning came as Fitch yesterday cut Malaysia's long-term local currency rating from A-plus to A on worries over its growing budget deficit.
But S&P said some Asian economies, such as Australia, China and Hong Kong, would be able to assume higher debt levels without a materially adverse impact on their creditworthiness because of the relative strength of their balance sheets.
标准普尔(Standard & Poor's)已针对一些亚洲国家的信用评级发出警报，称即使全球经济企稳，这些国家也面临着信用评级下调的风险。
该信用评级机构昨日表示，由于这些国家的巨额经济及金融救市计划导致预算赤字激增，这些国家的主权信用评级将面临压力。标准普尔表示，近期出台的对抗衰退、稳定银行业体系的财政措施，将给数个亚洲经济体的公共财政带来沉重负担。国债水平上升，将令信用评级处于压力之下。
标准普尔表示：“如果近期亚太地区的经济指标具有可信度，则该地区或已安然渡过经济动荡的最糟糕时期，但经济刺激计划与银行业支持措施所导致的财政恶化趋势，将在中期内继续对诸多主权评级施压。”
该机构发表上述评论之前不久，决定将印度和台湾的评级展望由“稳定”下调为“负面”，此举反映了“对各自经济提供支持所导致的财政恶化趋势”。斐济、斯里兰卡和泰国出现的政治骚乱也是“主权评级负面变动的主因”。
周二，出于对马来西亚预算赤字不断攀升的担忧，惠誉(Fitch)将该国长期本币评级从A+下调至A。
但标准普尔表示，澳大利亚、中国和香港等一些亚洲经济体由于资产负债表相对有实力，将能够在不给本国信用评级带来重大负面影响的情况下，承担更高的债务水平。
译者/陈云飞
德国之声：今年是"六·四"事件二十周年。在这个时间到来之前，在美国的民运人士成立了"六·四纪念委员会"。该委员会计 划了很多倡议，包括用各种方式来纪念"六·四"，在"六·四"当天所有人都穿白衣服来悼念死难者，确定每年的四月二十七号是中国的民主节，以及公布"六· 四"事件的民间白皮书。"六·四"过去几天了，从您亲身经历来看，美国方面的纪念活动您有什么亲身感觉？
严家其：我参加了一部分活动。这两天实际上在纽约华人中的纪念活动很多。六月四号11点钟，两个朋友开车把我带到华盛顿国会山前面，见到了王丹、柴 玲还有方政。我们到主席台上表达了我们纪念"六·四"的心意。六月四号中午，美国国会众议院议长南希·佩洛西也到场。王丹他们因为去参加别的会了，所以那 天由杨建利主持。当时有我、柴玲，还有几位新疆和西藏的朋友。佩洛希议长发表了讲话，我也发表了讲话。为了去那边讲话，六月三号晚上我实际上没有睡好。我 老想我该怎么讲。我想这么一个纪念活动是很重要的，我要讲的好一点。所以很糟糕的是那天我就没睡好，第二天都是让朋友帮我开的车。但临时让我讲话的时候， 我发现头一个晚上想的都不能在会上讲，当时就鼓足勇气随口在会上发表了一段演说。在那种场面，话要讲好，实际上主要是勇气和责任。
德国之声：您当时是怎么讲的呢？
严家其：我上台后的第一句话是这么讲的："今天，我在美国奥巴马总统宣誓就职典礼的地方，悼念"六·四"，悼念"六·四"的死难者。我在国会山上悼 念"六·四"，一方面心情非常悲痛，另一方面我在这个地方看到了我们中国的前途和希望。我在这个地方看到美国政府的长期稳定，以及美国的强大是建立在三个 基础之上。第一，美国政府的权力来源于人民；第二，美国政府的权力受到宪法中法律的限制；第三，美国人民的权力受到宪法中法律的保障。但在今天我们的祖 国，就在今天，"天安门母亲"要表达她们悲痛的权利都不可能。她们没有公开表达她们悲痛的权利。我的祖国怎么可能获得长期的政治稳定？连这种权利都要剥 夺。我的祖国怎么可能在21世纪强大起来？"
我后来想到，任何一个好的讲话，一定要从心里面讲出来。所以我现在想到，现在中国的国家主席每一次讲话都是书面语言。那个书面语言发表在《人民日 报》当然很好，但它缺少从心里面冒出来的感情。领导人实际上要对人民充满感情，才可能使我们的祖国强大起来。如果光凭理性，每句话都没有问题，但这样去做 事情是做不好的。我想到，在我们的中国，他们在"六·四"爆发的时候，那么胆小那么怕人民，怎么能使我们国家得到安定呢？那天我还讲了这话，明明是场大屠 杀，居然被中国说成反革命暴乱。六月四号发生的这件事情，关系到最高权力的更迭，关系到江泽民的上台和赵紫阳的下台。为了这么一件"大事"，让赵紫阳和" 天安门母亲"受这么大的冤屈。中国的冤假错案不是层出不穷吗？对这样一件事情都没有正义，中国怎么会有正义呢？
德国之声：二十年其实是一代人的年龄。"六·四"之后的这一代其实都慢慢地长大成人了。由于中国当局严密的新闻封锁，可以说中国很 多人都没办法来知道这件事情。您刚才提到中国"表面的强大"，经济实力的提高，很多人都比较重视物质享受，对于政治非常漠然。在这种情况下，您依然觉得自 己是充满乐观情绪的吗？
严家其：那当然了，而且最近很多国家都有类似的情况。它在政治民主化前有一段这样的时期。我举个简单例子，法国在十九世纪的五十六十年代--也差不 多有二十年--也处于这种情况。经济高速发展，而且是法国工业革命时代，法国的非政治领域的自由化也是空前的，非常自由。但在政治领域里却受到严格的控 制。这种情况到了普法战争时就慢慢改变过来了。中国现在这种情况，经济高速发展，以及经济和生活领域的自由化，同政治专制主义是并行的。为什么我有信心？ 因为这种东西从一个大的方面来看，要突破它是非常难的，不是容易的事。现在愚蠢的是这些领导人听不到这些声音，听不到全世界愤怒的呼声。现在大家很愤怒， 因为二十年了都不能改变。在二十年以前江泽民当政的时候，大家主要的愤怒都是李鹏、邓小平的大屠杀。现在的愤怒就是除了是对二十年前大屠杀的悲哀痛苦的流 露，还有对中国的领导人为什么木头一样地无动于衷感到愤怒。这个声音以前我是看不到的。这个愤怒是非常严重的。它不是简单的经济发展所能解决的。不要说中 国最高领导人，就是各省领导人、各县领导人，他们这样对人民，但人民怎么能这样呢？人民的情绪需要得到宣泄，得到表达，需要新闻自由，需要公正。
德国之声：赵紫阳已经去世多年。在今年"六·四"有件事情也引起媒体的关注：赵紫阳的一个生前录音讲话被整理成书出版了。不知道您是否看了这本书？
严家其：这本书内容我知道，但原件我还没收到。基本内容我都知道而且非常地了解。
德国之声：您怎么来评价这本书还有看它出版的这个时机呢？
严家其：我认为这个时机很好。赵紫阳的遗言是，他要出版这本书，在他死后出版这本书。死后二十年出版，二十五年出版，和十八十九年出版是一样的。他 把他的想法传播到全世界来。而现在在美国已经引起非常大的反响。因为它有英文版，全世界都知道。它把整个"六·四"事件都摊在阳光之下了。而我们说的"阳 光政府"，却要极力掩盖"六·四"的真相。这当然不可能的。赵紫阳的声音传播到全世界每个角落，而中国看不到这点，以为可以掩盖，要所谓的"安定"。中国 共产党有些人的做法是非常自私自利的，完全考虑个人权力地位。邓小平1979年搞改革开放，他不是自私自利，是想挽救这个党，因为文化大革命造成了那么大 的灾难。但是"六·四"大屠杀，邓小平考虑的就是个人。1992年邓小平南巡讲话，又是考虑中国共产党以及整个中国的前途。对于这个事情，今天中国的领导 人，我发现他们老关心自己的权力地位，这个国家搞不好的。在中国共产党的领导人里边，我相信还有胡耀邦、赵紫阳这样的优秀领导人。我感到今天的中国连周恩 来那点风度都没有。周恩来能够自由自在地说话，谈笑风生地接见外宾，谈笑风生地同中国的儿童、农民工谈话。我感到他们就没有这种本质。中国共产党的今天领 导人，应该把赵紫阳、胡耀邦当作他们的典范好好学习。他们不是别的人，都是党的总书记。我看到赵紫阳回忆录的出版，我想，赵紫阳的冤假错案，胡耀邦的冤假 错案，包括天安门事件的冤假错案，这三件事都要翻过来，让历史有个公正的评价。
采访记者：石涛
责编：乐然
"但历史已不能象过去那样受到歪曲。过去几百年，中国的皇帝可以随意改写其统治的历史，而今天共产党的镇压机器只能寄希望于时间。它可以控制自己的 媒体，有各种审查机制，但它早已不能全面压制中国互联网中的信息，更不用说控制国外。在国外，天安门大屠杀成了现代中国的关键事件。
通过博客和悄悄带入的书籍，对事件的回忆又渗透回归到中国。即使民众对此一无所知，但大学生、知识分子和具有批评精神的人士在私下讨论得十分热烈。 一名很有影响的中国博客问道，今天可以相对公开地谈论文化大革命的暴行和大跃进时代的饥荒，为什么就不能谈'六四'呢？'这只能表明，天安门这个话题中隐 藏着共产党最肮脏的秘密。'"
《法兰克福评论报》的文章认为，"今天提到中国，人们就自然会想到那位只身阻挡坦克的年轻人。""外部常把中国的发展归结为没有政治改革的经济改革，但现实情况要复杂得多"：
"经济进步使中国人变得更有要求，他们对自己的政府也提出了更高的要求。过去中国是一个以赤贫农民为主的国家，党很容易以诺言安抚人民。现在随着生活的富足和知识的增长，期望和批评能力也在增加。
根据官方统计，中国每年发生数万起示威，促使中国人示威的并非向往某种令人崇敬的新政治制度，而是他们自己的具体生活经验。这样的发展态势使人产生了希望，希望民主将成为文明的重力，有朝一日使有关西方民主能否值根于中国文化土壤的一切争论在实践中得到解决。
这条道路还很长。共产党不想寻找捷径，相反，它在努力走另一条路线，发明一种结构，使它能长期保护自己、不要象前东欧兄弟政权那样被人民意志唾弃。 中国的这个单一政党从东欧政权的崩溃和'六四'悲剧中吸取了教训，其中的一条是，用军事武力可以收复一个满是示威者的广场，但不能收复整个国家。
所以，党试图把过去害怕的'民主'一词赋予新的意义，使其不与一党体制相矛盾，'党内民主'就是这种半心半意改革政策的口号。"
摘译：王羊
责编：石涛
本文摘自或节译自其它媒体
不代表德国之声观点
The Rio Tinto mining company. A Chinese company has bid for $19.5 billion Rio Tinto stock.
SYDNEY, Australia — If outlanders tend to associate Australia with kangaroos, broad-brim leather hats and an opera house, many Australians are different. They think of iron ore and bauxite, copper and coal, nickel, gold and uranium, a trove of mineral riches that is their nation’s birthright and the bedrock of its prosperity.
This is the first in a series of articles examining stresses and strains of China's emergence as a global power.
Australia vetoed part of a $1.8 billion bid for Oz, a large zinc miner, because the military raised the prospect of Chinese espionage at an Oz mine not far from an aerospace test site.
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Which explains much of the breast-beating that has ensued since the Chinese announced plans this year to buy a big chunk of it.
Since three state owned Chinese companies said they would buy stakes in Australia’s storied mining industry totaling $22 billion — as much as China’s entire investment here in the last three years — some of this nation’s 21.3 million people have reacted with aggrieved nationalism.
The government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, which generally favors the sales, has been savaged as naïvely cozy with China, a view some in his own military appear to share. Opposition politicians have flogged the specter of an Australian future more or less as a giant open-pit mine in which the locals toil, but Beijing takes the profits.
“It’s the Communist People’s Republic of China, 100 percent Communist-owned, buying up sections of the country and minerals in the ground which they will then sell to the Communist People’s Republic of China,” said Barnaby Joyce, who is a leader of the National Party in Parliament. “And we’re going to live off the commission on the way through. They’ll try to make sure we get as little as possible.”
But a few months after the first of the deals was announced, a sharp initial backlash has given way to a more subtle queasiness over whether Australia’s place in the region, anomalous but secure for so long, is about to be altered by the new Chinese giant looming over its horizon.
Nor is Australia alone. From the Philippines to Vietnam, China’s neighbors are recalculating the benefits — and potential deficits — of life in the shadow of a newly dominant nation.
Australia has always been the West’s outpost in the East, the British penal colony with American spunk and European joie de vivre. But seemingly overnight, China has become Australia’s biggest trading partner, one of its biggest tourism customers, the largest single buyer of its government debt, a major buyer of farmland and real estate.
China’s hunger for steel gobbles up half of Australia’s iron ore exports, and its textile factories buy more than half of Australia’s wool. Over 120,000 Chinese students throng to Australian schools and universities.
Although China’s purchases remain dwarfed by cumulative investments of the Americans and the British, they are growing much faster.
And suddenly, Australians are stepping back, realizing that their new best friend is someone they really do not know very well, much less trust.
“The momentum has shifted from being broadly receptive to these deals to having a hard think at this,” said Alan DuPont, who heads the Center for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. “This is not just about China and Australia. It’s about how the world sees China playing its role in the future as a great power.”
Surviving Corporate Invasions
This is not a new question. More than a century ago, Australians fretted about becoming vassals of the resource-hungry British Empire; then, in the mid-1900s, they feared becoming an American subsidiary. When Japan Inc. began snapping up companies in the 1970s, suspicion of Tokyo ran rampant.
The British and Americans proved good corporate citizens, however, and Japan’s expansion faded amid economic problems. Now, Australians are asking whether China will be different.
In one way, it assuredly is. Western companies, if at one time equally ravenous for Australia’s resources, are not direct appendages of their national governments. The dominant shareholder in major Chinese resources companies is the Chinese government.
China has 115,000 state owned companies; the cream are more than 150 giants controlled by the central government. Those corporations — in mining, steel, finance, communications and other crucial areas — seek to make profits much as Western companies do. Government boards audit them, appoint their top executives and evaluate their performance, but in general, the companies insist, Communist Party leaders do not meddle in business strategy.
Even if that is true, China has long insisted on maintaining state control over companies in crucial industries, blurring the line between national and corporate interests.
Take steel. China makes more steel than any other nation, but it is highly dependent on iron ore imports to keep its mills humming. That raises suspicions that China may want big stakes in mining companies now to help ensure stable prices in the future.
But if China works to keep iron ore prices stable, that might benefit steel producers more than it does Australian mining companies. That concern has only grown in recent months, as China’s largest steel producers have rejected as insufficient offers of lower prices from Australian mining companies.
There is also the question of whether China’s stake in strategic industries — like its investment in United States Treasury bonds — could one day morph from a business deal to an instrument of diplomatic influence.
The Chinese bids for parts of the three Australian mining companies — Fortescue Metals, Oz Minerals and Rio Tinto Ltd. — have been raptly watched for Australia’s answers. So far, they are mixed.
The smallest deal, an $840 million bid for part of Fortescue, a struggling iron ore miner, won Australian regulators’ quick approval. But Australia’s foreign investments review board, the central gatekeeper for overseas purchases, vetoed part of a $1.8 billion bid for Oz, the world’s second largest zinc miner. The reason: Australia’s military raised the prospect of Chinese espionage at an Oz mine not far from an aerospace test site. A pared-down deal was approved after the suspect mine, the core of Oz Minerals’ assets, was excised from the deal.
But it is the proposed purchase by the Aluminum Company of China, or Chinalco, of $19.5 billion in Rio Tinto stock, bonds and mining rights — China’s biggest investment in a foreign company — that has caused the most angst.
Chinalco, which bought 9.3 percent of Rio Tinto in 2008, proposed taking a larger stake after the global economic collapse drove Rio into financial straits. If approved, the new investment would give China an 18.5 percent share of the world’s third largest mining company.
Chinalco unequivocally asserts its independence. “Chinalco operates as a commercial entity, at arm’s length from Chinese political processes,” the company’s Australian spokesman said in a written response to questions.
Many Australian experts agree. Modern Chinese corporations are state-run in name only, Ross Garnaut, an economist, former Australian ambassador to Beijing and himself the head of a gold-mining company, said in an interview. In practice, he said, they are just like their Western counterparts — fiercely competitive, and focused on profit.
“You don’t know anything about the dynamics of relations between major corporations in China if you think a major aluminum company like Chinalco would sacrifice its profits to increase profits for one of its rivals in the steel industry,” he said. Even Australia’s antitrust regulators have concluded that the Chinese would be unable to influence the price of iron ore, a crucial Rio Tinto product, were the Rio deal to go through.
Intentions Arouse Suspicions
Yet other experts have a much different view of China’s intentions. Paul Glasson, a Shanghai-based Australian who brokers deals between Chinese and Australian businesses, notes that China’s domestic reserves can meet demand for fewer than half of 45 strategic minerals. By 2020, it will have sufficient supplies of only six.
“In a nation of 1.3 billion people, with the complex issues they face, with such resource deprivation, would it be wise for the government to abdicate that responsibility to S.O.E.’s?” he asked, using the abbreviation for state owned enterprises. “Claiming the head doesn’t know what the body is doing just makes the situation difficult.”
Mr. Glasson says state ownership actually brings advantages — among them, deep pockets and a focus beyond the next quarterly statement — that any merger partner might find attractive. But Beijing’s denial of a role in its state owned companies, he said, is creating a credibility problem.
In fact, Chinalco would be very much a junior partner if the Rio deal were to go through, with just two seats on a 17-seat board of directors. Chinalco would have to recuse itself from any Rio issues that posed a conflict of interest.
Chinalco would also not be able to guarantee a supply of ore to other Chinese companies, although the companies envision new efforts to market iron and aluminum ore inside China.
Shareholders at Rio’s annual meeting in April were unimpressed. They denounced the proposed deal as a fire sale of assets to a government buyer whose interests were starkly at odds with their own. As if to underscore the point, Rio’s share price has risen sharply since the Chinalco agreement was announced, suggesting that Chinalco shrewdly struck a deal at the nadir of the financial crisis. With every gain in Rio’s stock price, the Chinalco deal looks less attractive.
Some institutional investors have suggested that they will oppose the bid, which requires shareholder approval, even if regulators approve it this year. And that seems in some question.
Allies of Prime Minister Rudd argue that increased Chinese investment pumps money into Australia’s economy and opens new trade opportunities. But Mr. Rudd’s opponents say he does Beijing’s bidding. Among a drip of well-timed news leaks were claims that Chinese spies sought to hack into Mr. Rudd’s laptop during last year’s Olympic Games, and that his defense minister had failed to disclose gifts from a Chinese friend with ties to Beijing’s military establishment.
Those allegations have been flying even as the Australian military has become more focused on China as a potential rival. A newly issued defense strategy proposes the biggest Australian military buildup since World War II, driven in part by a forecast of rising Chinese economic and military power, and a slow American fade in the Pacific.
And recently, a wealthy Australian businessman began a television advertising blitz opposing the Rio-Chinalco deal, featuring Mr. Joyce, an opposition leader. The theme — that Australia is selling its mineral wealth to a “foreign government” that may not have Australians’ interest foremost — is unlikely to affect regulators’ deliberations. But it stokes a larger disquiet of which Mr. Rudd’s government is acutely aware.
Mr. Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking ex-diplomat in Beijing, has not helped his cause: after an unannounced meeting with China’s propaganda minister in Canberra, Australia’s capital, he lobbied for a greater Chinese role in global finance at the Group of 20 economic meeting in London, leading critics to dub him China’s “roving ambassador.”
Mr. Rudd shrugged off the gibes, but seemed stung: in London, his staff quietly asked that he not be seated next to Beijing’s ambassador to Australia during a television broadcast (the request was refused).
Australia’s foreign investments board has given itself an additional 60 days to consider the Chinalco-Rio deal. But hopes that some of Australians’ unease might ebb during that breather took a hit in May, when another state owned Chinese company, China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group, proposed a $184 million purchase of 51.6 percent of another miner, Lynas Corporation.
Lynas, which mines rare-earth minerals, also has been left short of cash by the global economic crisis. Critics were quick to note that China Nonferrous operates huge nickel and iron ore mines in Myanmar, widely denounced as one of the world’s most repressive nations, and has extensive gold-mining operations in North Korea.
“So Lynas would become part of a group which makes hay in Burma. Can the government live with that?” The Australian, one of the nation’s major newspapers, asked. “What are the rules about ethical investments?”
The executives at Chinalco, which also has operations in Myanmar, might be expected to rue the bad timing of China Nonferrous. On the other hand, it could be promoted as evidence that the government does not stage-manage corporate strategy.
But at least one Chinalco executive no longer has those worries. The company’s chairman, Xiao Yaqing, the architect of both the 2008 and 2009 purchases of Rio assets, left the company in March after being promoted — to deputy head of the State Council, the team of cabinet ministers that sets policy for all China.
德国之声：李华南，你好！这是香港政权交接后港人第12次举行的烛光纪念活动。与往年相比，今年烛光晚会的纪念活动有哪些特殊的地方？
李华南：今年比较特殊的地方是，在首先的集体默哀之后，维多利亚公园内响起了赵紫阳的一段录音。这段录音是赵紫阳反思当年六四的一段讲话。因为往年主要是请王丹等在海外的学运领袖与会场连线。但是这次人们可以亲耳听到赵紫阳的声音。
另外，在美国的一位当年学运的领袖熊焱今天也成功入境香港，在会场上发表讲话。他说："全球各地能够在香港有这么一块地方来进行六四悼念活动，他感 到非常骄傲。他也感谢香港市民给了他这么一个机会来纪念六四。"此外，还有一位被香港拒绝入境后遣返回美国的当年的民运人士，他留下了一封书信在会议上也 被朗读了。这是今天活动区别于以往的几个层面。
德国之声：现场的气氛如何，尤其是播放了赵紫阳的那段录音以后？
李华南：今天香港十分闷热，大会现场被围的水泄不通。维多利亚公园六个足球场都挤满了人。大家身着黑白两种颜色的T恤衫，手中都拿着蜡烛，他们有的 带着孩子来的家庭每个人手中还有一朵小白花。在播放了赵紫阳的录音后，比较坦率的讲，香港本地市民都听不太懂录音里的内容，但是语言并不是问题，在场的人 都能感受到当时那种肃穆的氛围。尤其是上周末《赵紫阳回忆录》在香港推出后，这更让香港人对中国的前总书记有所了解。
德国之声：我们知道，早在一个月前，北京政府就开始压制与"六四"有关的一切活动，从互联网封锁、到对异议人士的监控，相比内地，您觉得香港的此次活动是不是希望给北京政府压力，从而促使中国能尽早正视"六四"问题呢？
李华南：无论是会议的组织者还是当年经历过这场学生运动的人都希望这一天能来得越早越好。但是与此同时，善良的愿望不等于能够替代政治现实，更不能 天真地以为我们一两次的行动就能达成目的。相反，我们应该从更长远的角度来看待中国历史。包括，当时六四为什么会以悲剧收场？其实，我觉得与其从当年整个 事件本身来看，还不如从中国100多年现代化的发展来看。
因为中国现代化的发展一直是步履维艰，尤其是政治现代化。从当年的洋务运动到孙中山的辛亥革命，到后来的国共争斗。他们一直没有完成这个使命。其实这里边有很多深层的文化上的原因造成的。
当然今天活动的组织者--香港市民支援爱国民主运动联合会的负责人也表示说，"现在很多人都在追究学生当年有没有错。"他的观点是，无论当年学生们有没有错，最后的处理方式一定是错误的。
所以，我觉得大家的"六四"情结主要是对当时中共的处理方式的不认同，这其实是造成今天很多人对"六四"难以忘怀的根本原因。
采访记者：严严
责编：石涛
Chen Guang, 37, a Beijing painter, was a soldier in Tiananmen in 1989 has created a series of works based on his photographs of the incident.
BEIJING — Soaked in sweat, his heart racing, Chen Guang descended the steps of China’s Great Hall of the People and aimed his automatic rifle at the sea of student protesters occupying Tiananmen Square. A 17-year-old soldier from the countryside, Mr. Chen and his comrades had just been given chilling orders: to clear the symbolic heart of the nation, even if it meant spilling blood.
Remembering the Tiananmen Protests
“We were assured there would be no legal consequences if we opened fire,” Mr. Chen recalled in an interview on Tuesday. “My only hope was that the students would not put up a fight.”
Twenty years after Chinese troops shot their way into the center of Beijing, killing hundreds of people and wounding many more, Mr. Chen provided a rare window into the military crackdown that re-established the Communist Party’s supremacy after six weeks of mass unrest and then, for most Chinese, disappeared in an official whitewash.
Speaking publicly for the first time — and defying security officials who have told him to keep silent — he explained how soldiers from the 65th Group Army dressed in civilian clothes on June 3 and stealthily made their way to the Great Hall on Tiananmen Square’s western edge. At midnight, with clips of ammunition slung across their chests, they faced off against demonstrators, the air filled with the singing of students and the sound of gunfire.
“I can assure you I didn’t shoot anyone,” he said.
Now an artist and a bit of a provocateur living on the outskirts of Beijing, Mr. Chen said he spent the next 20 years suppressing memories of that day. But last year he began working on a series of paintings based on hundreds of photographs, taken at his unit’s request while he was on the square. They include gauzy images of protesters commandeering a public bus, exuberant students parading with pro-democracy banners and soldiers feeding their abandoned encampments into bonfires.
“For 20 years I tried to bury this episode, but the older you get the more these things float to the surface,” he said, chain-smoking in his apartment. “I think it’s time for my experiences, my truth, to be shared with the rest of the world.”
But by publicizing his experiences through his art, Mr. Chen risks provoking the authorities, who are eager to suppress discussion of the episode and excise June 4 from public memory. In recent weeks, as the anniversary of the crackdown approached, the police have harassed or detained dissidents who they feared might draw attention to June 4. Last spring, Zhang Shijun, a former soldier from north China, was arrested after telling The Associated Press that he regretted his role in crushing the pro-democracy protests.
Last summer, after local galleries refused to show his paintings, Mr. Chen posted them on the Internet. Within hours, however, they had been taken down.
A slightly built man who talks softly and without emotion, Mr. Chen says he is not worried about the consequences of speaking out, even if he has received warnings to keep his paintings to himself.
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” he said. “I’m just talking about my experiences.”
Raised in rural Henan Province, the son of a factory worker, he dropped out of high school at 15 because, he said, he was a poor student. He wanted to be an artist, but everyone told him that was no way to make a living. “The pressure from my family was intense so I decided to join the army,” he said. Because enlistees had to be at least 18, he lied about his age.
Less than a year later, in mid-April, Beijing was convulsed by protests touched off by the death of Hu Yaobang, the Communist Party chief who had been forced to resign to take responsibility for what some rival leaders viewed as reckless economic and political reforms.
Isolated in their barracks three hours north of the city, Mr. Chen said he and his fellow soldiers understood little about protests. They knew only what military officers told them: “that bad people were trying to destroy the nation that was established with the death of martyrs,” he recalled.
On May 19, they were given orders to enter the city. But their path was blocked by throngs of students and average Beijing residents supporting the demonstrators. For two days the troops were lectured to and fed by strangers while the nation’s military leaders debated what to do.
On the third day, his unit withdrew, but Mr. Chen said the episode left him confused. “We were told they were bad people but the students seemed so honest and earnest,” he said.
After nearly two weeks isolated in their barracks, the soldiers were given civilian clothes and told to make their way to the Great Hall in groups of two or three. Mr. Chen said his assignment was far more unnerving. He said he was the only passenger in a double-length bus with its seats removed and its interior filled to the windowsills with guns and ammunition.
Unfed and terrified, the soldiers, most of them teenagers, waited inside the Great Hall while military commanders, perched at a second-floor window, strategized the assault. Around midnight, power to the square was cut and the soldiers eased their way down the broad steps to the street. To frighten the students into leaving, he said, the men were told to fire into the air. The tactic had the desired effect.
By 2 a.m., tens of thousands of students were weeping and singing the Internationale as they filed out of the square. Not long afterward, armored vehicles rolled in. One went to work on the Goddess of Democracy, a papier-mâché statue that art students had built just days earlier. “It took them three rams before it fell to the ground,” Mr. Chen said.
Most of the deaths in the crackdown, according to multiple accounts of the incident, occurred in the streets leading toward the square, not in the square itself.
Less than a year after the suppression, Mr. Chen enrolled in the military’s art school, then transferred to the Chinese Academy of Fine Art. In 1995, he left the army.
In those early years, Mr. Chen was drawn to photography and performance art, creating work that was lurid and provocative. He spent months filming prostitutes and took photographs of himself copulating on the Great Wall. He also produced a series of sexually explicit photos of himself posing with an elderly intellectual man who had been persecuted by the Communist Party. “I wanted to portray myself having a visceral connection to someone who had experienced China’s tumultuous history,” he said.
Although none of his early work refers directly to Tiananmen Square, he said most of it had been influenced by the trauma there. “Even if a connection is hard to see, everything I do is touched by that experience,” he said. Mr. Chen said he saw soldiers bloodied by rocks and a protestor having his head rifle butted by soldiers. But the image that haunts him most is rather mundane. As he was cleaning up the square that morning, he spotted a luxuriant ponytail amid the detritus of crushed bicycles and tangled blankets.
The clump of hair, held by a purple band, had been crudely shorn, perhaps as an act of protest but possibly the result of something more sinister. “It was a startling image,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about that hair and why it had been cut off.”
In recent months, he has produced a score of self-portraits. In each, his neck, shoulder and chest are littered with scraps of hair. He cuts his own hair only every year or two and then stores the clippings in his apartment. So far he has filled the equivalent of two dozen coffee cans, raw material for a future project.
He said he did his most intense work every June, around the same time that he was hit with wrenching stomach pain. It is the same twisting of the gut that he first experienced on the square, he said.
It was around this time last year that Mr. Chen decided to revisit the cache of photographs he had taken in 1989. Just before the assault on the square began, Mr. Chen’s commander handed him a camera and 20 rolls of film and told him to wander freely. When it came time to hand back the film, he hid three rolls in his army-issued satchel.
He said the photographs inspired him to take on a subject that few in China care, or dare, to touch. His paintings are artistic depictions of history, he insisted, not expressions of right or wrong. The images are largely dispassionate, although Mr. Chen has rendered them in a washed-out, melancholy blue.
“I have no regrets about what I did,” he said. “But I feel that this tragedy could have been avoided. Maybe if we start talking about this event, we can prevent it from happening again.”
 吾爾開希明言這次闖關是對中國政府的明確挑戰 |
前學運領袖吾爾開希在澳門與出入境官員對峙近一日後，被送上飛機返抵台北。
吾爾開希星期四（6月4日）15時左右（格林尼治標準時間7時）返抵台北桃園機場，並發表了講話。
吾爾開希說：“這一次……回到澳門，等於是向中國政府作了一個明確的挑戰：我要投案。”
“你在通緝我，我在投案。我敢回來，你敢接受嗎？”
他質問說：“在國內，異議分子被要求在這一段時間離開自己的家去旅遊，天安門廣場擠滿了軍警，擠滿了公安，請問中國真是一個有自信的大國嗎？”
設在香港的中國人權民運信息中心此前發佈消息稱，澳門入出境事務廳人員星期四上午曾強迫吾爾開希登機前往台灣，但遭到他的抵抗。
不過台灣中央社報道說，澳門入出境事務廳人員是一直“以柔性方式”勸吾爾開希離開，而後者則拒絕，雙方都維持客氣。
吾爾開希星期三（3日）下午抵達澳門，聲稱要向當地的中央政府聯絡辦公室自首，但被澳門拒絕入境。
澳門入出境事務廳要求他乘飛機返回台北，但遭到吾爾開希拒絕，於是他星期三夜間羈留澳門機場。
吾爾開希通過朋友發表聲明說，他自首並不是承認20年前自己違反法律或做錯，而是為了能夠看到20年未曾見面的父母。
吾爾開希說，他想重申中國政府對1989年發生的悲劇負有完全的和不可否定的道義、政治和司法責任。
他希望中國政府改變對“六四大屠殺”的立場，承認錯誤並向中國人民道歉。  “六四”20周年之際天安門廣場布置了不少警察 |
中國外交部對美國有關希望中國公布“六四”死者名單的呼籲表示“強烈不滿”。
中國外交部發言人秦剛在“六四事件”20周年當天譴責美國國務卿希拉里﹒克林頓的言論是對中國政府的“毫無根據”的指責。
克林頓星期三呼籲中國政府公布在“六四”事件中遇難、被捕和失蹤的人員名單。
克林頓發表聲明說：“中國已經在經濟上取得了巨大進步，並正在獲得理應得到的全球領導地位，因此應該公開檢討過去一些黑暗事件，並公布被屠殺、拘留和失蹤人員的名單，以便達到汲取教訓和治愈創傷的目的。”
克林頓提出，“六四事件”20周年給中國當局提供了一個機會，可以使所有因“六四”事件而受到監禁的人獲得釋放。
美國國務院發言人克勞利說，自從天安門抗議運動遭到鎮壓20年以來，中國在人權方面取得了一些進步。
他還談到中國地方當局在打擊腐敗以及保護產權方面所做出的努力。
不過他表示：“我們更願意看到中國汲取歷史教訓，而不是掩蓋歷史。”
他強調說，這與一個大國的所做所為是不相符的
“六四事件”20周年之際，北京戒備嚴密，不過天安門廣場仍然向遊客開放，不過警察和武警嚴格檢查所有人的隨身物品。
另據報道北京大學也把守嚴密，禁止師生以外的人入內。BEIJING — China blanketed Tiananmen Square with police officers Thursday, determined to prevent any commemoration of the 20th anniversary of a military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left hundreds dead.
Remembering the Tiananmen Protests
Visitors to the sprawling plaza in central Beijing were stopped at checkpoints and searched, and foreign television crews and photographers firmly turned away. Uniformed and plainclothes officers, easily identifiable by their similar shirts, seemingly outnumbered tourists.
A few pursued television cameramen with opened umbrellas trying to block their shots — a comical dance that was broadcast on CNN and BBC. There was no flicker of protest. Other than the intense police presence and the government’s blockage of some popular Internet services, the scorchingly hot day passed like any other in the capital.
China’s government has tried hard over the years to obliterate the memory of the huge student-led protests that shook the Communist Party and captivated the world for weeks.
An official reacted angrily Thursday to a call by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for a public accounting of the incident.
“The U.S. action makes groundless accusations against the Chinese government. We express strong dissatisfaction,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, told reporters at a regular briefing.
“The party and government have already come to a conclusion on the relevant issue,” he said. “History has shown that the party and government have put China on the proper socialist path that serves the fundamental interests of the Chinese people.”
In a statement Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton urged China to publish the names of the dead, missing or detained when the military crushed the protest, saying an accounting would help China “to learn and to heal.”
“A China that has made enormous progress economically and is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership should examine openly the darker events of its past,” her statement said.
She also called on Chinese authorities to release all prisoners still jailed for taking part in the demonstrations and to stop harassing bereaved relatives, who have formed a group called Tiananmen Mothers.
“China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally recognized human rights, and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform,” her statement said.
The president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, who has fostered closer ties to the mainland through a series of trade and tourism accords, also urged China to confront the episode. “This painful period of history must be faced with courage and cannot be intentionally ducked,” he said in an unusually strong statement.
Their remarks contrasted with the enforced public silence throughout China. There was no mention of the day’s significance in Thursday’s Beijing newspapers. The state-run mass-circulation China Daily led with a story about job growth signaling China’s economic recovery.
Access was blocked to popular Internet services like Twitter, as well as to many university message boards. The home pages of a mini-blogging site and a video-sharing site warned users they would be closed through Saturday for “technical maintenance.
Some Internet users tried to evade the censors by referring to June 4 as May 35 on electronic bulletin boards or message sites. Others proposed wearing white, the Chinese traditional color of mourning, as a silent form of protest.
One government notice about the need to seek out potential troublemakers apparently slipped onto the Internet by mistake, remaining just long enough to be reported by Agence France-Presse. “Village cadres must visit main persons of interest and place them under thought supervision and control,” read the order to Guishan township, about 870 miles from Beijing.
In Beijing, a number of prominent dissidents have been forced to spend recent days or weeks outside the capital, confined to homes or under tight surveillance.
Jiang Qisheng was imprisoned for four years in 1999 after he published a letter asking the government to reassess the June 4 crackdown.
“They started watching me in my apartment building on May 15,” he said in a telephone interview Thursday morning. “Before yesterday, I could go swimming or grocery shopping, but in their car, of course. But since yesterday, I have been prevented from going anywhere.
“We never forget June 4,” said Mr. Jiang, a writer. “And I believe most of Chinese people of my generation don’t forget. They are just tied up with daily routine life.”
Ding Zilin, a retired professor and activist whose son was killed during the crackdown, told The Associated Press: “They won’t even allow me to go out and buy vegetables.”
“They’ve been so ruthless to us that I am utterly infuriated,” she said.
A former key student leader of the demonstrations was detained Wednesday night at the airport in Macao, a special administrative region in China. He was deported Thursday afternoon back to Taiwan, where he lives with his wife and two children.
Wu’er Kaixi, now a 41-year-old investment banker, said he wanted to surrender to Chinese authorities and face trial because he hasn’t seen his parents in 20 years. “I also want to be in a courtroom so that I can talk,” he said in an interview Wednesday night from an airport detention room.
“We dissidents in exile, that’s what we do,” he said. “We try very hard to come home, all of us, but the door is shut very tightly.”
As a student leader in 1989, Mr. Wu’er was one of the few student leaders who met with Li Ping, then China’s prime minister, in a nationally televised encounter. He publicly rebuked the Chinese leader for not meeting the students’ demands.
He said he does not regret delivering that scolding today. But had he known that the demonstrations would end with the deaths of protesters and civilians, he said, he might not have pushed to continue them. “Perhaps not,” he said. “Perhaps not.”
Mr. Wu’er, who was listed as the second on the government’s most-wanted list of protest leaders, escaped overseas after the crackdown.
The Associated Press reported that Xiang Xiaoji, another dissident who took part in the 1989 demonstrations, was denied entry Wednesday to Hong Kong, another special administrative region of China. June 4 is commemorated every year with a candlelight vigil there, and preparations were under way Thursday for the evening gathering in Victoria Park.
A U.S. Consulate General spokesman told the news agency that the decision to deport Mr. Xiang, now an American citizen, was “particularly regrettable in light of Hong Kong’s well-known reputation as an open society.”
But Hong Kong allowed entry to one prominent student leader, Xiong Yan. Mr. Xiong, now a U.S. Army chaplain in Alabama, planned to speak at the candlelight vigil.
