Old Wounds

Elsewhere, the demonstration would barely have attracted notice. Several hundred university students, singing broken choruses of their national anthem and shouting slogans like "Long Live the Great People," massed in a corner of Peking's Tiananmen Square last week. They were protesting among other things Japanese "economic aggression," Tokyo's reputed flooding of China with defective and overpriced goods under the open-door economic policies of Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping. Security officials with loudspeakers ordered the protesters to disperse, and after about two hours they did.

It was the second anti-Japanese student protest in two months. In both cases, the ostensible purpose was to refresh Chinese memories of Japan's harsh military presence in China from 1931 to 1945. The events were also timed to coincide with two Sino-Japanese competitions in volleyball and an Oriental game called go. But the dissident students gave their protest an additional twist by dubbing the rally Democracy '85. In a manifesto circulated before the demonstration, organizers declared that "it will be impossible to realize our personal ambitions and careers without a conducive democratic atmosphere." University authorities responded with a series of public meetings to criticize the manifesto and discourage students from joining the protest.

The fact that so many demonstrators showed up despite the official pressure is a sign that campus discontent in Peking goes beyond anti-Japanese sentiments. Many students resent the fact that the benefits of Deng's reformist economic policies have gone to members of a Chinese elite that includes the well-connected children of Communist officials. The favored youth have a far better chance than most of getting good jobs or traveling abroad after graduation. Faced with a steep rise in the cost of living as a result of the reforms, many students are finding their already spartan daily lives less and less tolerable. Says a Peking university student: "Peasants are getting rich, workers get bonuses, but we still get our measly fixed allowance."

Some diplomats believe that the protests have been encouraged by Communist Party conservatives who are still fighting a rearguard action against Deng's reforms. Others accuse the government of encouraging anti-Japanese sentiment as a means of boosting national feelings. Whatever the reason, it may not have been a coincidence that the Peking government last week announced plans to remove, in the interests of beautification, the large billboards that advertise Japanese products along the capital's main avenue.