Rain

Things have pretty much calmed down over the past three days. This is the result of three main events.

First, three nights ago at 9 o'clock, the Henan Department of Education issued a six-part order:

1. The (figurehead) president and vice president (the real leader) are fired.

2. They must make a formal appology to the students.

3. Students who missed exams (presumably either in protest or out of fear of the protesters) will be given a chance to retake them.

4. The new leaders appointed by Zhengzhou University will find a solution to the problems (right).

5. The change to the diploma stands (more on this).

6. The students need to return to life as usual.


Basically, this is a very reasonable order, the best that can really be expected, although it falls a little short.

I had been a little confused about the specifics of the diploma change, but now, through meetings with people form the DOE and the administration (who finally, after five days, deigned to tell us their version what is going on), I understand it. Basically, a law was passed three years ago to close a loophole that allowed students from colleges affiliated with public universities to put just the universities name on the diploma without specifying which college. Given that many of these colleges are almost de facto independant, it seems like an entirely reasonable measure. The reason it is an issue now is it only came into effect with the students who entered college in 2003 (the older students were grandfathered through the loophole).

The students (and several other foreign teachrs) don't seem to fully understand this either. One of the main reasons that they don't particularly understand it is that the college has (intentionally?) mislead them into thinking they could still get the less specific, and therefore more prestigious, degree. The students do understand to a certain degree that they have been lied to: many of them were going around wearing shirts with "honesty" written on the back. Given the dishonesty of the school, my personal position is that the students should be given some sort of financial renumeration, but I think pigs will fly first.

The second thing that made them calm down was a threat to kick out any party members who were seen continuing to demonstrate. Given the degree to which the students have already seen their chances of getting a job severly damaged, loosing any party membership they might have would be an even bigger disaster. Although this doesn't affect all of them by any measure, the party members are frequently the ones who make better leaders (yay! coopting potential opposition!).

The third reason that the students calmed down, and in my opinion the biggest, is that it started to rain on Tuesday and basically didn't stop until today (Friday).

The interesting effect of all of this is that it has started to make it clear who among the students were hard-core on this issue, who will potentially continue to be radicalized (including a good friend of mine who needs to be much more careful than she is being right now), who were along for the ride and who were afraid of crossing picket lines. It was already clear who were running dogs of the administration (it was generally clear a long time before the protests even started; "please respect my China").

The interesting thing about these protests (to me) is that the studetns were primarily being reactionary. They wanted the school to cancel a good (in my opinion) reform that the school had no real power to cancel. True, they were also concerned with overly strict rules, assaults on students as part of the (largely unsucessful) administration crackdown and especially dishonesty, but once the weather changed and the powers that be decreed that the diplomas would stay changed, the bulk of the students, even the bulk of the student leaders, dipersed in disappointment.

The lessons of Tian'anmen are still powerful. The bulk of the students have still not turned away from the promise of prosperity to demand human rights, they were merely protesting the fact that they may have a difficult time acheiveing the promised prosperity in the current job market. We'll see how long it takes for freedoms to become the primary demands, rather than mere afterthoughts. You can bet there will be more student protests. As the worsening job prospects make the carrot harder to reach, more will start wondering why they are still being beaten by the stick when they look for their own ways to get food.

I am packed, bought my ticket to Beijing (8 hours in seats, ugh!), and trying to figure out how to meet my dad given that my cell phone was broken by some overzellous, water-throwing students (celebrating graduation, not protesting diplomas). One last thing about the protests before I move on to a presumably less entertaining travelogue: the best photos I've seen of the riots are here: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060619_2.htm.