Why am I interested, even though I'm not a communist? I could name a couple of reasons.
I was in Hong Kong when the student protests broke out in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which seems a lifetime ago. There was life coverage in the media, 24x7 in Hong Kong at the time, tracking all the details, including coverage of the few student leaders (amongst those, Wang Dan, Chai Ling, and Wu'erkaixi). What started out as idealistic and impromptu sit-in was turned into something more widespread. The students at the time were probably emblazoned by the endorsement of the leading political figures of Hu Yaobang (whose passing sparked the memorial that turned into protests for god-knows-what), and Zhao Ziyang. They must have thought that the polituro had fallen in love with the young, and would let them pout and whinge a bit, without ramifications. We know now that, that's not meant to be. The old, wise men like Deng Xiaoping would never allow things to get out of control, not to mention giving in to kids' demands, whatever the demands were which people seemed to be unsure about, because there were never any clear goals or plans. Those so-called student leaders like Chai Ling who are more radical in nature had only wanted to add the rush to the students' adrenaline by making new slogans everyday, eventually calling for the downfall of Deng, the supreme leader at the time. When the tanks rolled in, Chai were infamous quoted as saying, she's ready to die as martyr, and the rest of the students outside of her camps at night were oblivious what she had had in mind, since they were meant to be collaterals in writing down a page in history, with their blood.
Twenty-three years on, most of these so-called student leaders have "moved on," most notably, Chai Ling, who moved to the west, got her wish for a facelift (of double eyelids, as ridiculous and petty as it might sound), stole ideas from Harvard Business School's system to start her business, and comfortably making her money as a businesswoman. (Yes, you can easily note from my description that I despise this woman, but that's another story for another day.) Wu'erkaixi, for his part, became a radio DJ in Taiwan. Wang Dan is perhaps the lone student leader who stayed in China, did his time, eventually exiled, but has stayed true to what the student movement has started out.
What is so (un)remarkable is that, after twenty-three long years, nothing - absolutely nothing - has happened. The newer generations have heeded to what Chai Ling is doing now, which is to move on to the money-making business. So much for political changes; afterall, folks like Chai won't need political changes, as long as they can go on their merry ways to make more and more money. For those who did not see it close enough in 1989, they would have thought that it's politically incorrect to criticize any of the students leaders at the time. But what I'm surprised is, how this controversy has taken so long to surface. We watched the news everyday, and the news coverage in Hong Kong back then was surprisingly neutral in its coverage. Even then, there's been reports, towards the end of the student protests (and before the crackdown happened), there had been reports about that that were the same as the one noted in documentary. Sure, Chai has the money now to launch lawsuits; afterall, it's only natural that she would want to retain a pristine and clean name, for a legacy that should have been under more scrutiny.
Even back then, when we're all glued to the media for every tidbits of news coming from Tiananmen Square, the public at large had been wondering what the students really wanted. Even back then, in my young mind, I'd been wondering out loud, how these students would go on to rule a country under the same political structure. Now we know that, without real change in political system, whoever rises to the top, Chai included, would only go on to perpetuate an oppressive structure, as long as she has her change at the money pot and the power that it infers. For 1.1 billion people in China at the time, pulling down a political figure like Deng is not going to do one iota of change. One could say, these students were naive, at best. Should they have been given the chance to rule the country, what would have come of it? One doesn't even want to go there.
In contrast, I look on at Chilean Winter with admiration, how organized, disciplined and mature these student leaders have shown so far. Student leaders like Camila Vallejo Dowling would probably move on to become political figures, much like Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, whose peaceful rally for changes in an oppressive regime has brought admiration far and wide. Those like Chai and Wu'erkaixi didn't even come close.
One could argue, that perhaps the Tiananmen Square protests were never meant to be, in an era of prosperity in the 1980s. Almost two and a half decades later, inequality become the rich and the poor in China has grown so substantially, yet one would only hear pockets of protests or riots when the poor has absolutely nowhere to turn. If the central government throws them a bit of bread crumbs, so to speak, they would just go on tolling in their hard lives. That's how it's always been, for thousands of years, in China. There really is nothing "communist" about the central government in China at all, because one can find little to no evidence of how the Chinese government redistributes the wealth, in the spirit of communism. For all the saber-rattling of the western countries like US, in decrying the communism in China, they should realize that, yes, oppression as it is, there isn't anything communistic about the system in China at all.
One can only hope that the Chilean Winter would yield something far more productive, to the benefits of the general populace. But I would certainly not be consulting those involved in the student protests in Tiananmen Square for inspiration or advice, since they're self-serving individuals whose first goal is to save their own hide.
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