The Perils of Protest: State Repression and Student Activism in China and Taiwan (review)

The appearance of different city-states in ancient Greece prompted Aristotle to compare and contrast them in order to obtain insights into the relationships between ways of rule and critical social outcomes such as unity, stability, discord, and revolution. One would think that scholars of the twentieth century would follow Aristotle's footsteps by studying divided states, such as the two Chinas, the two Koreas, the two Vietnams (before the North's conquest in 1975), and the two Germanys before unification. But only a few scholars have done this, and Teresa Wright is one of these few. In The Perils of Protest, Wright compares the student pro-democracy movements at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in April-June 1989 and in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Taipei in March 1990. She aims to demonstrate that political environments determine student movements in terms of personalities, organizations, developments, and outcomes. In other words, Wright adopts a structural, as opposed to a behavioral (or cultural), school of thought in social science.

According to Wright, students in Beijing and Taipei shared a similar style of mobilization. Both used peaceful methods, and student leaders were concerned with maintaining order and social autonomy. They avoided mingling with non-student elements (especially workers), so as to lessen the chances of state repression. Student organizations in Beijing and Taipei underwent numerous transformations and divisions. In both movements, a radical faction emerged and instigated a hunger strike. As the campaigns progressed and more student groups joined, the question of legitimacy came to the fore, particularly for those who first started the protests. Wright then boldly and unambiguously states: "These similarities derived largely from commonalities in the political environment faced by students in both movements" (p. 95). By political environment, she is referring to the classical definition of totalitarianism: a single party, party penetration into student and other social groups, state control of mass media, a pervasive police surveillance and informer network among the population, and omnipresent threats of repression. Wright acknowledges differences between Beijing and Taipei, with a lesser degree of totalitarianism in the second. It is clear from her analysis that she considers these differences a matter of degree, not kind. She also notes, but does not elaborate on, the divergent outcomes of the student protests: a horrible massacre at and around Tiananmen Square and a peaceful resolution in Taipei. She states that the atmosphere in Taipei was "relaxed" (p. 128) and that any extreme action on the part of students would look "ridiculous" (p. 128). References like these to differences are far too few in Wright's analysis. In the concluding chapter, she once more stresses the commonalities between the Beijing and Taipei students and their cohorts in other parts of the world.

The greatest strength of this book is the details it presents on student mobilization and internal politics, more for Beijing (seventy-five pages) than for Taipei (thirty-five pages). Wright's research on the day-by-day developments of these student movements across the Strait has been thorough. She conducted interviews in both Beijing and Taipei and in the United States and has made use of a variety of secondary sources. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a concise and authoritative factual account of the tragedy at Tiananmen Square in April-June 1989 and of the sudden rise of student activism in Taiwan in 1990.

The problemmatic aspects of Wright's book are in her use of theory and interpretation. First of all, Wright cannot prove her thesis that common political environments have determined similar styles of student protests in Beijing and Taipei. To validate her theory, she needs to show how a different political environment, such as that of the United States, produces a very different type of student protest. She could have used...