LOBBYING in Late 1992, News Was Circulating Among the Chinese
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CHAPTER SIX LOBBYING In late 1992, news was circulating among the Chinese students living in Australia on four-year temporary permits. Prime Minister Paul Keating, in a meeting in Sydney with Li Lu, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen pro- test of 1989,1 promised that he would honor the commitment made by his predecessor, Bob Hawke. As noted in Chapter Two, Hawke once promised that no Chinese nationals would be forced to return to China. Moreover, Paul Keating had also said that he planned to consider their protection or residency issue in terms of a ‘long-term strategy’ (ACD, 17 December 1992; FDC Newsletter, No. 1, 1993). The Prime Minister’s assurance held the real promise of permanent residency for the entire student group, although ‘long-term strategy’ had very different meanings for Keating and Li Lu. Li urged the Australian government to let the students stay permanently as a way of keeping the ‘seeds of revolution’ alive for the sake of a democratic future in China.2 Paul Keating, on the other hand, seems likely to have been envisaging the students playing a bridging role between Australia and China. At the time, China’s economic growth was once again accelerating after Deng Xiaop- ing’s famous ‘southern inspection tour’ in the spring of 1992.3 In his first 1 Li Lu, a former student at Nanjing University, had been one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests. Afterwards he fled to France and then later in 1989 went to the USA, where he studied at Columbia University. After completing his studies he remained in the USA as a hedge-fund manager and investment banker (Li, 1990; Cunning- ham, 2009; Pulliam, 2010). His visit to Australia was for the purpose of rallying Australian supporters for his election at the first joint FDC and CAD convention, which was to be held in February 1993 (Chen and Lu, 1994; Kong, 1999; Fan, 2007). 2 The expression ‘seeds of revolution,’ a typical Chinese communist term, was met with laughter when the Keating-Li meeting was reported at FDC and CAD meetings in Australia. It had been a big joke to many students, and for this reason, it was occasion- ally changed to ‘seeds of Chinese democracy.’ However, it was indeed thought by some to express a convincing political argument for the student lobby. 3 As noted in Chapter Five, Deng’s southern tour to the Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen in early 1992 is considered by many to be a turning point in post-1989 Chinese politics (Zhao, 1993; Barmé, 2000). It was on this tour that Deng ordered people to ‘stop arguing as to whether the Reforming and Opening movement should be labeled “capital- ism” or “socialism” ’ (Huang et al., 1997: 100), but to be ‘more risky and more daring to make experiments in reform and opening’ (cited in Chen, 2008: 51). 130 chapter six political term (from December 1991 to March 1993), Keating painted a ‘big picture’ of Australia’s future. A key aspect of his vision of future Australia was ‘engagement with Asia’ by Australia as a republic that was no longer bound by old ties to Britain, but by new alliances and attitudes that would help the country to create a new economic, strategic and cultural future in its Asia-Pacific neighborhood (Burke, 2007; Kelly 2010).4 At the time he met Li, Paul Keating was planning his first Prime Ministerial visit to China. That visit eventually took place in June 1993, three months after Keating had won his second term in the ‘unwinnable’ 1993 federal elec- tion.5 His meeting with Li Lu, which took place just a few weeks before he called the election, may well have been a calculated strategy to win support from Chinese constituencies.6 Li Lu was not the only Chinese student leader to visit Australia and meet local political leaders in 1992–1993. No less than half a dozen high- profile Chinese dissidents, including Wan Runnan,7 Zhu Jiaming8 and Yu Dahai,9 came to Australia from the USA or Europe (where they were 4 According to Geoff Raby, an Australian former ambassador to China, Paul Keating had fully understood China’s economic and strategic potential on his first visit there in early 1989 (Raby, 2012). Keating expressed ‘great respect and admiration for Deng Xiaoping’ and regarded him as the leader of the twentieth century who would be most influential on the coming century (Keating, 2000). 5 Even though Australia’s Labor government had been in power for ten years and eco- nomic recovery from the recession of the early 1990s was slow, Keating led the party to its fifth consecutive victory in the 1993 election against the Liberal/National coalition led by John Hewson (Gordon, 1993; Kelly, 2010). 6 There is little evidence that Keating’s meeting with Li actually helped Labor to win any votes from Chinese Australians in 1993. However, it is also true that many casual observations of this group of new Chinese settlers have indicated that many of them have been Labor voters in the past 20 or so years. 7 Educated at Tsinghua University, Wan Runnan was the founder of the Beijing-based Stone Corporation, the first private Chinese high-tech company (Miles, 1996: 227). Wan and his company publicly supported the Tiananmen Square student protests. Afterwards he fled to France, where he played a key role in the formation of the FDC and was elected its Secretary-General at the inaugural conference in September 1989 (Goldman, 1994; Kennedy, 1997). 8 Zhu Jiaming, a graduate of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was one of Beijing’s ‘four princes’ (Chen and Jin, 1997: 144) or ‘four gentlemen’ (Fewsmith, 2001: 59) who were actively involved in the early rural and enterprise reforms of the 1980s. As a member of Zhao Ziyang’s young think tank (Cunningham, 2009), he supported the Tianan- men protests. He too fled to France. He acted as chair of both the FDC (1991–93) and the CAD (1993–94) (Sausmikat, 2003). 9 Yu Dahai graduated from Peking University and received a doctorate from Prince- ton. While studying at Princeton he was involved in the formation of the Young Chinese Economists Society (Chow, 1994: 66). He was president of the CAD (1991–93) and headed the China Spring magazine before becoming chief editor of Beijing Spring (1993–96) (Chen and Lu, 1994; He, 1996)..