Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

On indulgence: 20 years ago thousands of Chinese people, mostly young Chinese people, many of them students, gathered together in Tiananmen Square protesting for freedom and standing up for democracy. It was right that they did so. Tiananmen Square stands at the centre of the capital, the centre of China. It is the place where in 1949 Mao Zedong proclaimed that the Chinese people had stood up. And the Chinese people did stand up in 1989, 20 years ago, and then were cruelly crushed by the might of the Chinese state.

Probably the most memorable image from that time that sums up the challenge those young people faced is a photograph taken the day after, on 5 June. It shows a lone man in a white shirt, unknown then and unknown to this day, who stood in the way of a column of four tanks. As they ground down the square he stood in front of them. They swerved, he moved, and finally they stopped. That was a Chinese person, a Chinese man in a white shirt, who stood up in Tiananmen Square.

We should remember with great sadness and solemnity those dreadful days of the protests in Tiananmen Square. We should mark our respect for those who sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom, as we do for brave men and women everywhere across the world who stand up in the face of danger for the fundamental values of human rights that we enjoy in our nation Australia.

As the years have passed since those desperate and difficult days, relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China have strengthened, deepened and broadened. Let us be very clear about this: China’s opening of its economy to the world and its increasing global engagement is in the interests of all of us. The rapid economic advancement in China is a key factor in explaining why the level of poverty in the Asia-Pacific region has halved in just 20 years. By any measure of the human happiness index that represents an astonishing lift in prosperity and security.

It owes much to the embrace by Asia, including by the world’s largest communist state, of many of the principles of economic liberalism. Whether it is China’s growing importance in global trade and investment, her role as a major customer for reliable supplies of energy and resources, her activism in the regional councils or her role in global climate change negotiations, China is a headline story always for the world and, indeed, for Australia. But the great lesson of the 20th century is that the causes of economic advancement, social stability and prosperity will prove more sustainable and more enduring in societies ruled by open minds and open hearts. Australians must always think clearly and objectively about our foreign relations and those with China in particular, and in this I subscribe to the formula struck by our good friend the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, who said that our approach to China’s return as a great power should be characterised by ‘a spirit of ambition without illusion’.

In 1997 the Howard government launched with China a bilateral dialogue on human rights. It is through that forum we can raise at the highest levels of the Chinese government our concerns about human rights in, for example, Tibet and to reinforce the importance attached by the Australian people to the principles of freedom of worship and freedom of association. Since 1989 we have seen many positive advances in China, but some setbacks too. In the years to come it remains vital that China understands that Australians will always expect their governments to speak up honestly, directly and unapologetically for the values of freedom and liberty.

The protest in Tiananmen Square did not, as the protesters had hoped, herald a new dawn for China, but it did remind us of the aspirations of people in societies unlike our own to enjoy the political and civil rights we accept in Australia as a given. It is a matter of considerable sorrow to friends of the People’s Republic of China that even today, 20 years on, there is official reluctance to acknowledge the cause and the effects of that brutal crackdown in Tiananmen Square. To this day we still do not know exactly how many people died, and we in this House have no means of demanding or enforcing a demand that China face up to its past. But what we do ask, and must continue to ask, is that China embrace a future where basic civil and political rights are central to its thinking not only in its role as an emerging global power and a responsible stakeholder in international affairs, especially in our own region, but also in its attitude to religious and political freedoms at home.

We will never forget that brave man, that unknown man, in the white shirt who stared down the might of those four tanks on that day 20 years ago tomorrow in the immediate aftermath of the brutal crushing of that demonstration. It is my hope, and I am sure the hope of every member of this House, that in years to come he and the other courageous voices who spoke up for freedom will be properly remembered, recognised and honoured in China, too.

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