My Brush with Eternity: China Peace

Coretta Scott King is awarded a cast of "China Peace" by Chinese Info Cent.

It's been 30 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in June, 1989, when the Chinese military attacked and slaughtered perhaps thousands of peaceful pro-democracy protesters. A group of those who escaped joined Chinese students who were studying in the US at the time and formed an organization in Boston called the China Information Center. Their purpose was to try to get the word back into Chinese people about the events, since the Chinese government, humiliated by the successes of the democracy movement, was covering up the massacre.

They called me a week later to ask me to help them raise money by creating an artwork to commemorate the tragedy. The money that was raised by the sale of the resulting sculpture was then used to fund a drive to subvert the government censors and get the truth to the Chinese people. It was done by taking a narrative of the event, complete with photos of the massacre, and faxing it to random numbers throughout China. Over the next weeks the real news of the event spontaneously erupted from fax machines all over China, a phenomenon the Chinese government was powerless to stop! On Wikipedia this is listed as the "first FAX revolution in history."

The Chinese government's attempt to kill the grass-roots democracy movement (not just students but a wide swath ofthe population) only works for the short term. We have all watched with amazement as China's economy has exploded. Much of the reason for this sudden turn away from communist economic models is due to the leadership's need to ease the danger of a broad longing for freedom. Their choice is brilliant: by diverting attention away from human rights toward personal consumption afforded by new capitalist opportunities, the masses are placated. For a time. (I got to illustrate the cover of a book which asks, Will China Democratize?)

I feel incredibly honored to have been able to participate in such an earth-shaking milestone in Chinese history. May we all be vigilant for decoys to real human freedoms!

My "China Peace" bronze was featured on this book on Chinese democracy in 2012.