Chinese Democracy

Born in idealism and romanticism, the Goddess of Democracy radio ship project collapsed Friday in anger and debt. The ship had been blocked from leaving Taiwan with the transmitters needed for the broadcasts and was unwelcome elsewhere in Asia. So, organizers gave up their plan to beam pro-democracy messages into China from their ship by the June 4 anniversary of the suppression of Beijing's democracy movement. They said they will sell the ship to help cover costs.

Protests over the recent killing of a Beijing University student escalated Tuesday into the most dramatic pro-democracy campus rally in China since a crackdown on such demonstrations early last year. About 1,000 students on the campus late Tuesday and early today listened as speakers called for free speech and free press, for better living conditions for intellectuals and greater democracy.

Good cultural relativists that we are, American reporters and scholars have usually skirted the question of democracy in China. Who are we to say our political system has any relevance in a dirt-poor land of 1 billion people? We write of political prisoners and harsh justice in Peking but try to place it in historical context. The emperors were usually rough on free thinkers. Peasants in Guizhou have little knowledge of or interest in the Magna Charta.