Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community (PDF) - CIA

COMBATING ETHNOCENTRISM
Student leaders began a hunger strike to force a dialogue between the students
and the government. All signs seemed clearly to point to a popular movement
for democracy, for which there was a groundswell of support.
The Chinese government seemed hesitant or unsure. The People’s Liberation
Army (PLA) was sent to surround the square, but citizens blocked their
advance and tried to persuade the troops to be neutral. A curfew order was not
obeyed; martial law was declared and ignored. Another PLA move on Tiananmen
Square was repelled. It appeared that the students had forced a stalemate
and that their demands would be heard.
At that point, my assumption was that the government was weakened and
would be forced to respond to the protesters’ demands, at least to some degree.
I anticipated a dialogue and concessions on both sides. Although I imagined
the government was capable of resorting to violence, I assumed that it would
not. It seemed inconceivable that the citizens of Beijing—10–12 million people—would
not intervene on behalf of the students. That many people could
have overwhelmed the PLA had they chosen to do so. I also assumed that the
soldiers of the PLA would be reluctant to fire on their own people, partly
because the majority of both groups were from the same, dominant ethnic
group of China, the Han, and, in part, because the soldiers represented a lower
rung of Chinese society then did the students. The notion of soldiers killing
students would be an affront to the sensibilities of the Han, or so I thought. I
was wrong.
In the end, when the PLA carried out its orders to clear the square with
force and end the protest, support for the protesters turned out to be relatively
slight. The Chinese “middle class” never came to the students’ aid; the great
majority of the Beijing populace simply watched the events unfold. Moreover,
it turned out that the labor groups participating in the demonstration were
actually protesting against corporate corruption and the lack of job stability
brought about by market reforms and not in support of the students’ demands
for a loosening of restrictions on expression. What I perceived to be a groundswell
of popular support for the students had been exaggerated and wishful
thinking on my part.
My failure to anticipate the way events would actual unfold in Tiananmen
Square was tied to ethnocentric thinking and a lack of accurate and contextual
information. Students in the United States are encouraged to be politically
active, and their protests are often seen merely as minor inconveniences that
need to be endured. In China, however, the protesting students were seen as a
direct challenge to political authority and, much more so than in the United
States, their actions were viewed as an outright conflict between the future
elite and the current leadership. The protest itself was viewed as a violation of
a taboo, upsetting the cultural order and the stability of society.
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