Fear Abates Among Chinese But Few Find Cause for Hope
These days peasants are lighting fires for warmth underneath the platform beds they call the kang, and workers are buying winter jackets with English lettering for a cosmopolitan touch. But neither a warm kang nor a down jacket can dispel the political and economic winter that has lasted nearly 18 months and shows little sign of easing. The fear that gripped China after the crackdown on the democracy movement led by students in June 1989 has largely subsided, but it has been replaced by a bleak pessimism that matches the overcast skies and the air that is gritty with coal dust. The dominant emotions seem to be neither fear nor fury but rather cynicism and hopelessness.
