So if you stop repeating a request to stop, is stopping a sign of failure, or success?

The already too belabored point? Why are so few demonstrating on June4 this year? Have they given up, or have they been bought off by an improving economy?

Maybe it's because they know they've got their message across.

What was the message student demonstrators at Tiananmen 16 years ago sent China's rulers? Stop interfering in our lives. Stop deciding whether we deserve to go to university, what major we will take, and where we will work and live after we graduate.

Stop censoring our conversations among our friends. Stop setting up neighborhood spies to watch our every move. Stop making us live in the houses you choose for us.

Stop forcing us to have only one child. Stop forcing us to work under the direction of cadres solely for the profit of those who control the party-state.

The students died demanding fundamental democratic rights to choose their own education, their own jobs, and their own homes. They demanded the right to improve their lives by their own efforts.

And they won.

The party stopped choosing university majors, stopped making party loyalty the only gateway to opportunity, stopped organizing old women as neighborhood spies, stopped forcing people to live where they did not want to and work at what they did not want to.

It stopped forcing abortions on everyone pregnant a second time, regardless of the first child's sex and the parents' ability to afford a second child.

The unrest on the mainland subsided not only and not primarily because the military rolled out the tanks. It diminished because the party got out of people's faces.

The places where there is rising unrest in China today are places where party members still intrude too much and too arbitrarily into people's daily lives. That is why central authorities are constantly telling local authorities to stop this and why leaders like Zhu Rongji concluded the best way to lessen intrusions was to cut cadre numbers.

Are there still cadre abuses in the mainland? Yes, far too many. But bureaucrats worldwide intervene too often in far too many areas. Most of the votes against the EU constitution are votes against bureaucratic intrusions. The US Republican Party rose and rules because of a backlash against big, intrusive government.

In Hong Kong, what did so many who marched in 2003 and 2004 demand?

They demanded Beijing and Tung Chee-hwa stop Article 23 legislation that imperiled their freedom to access information, to express their opinions, and to live unthreatened by unreasonably broad searches and seizures inside their own homes. They demanded Beijing listen to views of the majority of Hong Kong people, especially on who would lead their government.

They demanded Tung step down.

Article 23 legislation was stopped. Tung resigned, apparently under Beijing's pressure. Beijing pledged to accept the wishes of the majority on his successor, even if the majority preferred one of their own knighted by the British colonialists over one of Beijing's trusted loyalists.

Does government still intrude too much? Yes, but any and all governments tend to tell people an ever-expanding number of things they can and cannot do. Our own airwaves are plagued with government-mandated slogans urging us to wash our hands, fight mosquitoes, report corruption, drive safely, support Liberal Studies and live agreeably with one another.

Our bureaucrats mandate that Chinese language television lead into its news programs with a full minute of flag-waving reminders that Chinese should be proud they are Chinese.

Some mainland cadres reportedly feel compelled to call members of the Election Committee and pressure them not to nominate Lee Wing-tat, despite Donald Tsang's 70 percent approval ratings. Most people believe they should have a right to a vote and want Lee nominated simply to assure one.

All bureaucrats everywhere tend to think they know best. They trust decision-making power only in their own hands. But that is what caused Tiananmen.

Wiser heads should prevail.

Bureaucrats' control-delusion has caused many demonstrations, and even revolutions in many places. But for now the message has been sent and largely received that Hong Kongers want more say over their own affairs.

Many conclude it is time to stop demonstrating. Maybe, for now, it is.

degolyer@hkbu.edu.hk

Michael DeGolyer is an associate professor of the government and international studies department at Hong Kong Baptist University