Dharamsala,

by Ankur Aras.

The Weeks before June 4 – Role Allocations

« An explanation of this 1989 series

» Previous post in this series

I won’t be able to describe Wu Renhua‘s entire document on the 1989 movement, at least not during this spring. I never planned to achieve such an ambitious goal anyway, but in the process of reading and roughly regiving the document’s content, I do feel some regret that I don’t have as much time for this as I would like to have. It might be a different story if I was more familiar with the weeks when a civil society in Beijing seemed to develop, and all the people and organizations involved. But in fact, the series on this blog is a process of making myself more familiar with the weeks prior to what we often narrow down to that one bloody night in June, 1989.

Wu’s document is a who-is-who, and a collection of locations in Beijing. Rather than trying to go through every day recorded in his tweeted today-in-history collection, I’m adding to a project, as suggested by C. A. Yeung a few weeks ago.

This also means that I may be dwelling on events in early May 1989 even in a few weeks, when the actual day in the year 2012 will be June 4. And in that case, I will simply continue this series with the events in May 1989, as described by Wu, in another batch of posts next year.

But at least every few days, I will keep adding posts to this series, until June.

We must restitute to past generations what they once possessed, just as every present tense is in its possession: the abundance of a possible future, the uncertainty, the freedom, the finiteness, the inconsistency (…), Thomas Nipperdey, a German historian, once wrote.

That’s what commemoration is probably about. Before the bloodbath and the great dispair, there had been weeks of frustration, hope, and self-determination. If history came out of the gun barrels (as certain people appear to suggest), there would be nothing to read, nothing to remember, and nothing to expect.

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Main Link: 八九天安门事件大记 (Major Daily Events, Tiananmen 1989), by Wu Renhua.

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Sunday, April 23, 1989

In the morning, Zhao Ziyang meets with Hu Qili and Rui Xingwen, and emphasizes his three opinions on how to handle the students’ protests, and that “the news-related public opinion must be in accordance with the guiding principle of correct reporting”. In the afternoon, he leaves for North Korea by special train, as scheduled. Li Peng, Qiao Shi, and Tian Jiyun, see him off at Beijing Train Station. At about 14 h, the People’s University Doctoral Candidates’ Declaration emerges. It states full support for the Seven Demands, and all patriotic movements from all students and people of all walks of life in society; calls a complete student (and doctorate candidates’) strike; demands the resignation of the collective leadership’s and collective mistaken decision-makers’ collective resignations [or be obliged to resign] (Li-Peng language), later referred to as “collective responsibility” (Li-Peng language); strongly demands all cadres in the party, government and army who are older than 75 to resign; to oppose violence, to protect human rights, and the military forces should not take part and interfere in state affairs; CCP activities should not be paoid for by the state; and censorship to be removed, press freedom be established, and private press, radio and television be allowed; anti-corruption commissions be established, corruption on all party levels be investigated and removed, and business activities of cadres’ relatives be examined, and the results be reported to the public. Science and Technology Daily, under deputy chief editor Sun Changjiang (孙长江), is the first press publication to break into the censored field of covering the movement’s activities, which is commended by the students and from all walks of life. A number of young professors at the University of Science and Technology Beijing (北京科技大学) and other universities announce a strike; some university posters call for a general university strike or for “we won’t attend class unless we achieve our goals”, and some call for a nation-wide general strike. Between ten a.m. and around eight p.m. or after, students at Beijing University and Tsinghua University unsuccessfully try to take control of their respective universities’ broadcasting stations. Shen Tong (沈彤)¹⁾ takes a different approach – he runs a broadcasting system of his own from his dormitory, near the San Jiao Di (explanation for San Jiao Di here, underneath the list of the seven demands). Liu Gang (刘刚) is an organizer of a Universities’ Interim Committee (高校临时委员会), to be renamed Independent (or autonomous) Federation of Students from Universities in Beijing (北京市高等院校学生自治联合会), at which delegates of a number of Beijing Universities – if not all universities – are to participate. In the afternoon, Liu and Dai Zizhong (龚自忠) sees Wu Renhua at Wu’s place at the University of Political Science and Law. Wu hasn’t known them personally before. Liu asks Wu to attend the students’ assembly scheduled for that evening, at Yuanmingyuan or Yuanming Park²⁾. Wu Renhua declines, because participation in the Yuanmingyuan assembly or meeting wouldn’t correspond with his role as a professor. If he played such a role, this would also provide a handle for the authorities. Liu Gang, in search for a candidate to chair the conference, approaches Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) [the student who hit his own head with his megaphone, during Guo Haifeng's, Zhang Zhiyong's and Zhou Yongjun's kneeling petition at the entrance of the Great Hall of the People a day earlier], but Pu doesn’t believe that he has the abilities it takes to become chairman. Probably more crucially, he points out that his parents by adoption, who live in a rural area, are relatively old people who depend on him³⁾.

The Yuanmingyuan conference meets in the evening, with delegates from Beiing’s twenty-one university. Each university dispatches ten delegates. Zhou Yongjun (周勇军),  of the University of Political Science and Law, and one of the three kneeling petitioners on the previous day, is elected chairman. Wang Dan, Wu’er Kaixi, Ma Shaofang, and Zang Kai (臧凯) become standing-commission members.

According to what are believed to be Li Peng’s diaries, the CCP Politbureau Standing Committee holds a meeting at eleven a.m.. Li Tieying, in his capactiy as national education commission’s director, calls Li Peng to inform him that the mood at all universities in Beijing is very emotional, that student strikes are brewing, and that he hopes that Zhao listens to / reads the reports. Beijing Municipal Party secretary Li Ximing calls Zhao Ziyang on the phone and asks him to put his trip to North Korea off. Zhao tells the national education commission’s director Li Tieying see this post, footnote 3 that he had already authorized Li Peng to chair the standing commission’s work and to report to him.

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Notes

¹⁾ According to this online story, Shen was extremely lucky after the Tian An Men crackdown:

Fortunately for Shen, he had already been accepted to Brandeis University and had been issued a passport to study in the U.S. Six days after Tiananmen he went undisguised to the airport and boarded a flight for the United States though the state security police had put him on their most wanted list. Some have taken this as a sign that even many in China’s military had secretly been in sympathy with the democracy movement.

²⁾ Yuanmingyuan or Yuanming Park (the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, 圆明园) belongs to Beijing’s Haidian District. It is also referred to as the Old Summer Palace. The actual palace was destroyed in the Second Opium War.

³⁾ Wu Renhua writes in his document that he doesn’t remember having warned Pu Zhiqiang against chairing the Yuanming Park meeting in principle, but he does remember that he did warn Pu to mind his safety, for the sake of his adoptive parents.

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Related

» April 23, 1989, Under the Jacaranda, April 23, 2012

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Huanqiu Shibao on Chen Guangcheng: “The Rise of China is the World’s Rich and Colorful Stage”

In an article of May 3, 10:22 local time, Shan Renping (单仁平) of Huanqiu Shibao (“Global Times”) describes Chen Guangcheng as a man who seemed to like his “policial super-role” (超级角色) very much. “Some Western forces” had taken “unusual ways of interfering, and Western public opinion and “some Chinese activists on the internet” had turned Chen into a human-rights brand. In fact, however, ordinary people had to cooperate with the big political powers who made their [own] arrangements.

Chen’s supporters had had a much clearer picture of that than Chen himself, and had hyped his case from an individual grassroot issue into a “microcosm” [literally: miniature, 缩影] of China as a country.

Some Western forces and their supporters in China will always need tools to struggle with China’s current political system, and “luck” and “disaster” become the matter of those who serve as tools. Everything can be distorted and labeled. Such a tool will not be lonely and may enjoy other benefits, too. Of course, if they go too far, they will pay the price.
西方一些力量和他们在中国的支持者们永远需要与中国现行政治体制做斗争的工具，“有幸”或“不幸”成为这个工具的人和事，都会变形，被标签化。做这样的工具，可以不寂寞，也会有其他利益。当然如果他们做过了头，也会付出代价。

Chen was just a very small case on Chinese society’s road ahead, and wouldn’t hurt stability in China, or the Chinese cause of human rights to develop further in a normal way. If they should experience “such a matter” again, China’s officials could be absolutely somewhat more at ease (以后遇到这样的事，中国官方完全可以更坦然些). “Some groups on the microblogs” who “warmed themselves at the fire” were on the fringe and did not represent the attitude of Chinese society.

Western public opinion was often looking for a crop in China, to inflate and exaggerate things. Chen Guangcheng and his supporters on the one hand, and Western public opinion, had benefitted each other this time, to blacken China’s ways.

Shan Renping advises the U.S. embassy to work “in accordance with its functions”, to distance itself from inappropriate activities, and to focus on garnering positive feelings among Chinese mainstream society, rather than act as a support for Chinese extremists.

Can the Chen Guangcheng case subside now? Hopefully. But there are some people inside and outside China who don’t want that. In that case, we will see some more quixotic pipedreams. The rise of China is also the world’s rich and colorful stage.
陈光诚的事情会就此平息吗？希望是。但中国国内和国外都有一些人未必愿意。那就让我们多看一些堂吉诃德式的妄想症好了。中国的崛起也是世间丰富多彩的舞台。

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Update/Related

» None of my Business – Readers’ comments, May 3, 2012

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The Uyghur Human Rights Project

The BoZhu Interviews series is sagging at the moment – then again, I don’t mind, as it doesn’t hurt to have the one with former Deutsche Welle journalist Wang Fengbo at the top of the feed there.

But I would want to ask Henryk Szadziewski for an interview, if he hadn’t just been interviewed anyway – and if all important questions, as far as I can see, hadn’t been asked already.

Meantime, I’ll remain busy with issues of Chinese soft power, and Wu Renhua‘s memories of the Tian An Men 1989 Movement.

Szadziewski’s blog is Uyghurnomics, and Xinjiang Source interviewed him in his capacity as the Uyghur Human Rights Project‘s project manager.

The interview (and a link to Xinjiang Source) can be found here.

The Weeks before June 4 – Seven Demands

« Explanation of this June-4 series approach

« Previous post in this series

Note: I won’t be able to translate all of Wu Renhua‘s document. However, I’ll try to reflect the gist and the spirit of Wu’s account, and to keep the contents I’m reflecting here consistent.

Wikipedia provides a framework of the Tian An Men events from April to June 1989, and Diane Gatterdam is blogging on a today-in-history basis, on C. A. Yeung‘s Under the Jacaranda blog.

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Main Link: 八九天安门事件大记 (Major Daily Events, Tiananmen 1989), by Wu Renhua.

Tuesday, April 18, 1989

On midnight, more than one-thousand students leave the Beijing University campus for a demonstration, and as they reach Diaoyutai Guest House, their number has risen to three-thousand. Foreign journalists and staff from foreign embassies walk along and watch the event. At 1.30, they reach the People’s University (Renmin University) and stop for a while, as nearly one-thousand People’s University students join them. Along the walk, Tsinghua University and other students also join. By now, nearly ten-thousand people have gathered, most of them students who leave again during the demonstrations.

Beijing University demonstrators carry white silk banners of ten meters length and four meters height, with characters like “Soul of China”, “Remembering Comrade Hu Yaobang forever”, signed by “teachers and students from Beijing University and friends”. Students call, on top of their voices, “long live democracy”, “long live liberty”, “down with bureaucracy” and similar slogans, and sing the “Internationale”. The demonstrators reach Tian An Men Square at about 4.30 in the morning and gather at the Monument to the People’s Heroes. A student climbs the monument and shouts: “This action is completely spontaneous and not linked to the [official, party-controlled] Student’s Union (学生会). We have elected our own students’ representatives, who are preparing to talk with the government.”

As the day dawns, several hundreds of Beijing University students who are sitting in front of the Great Hall of the People demand to speak with leaders above the level of the NPC Standing Committee level, and present seven demands:

1. to re-assess Hu Yaobang’s merits and demerits and to affirm their democratic, liberal, tolerant and harmonious points of view
2. thoroughly reject the campaigns against spiritual pollution and against caipitalist liberalism, and correct injustices done to intellectuals
3. make the salaries and all income of the country’s leaders public, act against corrupt officials
4. permit private newspapers, remove censorship, implement freedom of speech
5. increase spending on education, improve the treatment of intellectuals
6. remove the Beijing municipal government’s ten rules concerning demonstrations
7. require the government leaders to report mistakes to the National People’s Congress in a public review and put certain officials’ posts up for re-election

[For comparison, the seven demands as quoted on Wikipedia]

These seven demands had gone through discussion at Beijing University’s law faculty postgraduates’ assembly, chaired by Li Jinjin (李进进).

At 7.30, Wang Dan (王丹) of Beijing University History Faculty, notices that the number of silent protesters is diminuishing, and gives Fang Lizhi’s (方励之) wife Li Shuxian (李淑娴) a phonecall. She puts up a poster at Beijing University’s San Jiao Di [三角地, a place where most student demonstrations passed through during the 1970s and the 1980s. It is also the site of a memorial of Beijing University's 100th anniversary]. After the 9-4 incident, it is the only case the CCP establishes as a manipulative act between Fang Lizhi’s wife and the students’ movement.

At eight in the morning, General Office of the Communist Party of China (中共中央办公厅) and General Office of the State Council’s Bureau for Letters and Calls chief Zheng Youmei (郑幼枚) and others invites Guo Haifeng, Wang Dan and other students representatives to enter the Great Hall of the People and receive their petition there. Guo, Wang etc. demand that the NPC Standing Committee members emerge to have a dialog, while Zheng Youmei replies that this would require certain etiquettes. The students’ representatives state that this dialog had not been satisfactory.

At 5.30, Standing Committee member Liu Yandong and NPC delegates Tao Xiping and Song Shixiong meet the silent protesters’ delegates Guo Haifeng and others, and Guo et al submit a Petition to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee – a petition which mainly contains the seven demands.

At 6.55 p.m., more than three-thousand students from People’s University, Beijing University, Beijing Institute of Technology (北京理工大学) leave their campuses and set out for Tian An Men Square. They arrive there at 8 p.m. – first those who came by bicycle, then those who walked to the square. At 9 p.m., some ten- to twenty-thousand people have gathered on the square, and apart from the silent demonstrators in front of the Great Hall of the People, they gather in front of the Monument to People’s Heroes.

At 10.50 p.m., more than twenty-thousand students and onlookers move to Xinhua Gate, the State Council’s place at Zhongnanhai, and demand a dialog with chief state councillor Li Peng. Li is paying a visit to Hu Yaobang’s family that evening, expressing his appreciation for Hu Yaobang. His family people express their wish for a simple funeral, and that the center will issue a conclusion of his work.

In the afternoon, Nanjing University and Hehai University students have applied for a demonstration permit to the Jiangsu Province Public Security Bureau, stating that more than ten-thousand students from several universities want to gather at the Clock-Tower Square at 1 p.m. on April 9. Reports about activities from Shaanxi Province are also coming in – in Xi’an, the mourning activities are said to spread from the students to society at large.

As Tuesday comes to an end, only Associated Press, among the foreign news providers, has covered activities in Shanghai, according to reference material provided to the CCP leadership. All other reports have remained focused on Beijing. According to Associated Press, the demonstrations have become more political on Tuesday, demanding answers from the government. Li Jinjin [see further above, re seven demands] is quoted as saying that the bureaucracy had got a taste of the people’s power. The students had wanted a dialog with NPC Standing Committee members in charge, and weren’t demanding an immediate response, but they [Standing Committee members] hadn’t dared to show up (今天，学生们的游行逐渐变得越来越带政治性，要求政府对他们提出的七条要求做出答复。学生代表李进进说：官僚们会尝到人民的力量。他说，学生们想同全国人大常委会负责人谈谈要求，而且不会要求立即作出答复，可他们不敢出来).

Continued here »

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Related

» April 27, 1989, Under the Jacaranda, April 27, 2012
» A Frenzy for Freedom, J. Bennett, May 1990/April 2012
» All Highly Quotable, May 20, 2010

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A Blogging Break until Wednesday

I’m taking a break until this coming Wednesday. Latest news and trends have taken a backseat anyway, as I’ve become focused on Wu Renhua‘s June-4 records. In many cases, when I’m reading or translating material from Chinese intellectuals, it’s C. A. Yeung who gets me started. This time is no exception.

Überseemuseum, Bremen (archive)

The June-4 document also seems to “distract” me from my soft-power project – but I don’t feel that it does, really, because there seems to be Chinese potential for soft power – at times when people in the country hold hopes that include economic aspirations, without leaving it there.

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Related

» Inclusive and Exclusive Concepts, April 17, 2012

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The Weeks before June 4, 1989

Wu Renhua (吴仁华) is a former China University of Political Science and Law professor with classical literature as a major. According to a VoA article of May 30, 2010, he belonged to one of the last groups who left Tian An Men Square, in 1989. He first went to Hong Kong during the 6-4 aftermath, and then into American exile. He is the author of two books on the Tian An Men crackdown. From April 15 to June 9, 2011, he kept kind of a “today-in-history” diary  on his Twitter microblog, recording once again the run-up to the massacre on June 4. Later, he turned the single posts into one document.

June 4 isn’t too much of a topic in Western media these days. Obviously, every year when the anniversary approaches, arrives, and passes, there will be some coverage on commemorative sessions planned in mainland China (usually, the state security and censorship make sure that they either don’t happen, or don’t become public), and on events like the annual candellight vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park. But the stories told among Chinese people in their own language, among dissidents, relatives of those killed or injured on June 4, those who take a general interest in the past, and among Chinese people outside mainland China, go beyond Western news articles.

At the same time, the June-4 massacre as remembered on such occasions is only one narrative among many. If there is an official side of the story at all, i. e. one authored by the Chinese Communist Party, it is one mainly for foreigners’ consumption, published by state-controlled media like the English-language “Global Times” edition, or a narrative advocated by Chinese or non-Chinese people who view the massacre as an essential atrocity “to keep China stable”. As C. A. Yeung, a blogger and activist, put it in an interview in October last year:

[T]the so-called pro-democracy faction among overseas Chinese community worldwide has been more or less discredited. The world is now more eager to see a stable China than before the 2008 financial meltdown, to the extent that many world leaders are willing to overlook some rather obvious human rights violations that are happening in China.

Differences with other emerging schools don’t seem to have discouraged June-4 veterans like Wu. According to a Human Rights in China quote from him in 2009, June 4 wasn’t only a major event in Chinese history, but also caused the turn of events in the Soviet Union  and its satellite states, and in all of humankind’s 20th-century history.

If this holds water in a historian’s view isn’t for JR to decide. For sure, the June-4 1989 events preceded similar events in a number of Central and Eastern Europe, later that same year.

Diane Gatterdam has started a series of posts on Under the Jacaranda, about  the weeks leading up to June 4, in 1989. Her posts can be accessed in a row under this tag. I’ll keep reading there and posting here, in a complementary way, to quite an extent, but not necessarily exclusively, translating from Wu Renhua’s recollections.

The approach may not satisfy a historian’s standards, but I am no historian, and one has to start with something. The most important thing is that June 4 and those who hoped until that day, and lost during that night – their hopes, their health, or their lives – are remembered, until historians can freely get to work in China.
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Continued here »

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Related

» Cultural Revolutions Great and Small, April 1, 2012

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Two Difficult Choices: a Festive Barbecue in North Korea, and the Missile Failure’s potential Influence on North Korean Preference Falsification

The Respected Comrade doesn't intend to leave. He is only taking a 90-seconds break.

Main Link: UDN, Singapore

A backup copy will probably remain available on this Australian website (Chinese Newspaper Group), once Zaobao /UDN take their article offline (they usually remove their online articles after a few days).

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The failed launch of a missile spells a blow for North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, Singapore’s United Morning News (UDN, Lianhe Zaobao) quotes Chinese scholars, but not a big crisis for the regime. However, China was once again facing two difficult choices, concerning North Korea. The leaders in Pyongyang hadn’t invited so many foreign news people merely because they had been absolutely certain that the launch would be successful, the paper quotes Central Party School’s North Korea expert Zhang Liangui (张链瑰 or 张琏瑰). Another motivation had been to have the foreign press gathered in North Korea at Kim Il-sung’s 100th-birthday ballyhoo(or publicity event). The failed launch didn’t make the regime look good on the surface, but the propaganda machine could still explain to the domestic public that objective factors such as weather conditions were the cause to this, they could still solemnly commemorate Kim Sung-il’s 100th birtday, and even announce another nuclear test and similar measures to inspire the masses. The UN security council would not necessarily pass a resolution to condemn and sanction North Korea, but issue a statement by the president of the security council, condemning the launch of a long-range missile, instead, UDN quotes Zhang. But China was once again facing a difficult situation, as the U.S., Japan, South Korea and others would strongly advocate a security council resolution that would condemn and sanction North Korea. The issue of which China was to adopt had moved into the focus, and the North Korean issue was therefore turning into an issue of China’s attitude.

One choice was that China would support a resolution draft from the U.S. and Japan, which would earn Beijing praise from the West, but offend North Korea; the second was to use its veto power, which would, in Western eyes, gradually turn China into a supporter of North Korea’s extreme behavior, and a representative of North Korea’s interest which would add to diplomatic and military pressure on China, thus gradually deteriorating the environment for China’s diplomacy; and thirdly, and most likely,  Beijing could advocate a statement by the president of the security council, which, however, wouldn’t curry favor with either side.

No matter if a resolution or a security-council presidential statement condemned North Korea, Pyongyang could react furiously, and even carry ot another nuclear test.  If China kept to its established North-Korea policy, or make some adjustments, wasn’t just a matter of diplomatic and foreign policy, according to Zhang, but also a domestic issue [in China].

Huanqiu Net (Huanqiu Shibao online) is quoted by UDN as in turn quoting Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences researcher and North and South Korea Research Center director Lü Chaoshuo (吕超说) as saying that North Korea’s missile launch was a mudded provocation [or, depending on translation, trick, or move], and its [technical] failure had been no great surprise. Progress that had previously been made in North Korean and American relations, and to some extent in Pyongyang’s relations with Europe, too, and which had led to some easing in Northeast Asia, had been reset to zero by the missile launch. It [the launch, apparently], hadn’t been worth the loss [of these achievements].

Also, just as North Korea’s new regime had been established and as everything had been waiting to be improved, considerable energy and funding had been used by the regime to launch the missile. Given the technological limits, the failure had been quite likely. This failure could, of course, influence the North Korean citizens negatively, and from that perspective, North Korea had been unwise.  It should rather focus on rebuilding and stabilizing the country and society.

The Lü quote would contradict the North Korean regime’s own priorities, which would be quite the reverse, if an unnamed Yonsei professor indirectly quoted by S. C. Denney in this Sino-NK commenter thread is right:

[H]e said that because appeasing the military and satisfying the people’s demand for food, energy and a stable economy are mutually exclusive, Kim Jong-un’s inability to satisfy the latter will be his biggest problem (and potential downfall) in the short-term.

Denney’s own view – differing from the academic whose views he extensively describes in his post which lead to the commenter thread, is that North Korea isn’t really unstable. But for some (counter)revolutionary scenarios more in general, he  also linked to a mathemetical explanation of how people make up their minds between the status quo, or revolution – and how many of them may have previously feigned preference for the status quo, owing to preference falsification. Obviously, given that neither the numbers of open dissidents nor the share of preference falsification among status-quo supporters can be measured, that is no tool to forecast revolution or change.

On April 10, Huanqiu had quoted Zhang Liangui (the party school professor quoted at the beginning of this post) as asking if China needed to resist North Korea if it chose to Pyongyang indeed launched the missile. The article therefore came three days ahead of the atual launch. China’s diplomacy was to be roasted in the resulting tensions between North Korea and its opponents, Zhang suggested.

That had been a galvanizing article last week, Adam Cathcart, also on Sino-NK, noted on Friday. Zhang had described five scenarios in which China, North Korea and all other stakeholders taking different steps to handle the launch, all of them creating different constellations – but in neither of those, China would escape the barbecue.

Zhang’s five barbies have apparently since – after the launch – boiled down to two difficult choices, if the above UDN article quoted him correctly.

Meantime, South Korean warships have searched the failed missiles’ debris in the Yellow Sea, probably to steal the technology.

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Related

» Vows of Loyalty, ABC News, April 14, 2012
» Obama: Not really good at it, Telegraph, Apr 14, 2012
» Say it through the Papers, Dec 25, 2010

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