Zhou Yongkang Awards Heroic Police Collectives and Expresses Four Hopes

Main Link: People’s Daily / Enorth, May 19, 2012. Translated off the reel, and posted right away.

The General Meeting for the National Police Collective Heroic Model Award was held in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Friday. Before the meeting, CCP Central Committee General Secretary, State Chairman and Central Military Commission Chairman Hu Jintao expressed his heart-felt congratulations to the National Police Collective Heroic Model Award collectives and his sincere greetings to all the police and military police who stand at the front line and fight bravely to protect national security and social stability.
全国公安系统英雄模范立功集体表彰大会18日上午在北京人民大会堂举行。会前，中共中央总书记、国家主席、中央军委主席胡锦涛亲切会见全体与会代表，向受到表彰的全国公安系统英雄模范和立功集体表示热烈的祝贺，向奋战在维护国家安全和社会稳定第一线的广大公安民警、武警官兵表示诚挚的问候。

Permanent Politbureau member and State Council Chief Councillor Wen Jiabao, Permanent Member of the Standing Committee of the Politbureau, Deputy State Chairman and Deputy Central Military Commission Chairman Xi Jinping attended. Permanent Politbureau Member and CCP Political and Legislative Affairs Committee Secretary Zhou Yongkang attended the meeting and spoke at the award ceremony.
中共中央政治局常委、国务院总理温家宝，中共中央政治局常委、国家副主席、中央军委副主席习近平参加会见。中共中央政治局常委、中央政法委书记周永康参加会见并在表彰大会上讲话。

At about 9.30 a.m., Hu Jintao and the other central leading comrades entered the Great Hall of the People’s North Hall, came to the middle of the delegates, the entire audience sounded an enthusiastic applause. Hu Jintao et al happily and warmly shook hands with delegates, and had a keepsake photo taken with them.
上午9时30分许，胡锦涛等中央领导同志走进人民大会堂北大厅，来到代表们中间，全场响起热烈掌声。胡锦涛等高兴地同代表们热情握手，并与大家合影留念。

A souvenir photo with Comrade Yongkang (CCTV 新闻联播, main evening news, May 18, 2012). Click picture – video should be online for at least a few days.

Zhou Yongkang said in his speech that under the correct leadership of Hu Jintao as Secretary General, police work had centered around the goal of comprehensively building of a modest-prosperity society, firmly mastering and protecting the general requirements of important times of strategic opportunities. They solidified the leading ruling position of the party, protected the country’s lasting stability and peace, safeguarded the lives and work of the people in peace and contentment, and  served economic and social development, thus making outstanding contributions. A large number of heroic models and advanced collectives had emerged, who completed major security tasks, took part in natural disaster relief, carried out specialized actions, and broad ranks of police didn’t shrink from life-and-death situations, never gave up in the face of numerous difficulties and dangers, and dedicated blood, life, and sweat to write a great song of heroism that shook heaven and earth (感天动地).
周永康在大会上讲话，他说，党的十七大以来，在以胡锦涛同志为总书记的党中央正确领导下，全国公安机关紧紧围绕全面建设小康社会的总目标，牢牢把握维护重要战略机遇期社会稳定的总要求，为巩固党的执政地位、维护国家长治久安、保障人民安居乐业、服务经济社会发展作出了突出贡献。特别是在完成一系列重大安保任务、处置一系列重大突发事件、参与一系列重特大自然灾害抢险救援、开展一系列专项打击整治行动中，广大公安民警生死面前不退缩，千难万险不放弃，用鲜血、生命和汗水谱写了一曲曲感天动地的英雄赞歌，涌现出一大批英雄模范和先进集体。实践证明，公安队伍是一支忠诚可靠、能打硬仗的队伍，是一支正气浩荡、英雄辈出的队伍，不愧为坚强的共和国之盾。

Zhou Yongkang emphasized that this year is especially meaningful for our country’s development in that our Party will hold its 18th National Congress. Creating a harmonious and stable environment for this a victorious event was the public security organs’ primary task. Public security organs on all levels needed to clearly understand the complicated nature of the current international and domestic situation and the particular importance of maintaining stability this year, and with the meeting with Secretary General Hu Jintao and other central comrade-leaders as a collectively motivating force, they should improve their abilities to combat crime, to serve the people, and to protect national security and social stability. To accelerate the building of a country under socialist rule by law, to actively build a socialist and harmonious society, and to ensure the timely and comprehensive building of a modest-prosperity society, new contributions needed to be made.
周永康强调，今年是我国发展进程中具有特殊重要意义的一年，我们党将召开十八大。为十八大胜利召开创造和谐稳定的社会环境，是公安机关的首要政治任务。各级公安机关和广大公安民警要清醒认识当前国际国内形势的复杂性，清醒认识做好今年维护稳定工作的特殊重要性，以胡锦涛总书记等中央领导同志接见公安英模和立功集体为动力，进一步提高打击犯罪、服务人民、维护国家安全和社会稳定的能力水平，为加快建设社会主义法治国家、积极构建社会主义和谐社会、确保如期全面建成小康社会作出新贡献。

Zhou Yongkang expressed for hopes to the public security authorities and the police:

1. That they be steadfast in their ideals and beliefs, and forever preserve their political qualities, deepen the development of political and legal core values in their actions and activities, adhere to the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics, maintain the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, maintain the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, firmly establish a concept of socialist rule by law, that they be  unswerving builders and defenders of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
2. [more practical, work-related aspects, plus being close friends of the masses ... .] That they sing and sound (唱响) the People’s Police for the People theme, give their best in working practically for the people, solve problems, do good things, and deepen interaction on good terms.
3. That they [keep holding] the Three Assessment Activities (“三访三评” 活动), deepen their understanding of the problems of the masses, build harmonious police-to-people relations while solving mass difficulties, win the trust and support of the masses in the process of safeguarding their rights and interests, and that they continuously improve public credibility and the masses’ degree of satisfaction.
4. That they  maintain their determination for reform and innovation, constantly promote the development and progress of public security work. That they firmly establish a people-oriented (以人为本) concept that puts service first that carries out action and prevention in a coordinated manner and that puts prevention first. That they consolidate the foundations, focus on long-term concepts, progressively improve and perfect work mechanisms, that they guide police work in accordance with the will of the people, guarantee police work by systematic standards, by effective prevention and control, precise action, scientific management and modern technology improve police work, and that they constantly improve the scientification of police work.

周永康向公安机关和公安民警提出4点希望：一要坚定理想信念，永葆政治本色。深入开展政法干警核心价值观教育实践活动，坚持中国特色社会主义道路，坚持中国特色社会主义理论体系，坚持中国特色社会主义制度，牢固树立社会主义法治理念，坚定不移地做中国特色社会主义事业的建设者、捍卫者。二要增强大局意识，忠实履行各项法定职责。主动服务第一要务，认真落实第一责任，依法打击各类违法犯罪活动，切实解决群众反映强烈的突出治安问题，加强和改进人口、治安、交通、消防、出入境等公安行政管理工作，积极探索对流动人口、特殊人群、信息网络、“两新”组织服务管理的新路子，促进经济社会又好又快发展。三要坚持执法为民，永远做人民群众的贴心人。唱响“人民公安为人民”的主旋律，尽心竭力为群众办实事、解难事、做好事，深化大接访、大走访和“三访三评”活动，在体察群众疾苦中加深对人民的感情，在解决群众困难中构建和谐警民关系，在维护群众权益中赢得人民的信任支持，不断提高公安机关的公信力和人民群众的满意度。四要锐意改革创新，不断推动公安工作发展进步。牢固树立以人为本、服务为先的理念，打防结合、预防为主的理念，固本强基、注重长远的理念，进一步改革完善警务工作机制，以民意引导警务，以制度规范保障警务，以有效防控、精确打击、科学管理和现代科技手段提升警务，不断提高公安工作的科学化水平。

Zhou Yongkang demanded that party committees and governments at all levels strengthen their leadership of police work under the new situation, to support the public security organs in their performance in strict accordance with the law, to coordinate solutions of problems and difficulties timely, to conscientiously implement the political building of the police, to administrate police seriously, to manage the police forces well by  taking steps in all fields of preferential treatment of police policies, by building and making good use of the police, and to conscientously shoulder the major policies in the areas of maintaining stability and of safeguarding the peace.
周永康要求各级党委、政府加强对新形势下公安工作的领导，支持公安机关严格依法履行职责，及时协调解决遇到的困难和问题，认真落实政治建警、从严治警、从优待警的各项政策措施，建设好、使用好、管理好公安队伍，切实担负起维护一方稳定、确保一方平安的重大政治责任。

General Office of the CCP director, State Council Secretary and State Councillor Ma Kai attended the meeting.  State Councillor and Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu^*) attended and presided the meeting.
中共中央书记处书记、中央办公厅主任令计划，国务委员、国务院秘书长马凯参加会见。国务委员、公安部部长孟建柱参加会见并主持大会。

The award decisions were announced, and National Police Collective Heroic Model Awards were given. Hebei Provincial Highway Traffic Police (Baoding Detachment detachment heads Jian Zhuozhou and Gu Huaigang, Hubei Province Wuhan City Public Security Bureau Hanyang Divisional office Zhoutou Street local police station deputy chief Wang Qun, Gansu Province Lanzhou City Public Security Bureau criminal police’s Zhang Jingang and other spoke on behalf of the prize winners [i. e. prize-winning collectives] and took the prizes.
会上宣读了表彰决定，并向受到表彰的全国公安系统英雄模范和立功集体颁奖。河北省公安厅高速公路交警总队保定支队副支队长兼涿州大队大队长古怀岗、湖北省武汉市公安局汉阳分局洲头街派出所副所长王群、甘肃省兰州市公安局刑警支队一大队大队长张金刚等代表获奖者发言。

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Note

^*) A number of reports have recently suggested that Meng Jianzhu had effectively taken control of what had previously been Zhou Yongkang‘s central responsibilities. However, it should be noted that Zhou Yongkang’s downfall has been anticipated in the foreign press for many weeks, and the sources seem to be anonymous, for obvious reasons. Without official confirmation, or with obvious shifts in “public-security” policies, I don’t see a lot of evidence for Zhou “falling from power”, but it might be plausible that he wouldn’t involved in investigating the cases of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai. That alone, if true, would suggest quite a loss of control, and possibly the beginning of the end to his career.

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Related

» Social Management, Febr 21, 2011

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Experts: How to Win Friends Abroad, and to Lose them at Home

Huanqiu Shibao quotes the gist of what ten academics said in a Central Party School discussion on May 5. This post contains translations from four of the quotes, and a few comments from the Huanqiu readership.

Wang Fan (王帆, Professor, Director of the Institute of International Relations, and Assistant President, China Foreign Affairs University):

In terms of power and politics in Asia, the cold-war mentality won’t go away. China should reduce the negative effects of cold-war mentality, manage crises, and take preventive measures against crises. In the framework of the maintained status quo, a consensus with America should be worked out. On the one hand, multilateral security cooperation should be strengthened, on the other, untraditional security cooperation should be strengthened, and the East Asia Kyousei Forum (东亚共生) model be used, to solve issues of balanced development in East Asia.
从亚洲地区权力与政治的现状来看，冷战思维是不可能消除的，中国应减少冷战思维的负面影响，管控危机、预防危机。在维持亚洲现状的情况下与美国达成共识。一方面加强多边安全合作，另一方面加强非传统安全合作，充分利用东亚共生的现象，解决好东亚均衡发展问题。

Zhang Yansheng (张燕生, the Institute for International Economics Research of the National Development and Reform Commission’s academic-commission secretary):

In the next few years, according to the current pace of development, the size of China’s economy will overtake America’s. During this process, there will be competition between China and America, and China  [correction, May 12: America] will do everything in its power to hold China back. This is a critical stage for China as a country. To respond to these unfavorable prospects, China needs to change its development pattern and establish a pattern which lends support to a order and to a legal system. From an export-oriented economy, it must internationalize [in terms of] talent, markets, industry, capital etc., strategically and structurally link China with the international systems, and structural transformation is the core here.
未来几年，按照现有的发展速度，中国的经济规模将会超过美国。在这个进程中，中美会出现竞争，美国会千方百计地阻止中国。因此，对中国来说，这是一个国家发展的关键时期。中国若要应对这一不利前景，必须改变前30年的发展模式，建立一个基于规则和法制的发展模式，由外向型经济转变为人才、市场、产业、资本等的国际化，在体制、战略和结构上与国际制度接轨，其中体制转变是核心。

Shao Feng, (邵峰, CASS Global Economics and Politcs Research Institute’s Strategy Office director):

A country’s overall level of development is the actual embodiment of its soft power. Four international strategic issues urgently need research and solutions:

• the issue of strategic timing, how China should seize its opportunities and solve issues inherited from history
• the issue of China having too few friends internationally, of how to win more friends through the establishment of common values and common benefit
• the issue of raising China’s international image, and
• the issue of building the national economy and society.

国家整体发展水平才是国家软实力的体现。中国国际战略研究急需研究解决以下四个课题：一是战略时机问题，中国应如何抓住时机，解决历史遗留问题；二是中国在世界上朋友太少，如何通过建立共同价值观和共同利益，在国际社会争取更多朋友；三是提升中国国际形象；四是加强国家经济、社会等建设。

Wang Hongxu (王红续, Central Party School International Strategic Research and Chinese Diplomacy Research Office director):

In the definition of international strategies [an international strategy], the domestic environment and the international environment are equally important. China’s current unbalanced development and cultural soft power stays far behind its economic development, and its position in international public opinion and  discourse dominance [also: the right to speak - 话语权] is weak. In view of that, China still needs to practise, on the global stage, the basic strategy defined in the 1980s. Obviously, there need to be adjustments in accordance with new situations and new characteristics. China hasn’t yet achieved an international cultural strategy, and that has to change.
在制定国际战略时，国内环境和国际环境同样重要。中国目前的发展不平衡，文化软实力大大滞后于经济发展，在国际舆论和话语权方面处于弱势地位。鉴于以上情况，中国在上世纪80年代制定的基本战略还需要继续实行。当然，要根据新形势和新特点，进行适当调整。目前，中国还没有成体系的国际文化战略，这一情况需要改变。

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Comments from the Huanqiu Shibao readership:

It only takes very small numbers of troops to regain ones territories and territorial waters! Why all the pondering? In the War to Resist America and to Aid Korea, and the self-defense strike against Vietnam, it took very few troops! These so-called experts are apparently all women! — There is no masculine disposition here! This becomes especially apparent in the ideological methods. Take these [experts] and put them next to Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping to compare their ideological methods would do too much honor [to these experts].
收复自己的领土领海而动用非常少量的军队!用得着这样思前想后的吗?和在抗美援朝战场及对越反自卫击战投入的兵力比 真的只需动用非常少量的军队!这几位所谓的专家应该都是女性!—没有男子汉的气质与胆量!特别是体现在思维方式上更是如如此 当然啦 拿这几位和毛泽东,邓小平去比较思维方式确实是太高看其人了.
– 21 minutes ago

This bunch of traitors is misleading the citizens! Stomp [them]!
这群汉奸又在误导国民。脚踩！！！
– 26 minutes ago

In reply to the previous comment:
Correct. 正确
– 13 minutes ago.

[A rather sophisticated comment - and too sophisticated for JR to grasp its first line (谁想打仗让谁上好了)]:

[...] A bunch of screaming and chattering lunatics. Do you know the cruelty of war?
谁想打仗让谁上好了,－群哇哇乱叫的疯子,知道战争的残酷吗?
– one hour ago

I can’t translate the replies to the latter comment, but neither of them appears to be friendly, but one of the three (possibly all the same person) writes:

In the past, territory was given away in exchange for peace, but in the end, there was still war. Cruelty? I would rather die than live without dignity, sovereignty is fought for, it’s not resistance with each passing day.
你就是一sb，以前用领土换和平还不是最后要打仗，残酷？情愿死也不要无尊严的活着，主权是打来的，不是天天抗议
– one hour ago.

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Related

» First School Lesson: Patriotic Essays, Sept 1, 2009
» Concerning Traitors, Aug 25, 2009
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Update/Related

» Orgasm is Easy, Rectified.Name, May 12, 2012

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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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The Weeks before June 4 – Hu Yaobang’s Funeral

« An explanation of this 1989 series

» Previous post in this series

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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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Saturday, April 22, 1989

At ten a.m., the officially arranged mourning ceremony for Hu Yaobang in the Great Hall of the People is held. State chairman Yang Shangkun (杨尚昆) chairs the ceremony, CCP general secretary Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳) delivers the eulogy. Fifteen minutes before the ceremony, Deng Xiaoping has arrived, and Zhao Ziyang, Li Peng, Wan Li, Qiao Shi and other leaders are also arriving. Beijing’s communist leaders have turned out in full strength.

There is news that Hu Yaobang’s family has refused to let the central advisory commission vice director Bo Yibo (薄一波) and central commission for discipline inspection of the CCP deputy secretary Wang Heshou (王鹤寿) attend the ceremony. Bo and Wang had been stricken by the “61 Traitors” case. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Hu Yaobang, then the CCP central committee organization department ‘s director, had overturned the verdicts against them despite facing strong pressure [not to do so], but at the end of 1986, when Hu Yaobang was removed as secretary general, Bo and Wang, ungratefully (忘恩负义), were the main villains [people who worked against Hu]. At about 11.40 a.m., the ceremony ends, and Qiao Shi, Hu Qili, Song Ping, and head of the party’s general affairs secretariat Wen Jiabao (温家宝), with Hu Yaobang’s wife Li Zhao (李昭), accompany Hu’s coffin to Babaoshan crematorium. Babaoshan Cemetery is some 15 kilometers from Tian An Men Square, people crowd along Chang An Lu and on the buildings next to it, many wave to the car. Hu Yaobang’s son Hu Deping (胡德平) puts his two hands in front of his chest, expressing his thanks to the crowds in a traditional way. Some three-thousand police and military are deployed at Tian An Men Square and Chang An East Road.

Li Peng notes in his “June-4 diary”^*) that Beijing police representatives talked with students’ delegates at 3 a.m. and asked them to move eastward on the square, so that the cars at the eastern gate of the Great Hall of the People could get through, and that the students agreed.

A request by the students to dispatch delegates to attend the mourning ceremony was declined. Yuan Zhiming (远志明), a co-author of the “River Elegy” documentary movie, and other writers and authors are on Tian An Men Square, too.

At ten, as the live broadcast announces the beginning of the ceremony, tens of thousands of students fall silent, and stand as a mark of respect. They sing along the national anthem, some are in tears, and the atmosphere is solemn and respectful. Students on Chang An Street (West) who hadn’t been able to enter the square are wearing black armbands, white flowers, and raise banners with inscriptions like “Hu Yaobang, Beijing University mourns you” and “the University of Political Science and Law pays its respect”.

Tens of thousands hope to accompany Hu Yaobang on his last path. As they learn that the car with the coffin has already left, they become excited and angry. Three demands are made in a petition:
(1) that the car with the coffin drives once around the square, (2) a dialogue with Li Peng, and (3) open coverage of the students’ mourning activities on this day.

At 12.50, Beijing University students Guo Haifeng (郭海峰), Zhang Zhiyong (张智勇), and University of Political Science and Law student Zhou Yongjun (周勇军), holding the petition [Correction, May 2: the previously written seven-point petition, in fact], kneel on the entrance stairs of the Great Hall of the People, and for a long time, there is no response. Tens of thousands of students and onlookers express deep sympathies, and once in a while, shouts are heard. A great number of military police and PLA troops encircle the entrance area, and the square is full of people. Among the comments among the crowd, there are lines such as “this is what the officials’ fear has turned into” (当官的怕学生怕成这样). The crowd begins to mock the troops, some students and other people begin moving forward, and frictions with the officers on duty occur. The pushes, back and forth, lasts for about fifteen minutes.

Nobody emerges from the hall to take the petition, which angers the students, and University of Political Science and Law, Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强), hits his own head with the megaphone he carries until blood runs across his face.

Taiwan TV coverage, April 22, 1989 (click picture for video).

After 13.50, more than ten-thousand students from Beijing University, University of Political Science and Law, Bei Hang University, People’s University etc. disperse in an organized way to return to their universities. According to a leading student from Beijing University, the students’ representatives haven’t been met, and nobody was prepared for a dialog with them. To maintain the students’ safety and the national situation, they had decided to return to the university strikes.

Apart from the Beijing municipality military police on duty around the Great Hall of the People, the 13th regiment of the 3rd Capital Garrison had been dispatched to the scene. During the 1989 movement, there will be three times for them to enter Beijing, and after June-4, the central military commission will be awarded a Collective Merit Citation Class One (集体一等功).

A growing number of posters emerges on the campuses, reacting to the events of the day, emphasizing the need to work out strategies and to find effective ways of organizing petitioning, and statements like “Today’s China is too dirty, and this is the time for a great clean-up”.

Li Peng’s “June-4 diary”:

This morning, a serious clash occured in Xi’an. Criminal elements pounded the provincial government compound, the procuratorate, and the court building. Cars, garages and oil depots were arsoned and a clothing shop on a main street looted. The Shaanxi provincial party committee sent a telegram to the central government: Shaanxi police isn’t sufficient, we request support from the center. Four-thousand PLA troops are going to assist Xi’an.

To be continued, probably on Saturday.

Continued here »

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Notes

^*) I heard about the “diary” in 2010, but I don’t know if that document can be considered authentic.

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Related

» April 22, 1989, Under the Jacaranda, April 22, 2012
» Cultural Revolutions, Great and Small, April 1, 2012

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The Weeks before June 4 – a Trip to North Korea

« An explanation of this 1989 series

« Previous post in this series

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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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Wednesday, April 19, 1989

Some two thousand students stay in front of Xinhua Gate overnight, even after three in the morning. But it is quite a reduction from the peak of the evening before, when there were more than twenty-thousand students and onlookers. At 4.20 a.m., a loudspeaker announcement warns of bad elements trying to create trouble, and wanting to use people for their own ends. This was no longer a normal mourning activity, says the message. A great number of police cars arrive, plus two buses, which take students who still stayed on at Xinhua Gate back to their campuses without incidents. In the afternoon, the slogans, besides praise for late Hu Yaobang, begin to include calls for unfolding the May-4 tradition¹⁾.

At 9 p.m., several ten-thousand people have gathered on Tian An Men Square again. Public security authorities inform the public by loudspeaker messages that wreathes may be taken to the Monument of the People’s Heroes, but not to Zhongnanhai. Around 10 p.m., police stops students from flying seven hydrogen balloons which carry the inscription “Hu Yaobang isn’t Dead”. Xinhua Gate is out of reach for demonstrations, as it has been sealed off by police.

In the evening, the Democratic Salon holds a session at Beijing University’s San Jiao Di [explanation here, underneath the seven demands]. It is initially moderated by the university’s history department student Wang Dan, and then by Wu Yunxue (武运学), as Wang Dan’s voice is getting hoarse. Ding Xiaoping (丁小平), Xiong Yan (熊焱), Feng Congde (封从德), Yang Tao (杨涛) and others give speeches. The students present at the session decide to depose the [official] Students’ Union and to establish a Steering Commission for an Autonomous Beijing University Students’ Union.

The CCP Central Committee announces that a mourning ceremony for Hu Yaobang will be held in the Great Hall of the People on April 22, at ten a.m.. The ceremony will be broadcast live by China National Radio and CCTV.

Fang Lizhi (方励之), researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories (北京天文台) at the time, is interviewed by a Hong Kong reporter on the phone. The students have the right to make demands, and to express them peacefully on demonstrations, he says. He supports the students, and so do intellectuals and public opinion in general. He has no direct links with the students; the students strife for democracy and freedom is spontaneous, with views of their own. He isn’t directly participating in their actions.

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Thursday, April 20, 1989

At midnight, at the Democratic Salon at Beijing University, Wang Dan announces the foundation of the “Beijing University United Students’ Union Steering Committee”, which is to replace the officially-controlled Beijing University Students’ Union. The steering committee’s seven members are Ding Xiaoping, Yang Tao, Wang Dan, Yang Dantao (杨丹涛), Xiong Yan, Feng Congde, and Chang Jin (常劲, sometimes also spelled Chang Jing). The committee recommends that students from every university organize themselves and elect delegates to ensure a unified leadership for the movement.

At peak times, there are now up to fifty- or sixty-thousand people on Tian An Men Square.

Zhongnanhai is sealed off [apparently to prevent further demonstrators to get to Xinhua Gate], and loudspeaker messages at 3.45 in the morning warn the about 300 students who are still in front of Xinhua Gate that if the “small minority of people” still hold out there, the consequences will solely be their own responsibility. At about 4 a.m., military police disperses the several hundred students and forces them on buses. Some don’t want to get on the buses and for the first time, there is fighting.

Hong Kong’s Express (Kuai Bao) reports that student delegates from Beijing University, the People’Äs University and the University of Political Science and Law who had regular talks with the authorities, but there hasn’t been news from them since they had entered Zhongnanhai at two a.m.. Students are losing patience.

At 3 p.m., protests emerge at Beijing University, against the beating of a University of Political Science and Law student, Wang Zhiyong, at Xinhua Gate early that day. The student’s bloody clothes are put on display at Wang’s university.

Deng Xiaoping, in his capacity as the CCP’s central military commission, decides to call troops into Beijing to reinforce the police and military police in Beijing. Troops dispatched are from the 3rd Capital Garrison Division (Police), and from the 38th Army (belonging to the Beijing Military Region).

In the morning, vice chief state councillor Tian Jiyun (田纪云) meets party secretary general Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳) and suggests that Zhao should change his plan to leave for a visit to North Korea on April 23. Tian is the only cadre Zhao brought with him to Beijing²⁾, from Sichuan. Zhao says that he has thought about that, too, but he believes that to change his plans would suggest to the world outside that the political situation was unstable. He therefore sticks with his travel plan.

Students come in from Tianjin, by train, fifty on them this Thursday evening. More than one-hundred have bought train tickets and will arrive on Friday to take part in a demonstration in Beijing.

Demonstrations are reported from Anhui Province, and in Nanjing, at 10.30 p.m., more than three-thousand students leave the Nanjing University campus for demonstrations at the Jiangsu Province government buildings.

In Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, some 2,300 people charge ahead for the entrance of the provincial government building. More than 200 are arrested by military police. An official statement says that very few organized students had been among the troublemakers, and that the majority had been “young people waiting for work”³⁾, workers, people without fixed duties, and mostly young.

Continued here »

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Notes

¹⁾ See last paragraph – a quote from the Hong Kong Standard – there. The May-Fourth movement of 1919 is canonized in Chinese history recording, as a starting point for national renewal and for patriotism, and to invoke this tradtion usually helps to add legitimacy to ones own actions.

²⁾ 待业青年 (young people waiting for employment) remained a euphemism for youth unemployment in the 1990s. Basically, the Shaanxi provincial government communique distinguished between “good-for-nothings” and students – in the early days or weeks of the 1989 movement, there seemed to be a wide-spread reluctance among officials to condemn the students’ agenda, not only among cadres close to Zhao Ziyang. This initial sacrosanctity was possibly owing to the glorification of the May-19th movement in China’s official history records, and also to a switch in the CCP’s coalition-building, away from the peasant and working class towards the intellectuals, as (particularly explicitly) described by Chinese academic Kang Xiaoguang – cited there.

³⁾ It probably goes without saying that Zhao Ziyang, general secretary of the CCP at the time, was rather sympathetic towards the students’ movement, and certainly not willing to unleash the army on them. Wu Renhua, who wrote the Tian An Men 1989 records I’m quoting from in these posts, sees a particular degree of trust between Zhao and Tian, because they worked together in Sichuan Province, before Zhao was promoted to Beijing.

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Related

» April 20, 1989, Under the Jacaranda, April 20, 2012
» April 19, 1989, Under the Jacaranda, April 19, 2012
» Zhao Ziyang’s Memoirs, New York Times, May 14, 2012

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Chen Guangcheng, Rebiya Kadeer, and Chinese Tradition

Chen Guangcheng and Rebiya Kadeer have something in common: they seem to embody what the CCP itself likes to sell to foreigners as “the Chinese people’s strife for a better life”. Chen became a lawyer of sorts, despite his blindness. Kadeer, an Uyghur, became a successful business woman. That was how she was portrayed by CCP propaganda, anyway.

Lu Zhishen pulls a willow tree. (Click picture for source.)

Both, at some time during their careers, found themselves at odds with the Chinese Communist Party. They still are.

A too idealistic view? Maybe – but that’s what narratives are about. That’s probably why the Water Margin, one of the Chinese classics, came to my mind when I heard about Chen Guangcheng’s escape from his “house arrest” in Shandong Province. Mount Liang, where the novel is set, is located in Shandong Province, too.

The narrative here is this (more or less): 108 outlaws form a sizeable army (officials at the time would refer to them as a gang, of course), the outlaws become pretty convincing (illegal) military personalities, they teach the imperial armies lesson after lesson, and are then – as usual with successful rebels – granted an amnesty, and coopted to defend the Chinese empire.

The rebel idealism is one narrative – the one of co-option is another. They seem to complement each other. That China’s intellectuals have been co-opted by the CCP has been frequently said. Kang Xiaoguang suggested in 2007 that the CCP had replaced farmers and workers as the country’s elites, and chose the intellectuals instead:

However, the relationship between the intellectual elite and the CCP has gone through twists and turns. There were constant conflicts between the two in the 1980s, which gradually died out after the 1990s. Why did the intellectuals stop making noise? Some say it is due to heavy-handed suppression while others say that the intellectuals have been bought off. Indeed, suppression has never stopped, and has been dreadful, too. In the mid-1990s, the government started a policy of massive buy-off. For instance, there has been a marked increase in the outlay for education and research, and much better working and living conditions for teaching and research staff. However, suppression and buy-off cannot fully explain the change in the intelligentsia. Otherwise the intelligentsia would not be the intelligentsia any more. No, there are deeper reasons for this change of attitude. First, the Chinese government continued the reform and opening-up policy in and after 1992, which was what the intelligentsia wanted. [...] »

Kang’s explanation goes beyond Wu Renhua’s description of how CCP cooption works. Wu, in his Tian An Men 1989 tweets of 2011, wrote that the CCP learned its lesson from 1989, and bought the intellectuals off, with 1,800,000,000 Yuan RMB allocated to Tsinghua, Beijing University, as teacher subsidies which were spent within three years.

That may create stability, at least superficially. But it also rots civil society.

Soft power comes from values, Chinese intellectuals keep stating. But when values begin to resist state power, they seem to become irreconcilable, in China.

Many people who allow the party establishment to buy them off will hate Chen Guangcheng. Others will silently admire him – after hours, and without consequence.

That’s tradition.

The Weeks before June 4 – Towards the Sun

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

« previous post in this series, and an explanation of my approach to regiving Wu Renhua’s document

Monday, April 17, 1989

From the afternoon on, larger-scale activities than before to mourn Hu Yaobang spread from the university campuses to Tian An Men Square. In big and medium-sized cities nationwide, mourning activities are also becoming larger. At about 1 p.m., more than 600 teachers and students from China University of Political Science and Law move towards Tian An Men Square, along the Second Ring Road, led by young teachers like Chen Xiaoping, Xiong Jining, and Wu Renhua. It is the first demonstration by the 1989 popular movement. More details [in Chinese] here.  Some of the participating China University of Political Science and Law students later become a backbone of the students’ movement, like Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强), Xiang Xiaoji 项小吉, head of the Beijing Universities’ Students’ Dialog Delegation), Zhou Yongjun (周勇军, Beijing Students Autonomous Federation chairman), the Students Autonomous Federation’s first secretary Wang Zhixin (王志新, listed by the Ministry of Public Security as one of the 21 student leaders), Wang Zhiqing (王志清, also listed as one of the 21 student leaders by the public security ministry, and unaccounted for ever since the end of the June-4 movement).

At 5 p.m., there are nine wreathes in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, signed by a number of students from Beihang University (aka Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), teachers and students from Beijing University, teachers and students from Beijing Normal University, by all post-graduates from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and by a cadre from the China University of Political Science and Law.

By 7 p.m., some two- to three-thousand people have assembled at the Tian An Men Square monument, and mostly students read out memorial speeches. After midnight, there are still between two- and three-hundred students who don’t want to leave the place.

In Shanghai, more than one-thousand (mostly) Fudan University students have moved to the government buildings and demanded talks with city leaders. They disperse by about 4 a.m. next morning. The authorities, led by Shanghai party secretary Jiang Zemin, issue a notice, stipulating that memorial activities for Hu Yaobang have to be conducted within the respective work units (danwei), to safeguard normal work and studies, stability and unity. The notice also calls for vigilance, concerning bad elements who could seize the opportunity to instigate disturbances. On Monday evening, more than one-thousand students from Tianjin’s Nankai University also leave their campus for a demonstration, singing the Internationale, the national anthem, plus the military anthem of the PLA (我们的队伍向太阳)¹⁾, and calling slogans like “Down with dictatorship”, “long live democracy”, and “long live liberty”. Demonstrations are also reported from Hunan Province.

At People’s University (aka Renmin University) in Beijing, the “Some Suggestions from Beijing University, Tsinghua University, People’s University, and Normal University” document emerges, with the following main content:

• making Tian An Men Square the focus of elegiac couplet and wreaths
• the establishment of a new, democratic order
• review of major mistakes that emerged during the ten years of reform, and
• the removal of those responsible for the mistakes from office.

The Hong Kong Standard, in a news report headlined “Hu Yaobang’s death believed to revive reformist faction”²⁾, writes that

The movement for democracy and human rights is growing by the day, and following the May-Fourth 70th anniversary, its momentum will only expand further [...] The students from Beijing’s universities, in their activities to mourn Hu Yaobang, may spontaneously organize activities to make demands for broadening democracy.

Continued here »
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Note

¹⁾ PLA performing the song on August 1, 2007 (video), lyrics in English (“Facing towards the Sun”, Wikipedia).
²⁾ The Standard (HK) most probably published this report in English – the above is my English translation from the way Wu Renhua quoted the report in Chinese.

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Related

» “Our Opportunity had Arrived”, Under the Jaracanda, April 17, 2012
» Hu is Popular, April 17, 2010

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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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