First Published: Frontline, Vol. 7, No. 2, July 3, 1989.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
Two weeks after ordering troops into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese leadership is moving decisively to entrench its policy of resistance to democratization.
To ensure “hard-line” control of the Communist Party (CPC) structure, a central committee plenum was convened June 23 and a new general secretary chosen to replace Zhao Ziyang, who had been too sympathetic to the student-led protests. To intimidate popular opposition, a nationwide “no mercy” campaign of arrests and executions has been launched against those accused of participation in the pro-democracy movement. And to bolster the leadership’s claim that the mass demonstrations were a cover for counter-revolution, the government has issued a barrage of propaganda, including an official history of the protests entitled “The Flag Must Be Bright to Go Against the Turmoil” released to Chinese bookstores June 21.
The CPC central committee meeting was shrouded in secrecy and only sketchy details of the results were available at Frontline press time. However, it was announced that the plenum had selected a new party general secretary, Jiang Zemin, Jiang, Shanghai party leader who directed the crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrations in that city, is reputed to favor the same political direction for China advocated by actual-but-not-formal CPC top leader Deng Xiaoping: continued market-oriented economic reform but not political democratization. Rumors circulated among diplomats and journalists in Beijing that more well-known (and in practical terms more powerful) leaders had declined the post of general secretary, indicating that the Deng grouping’s control of the CPC is still not complete and political battles within the party may not be over. Zhao, meanwhile, was formally ousted after being criticized for “supporting turmoil and the splitting of the party.”
Besides officially taking the CPC’s top post, the grouping around Deng simultaneously tightened its hold on the central party propaganda organ, the People’s Daily. The former director and the editor, who had been in charge during the brief period when the paper gave full coverage to the protest movement and portrayed it in a favorable light, have been removed “for reasons of health.” The new director, Gao Di, is reported to be close to Prime Minister Li Peng, and the new editor, Shao Huaze, was previously director of propaganda in the political department of the People’s Liberation Army. The first issues of People’s Daily under Gao and Shao emphasized the importance of sharp struggle against “bourgeois liberalization,” and placed the government’s repression of the pro-democracy movement in the context of “class struggle ... still going on.” The idea that class struggle remains a significant factor in socialist China has rarely appeared in CPC statements since the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Among the broader population, the Chinese authorities have followed up the assault on Tiananmen Square with another form of political and physical massacre. Over 2,000 people have been arrested and 10 executed in Shanghai and Beijing after one-day trials and rapid rejection of their appeals. Seventeen more people were executed in Jinan, but it was not clear if all of them were charged with actions connected with the pro-democracy protests. The executions were accompanied by television broadcasts showing young men with heads shaven, their names and crimes posted on signs around their necks and their hands tied “airplane-style” behind their backs after their arrests.
So far, all of those executed have been workers. The government seems extremely anxious to stabilize the workforce, but hesitant to risk creating student martyrs. Campuses have been combed, however, and a list of 21 “most wanted” student leaders issued, of whom six are now in custody. And on June 23, the government issued an all-points arrest bulletin for seven prominent intellectuals, including the head of the government’s own Institute for Restructuring the Economy, Chen Yizi.
While there were no further executions in the four days just before Frontline’s presstime, Prime Minister Li Peng pledged that “Anyone who has conducted beating, looting and robbery, or took part in murdering soldiers and police, no matter if he is a student or not, will be dealt with without mercy.”
Along with the arrests and executions, the government unfolded a massive propaganda campaign to rewrite the story of what happened in Tiananmen Square June 3-4. Authorities took quick advantage of the confusion and chaos that reigned that night, and the ability to arrest and “wring the real truth” from eyewitnesses who had been shown on television talking to the Western press.
The official story is that the PLA had done no killing at all in Tiananmen Square, that troops only defended themselves against violent attacks by protesters, and that the majority of casualties had come from the “heroic” military ranks. The democratic movement, in this version, is painted as a group of “counter-revolutionaries, ruffians and thugs,” in league with international capitalism in the West and Taiwan. The story is promoted via television interviews with individuals retracting earlier statements and confessing sins against the party and populace; and by pictures of demonstrators attacking members of the army and the police. And in one of history’s quickest rewrites, the official recounting of the protest movement as a counter-revolutionary conspiracy went on sale June 23.
The crackdown has strained China’s ties with the U.S. and the question of how matters will finally shake down is far from settled. For its part, the Bush administration is balancing two concerns. On the one hand, it is more than happy to have ammunition for a propaganda offensive against socialism, especially since the U.S. President has been getting the worst of it in his international battle for hearts and minds with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This consideration pushes Washington toward stronger actions against China, as does the heavy lobbying being carried out by Chinese students in the U.S. and the main currents of U.S. public opinion.
On the other hand, it wasn’t concern for democracy and human rights that has made China Washington’s favorite socialist country since 1972: it was a combination of new economic opportunities in the world’s most populous nation and Beijing’s willingness to cooperate, to varying degrees, in political and even military efforts against the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. Bush continues to place high priority on trying to ensure that these pillars of what he calls “the enduring relationship” between the U.S. and China do not get disrupted. At least to this point, this factor has predominated in the administration’s concrete actions.
Thus, in contrast to the massive sanctions that followed Poland’s (bloodless) imposition of martial law in 1981, Washington’s response to the events in Beijing has been relatively restrained. Bush initially limited U.S. actions to verbal protests and suspension of military contacts and sale of military equipment. As the executions began and congressional pressure mounted, Bush added suspension of cabinet-level contacts and said he would act to postpone consideration of international loans. Simultaneously, Bush appealed to Congress for “patience and forbearance.”
Regarding future steps, the administration has signaled that its key consideration will be whether or not China continues its policies of economic openness to Western investment and trade. Like others across the political spectrum, the administration seems to regard the Chinese leadership’s charges that agents of Western capitalism instigated and fanned the protests as mainly intended to consolidate internal support via appeals to patriotism, and not as serious indicators of future Chinese foreign policy.