Massacre in Peking

National Review, August 4, 1989 by Nien Cheng

China comes full circle-but with a difference A hundred flowers have bloomed and as he did during Mao's A nti-Rightist Campaign, Deng Xiaoping has cut them down. But this time it may not take thirty years for spring to return.

FOR SEVERAL WEEKS in May and June, Tiananmen Square in central Peking held the world's attention. As the drama unfolded on the television screen, the world was shocked to witness an extraordinary display of the cruel reality of Communist dictatorial power. The paramount leader of China, Deng Xiaoping, had said, "We do not mind spilling a little blood." Spilling blood was what did happen. Soldiers with automatic weapons, tanks, and armored vehicles attacked unarmed civilians. Bloody ground, prostrate bodies, wild-eyed young soldiers firing in all directions were seen by viewers all over the world. The conscience of civilized people everywhere was offended, but the hard-line leaders were oblivious to world reaction. Their spokesmen declared calmly on camera that there were no civilian casualties, only soldiers "murdered" by counterrevolutionaries.

Ten years of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976) exploded the myth of the Communist leadership and debunked its claim that it represented the interests of the working man. When he came to power in 1978, Deng Xiaoping tried to restore the Party's credibility with economic reform. But economic reform without political liberalization had reached a dead end. Rampant official corruption and nepotism became the order of the day. With real inflation at 40 per cent, life for those on fixed incomes became unbearable. While the people struggled to make ends meet they watched with dismay the children of senior leaders amassing huge fortunes in foreign currency. The Chinese people are long-suffering, and they have known nothing other than authoritarian government. But in China's modern history, whenever the government in power became especially detestable, the call for democracy was made by the more enlightened sections of society. Always the university students acted as the vanguard.

Seventy years ago, on May 4, 1919, students poured out of the gate of Peking University and held a demonstration calling for democracy. Their call was taken up by students all over China, and their demonstration triggered the historic May 4 Movement. As a result, China's written language was reformed to enable the spread of literacy, and two years later the Chinese Communist Party came into existence. In a speech made in Yenan in 1939, Mao Zedong declared May 4 Youth Day. After the founding of the People's Republic, it was routinely celebrated in China.

THIS YEAR the students at Peking University were planning to hold a parade to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the May 4 Movement when they received the news of the death of Hu Yaobang, the former general secretary of the Communist Party. He died of a heart attack on April 15 while making an impassioned speech urging the Party leadership to curb corruption in its ranks.

A sympathetic figure to the students, Hu had spent many years working with young people in the Communist Youth League, eventually rising to the post of general secretary of the League. He was a lifelong follower of Deng Xiaoping, who made him the general secretary of the Communist Party and his designated successor. In December 1986, when the students took to the streets to demonstrate for democracy, Hu refused to act against them. He was attacked by the old-guard hard-liners. Deng sided with the hard-liners and Hu lost his position as general secretary. Although allowed to retain a minor position in the Party leadership, he became in effect a non-entity.

To mourn Hu's passing, students at Peking University decided to bring forward the demonstration they had planned for May 4. They laid a wreath at the Monument of the Revolutionary Heroes in Tiananmen Square and paraded with banners eulogizing Hu. And they demanded that the Party give a fair assessment of Hu's work.

Since early this year, rumors had been trickling out of China that another round of power struggle was imminent and that the hard-liners were pressing Deng to remove Zhao Ziyang, Hu's successor as the Party's general secretary. According to the rumors, this was likely to happen after Gorbachev's visit on May 15. Both Hu and Zhao had been handpicked by Deng to carry out his program of economic reform. Both attracted a large following among China's intellectuals, and both protected dissidents during the Anti-Spiritual-Pollution Campaign and the Anti-Bourgeois-Liberalism Campaign.

For those who play the political game in Communist China, statements are often made with gestures. The students' demonstration to mourn Hu Yaobang and to affirm their support for his work could be seen as a timely political gesture to strengthen Zhao's position in the showdown with the hard-liners. It is entirely possible that some of the student organizers were sons and daughters of officials sympathetic to Zhao or having a personal stake in the outcome of this round of power struggle. Deng Xiaoping's position in this struggle was pivotal. Although he had often in the past played a balancing role between the hard-liners and the moderates, he has moved closer to the hard-liners ever since the student demonstration of December 1986 and especially since the exposure of the financial scandal involving his crippled son, Deng Pufang.