Chinese Students in U.S. Lend Support to Protesters Back Home

Chinese students studying throughout the United States have written an open letter to their government expressing strong support for the pro-democracy student demonstrations in China.

Students at UC San Diego, whose contingent of 230 Chinese students is one of the largest among American universities, have been instrumental along with their peers at other campuses in raising funds through a special computer network to distribute the message in China. The message was read by telephone on Tuesday to students at Beijing University who tape-recorded it for dissemination in China.

Students at the University of Massachusetts wrote the five-paragraph document last Saturday and placed it on the 2-year-old computer network that allows Chinese studying in the U. S., Europe, Australia and Japan to communicate among one another concerning events in China.

“All over the world from the East to the West, democracy has become an irresistible historical trend . . . How about China?” part of the statement reads.

“Please let the people speak and know the truth . . . We appeal for a dialogue between the Party and the people and students to answer people’s questions instead of suppressing them. . . . Remember what Comrade Mao Zedong once said, ‘Whoever did crack down on the student movement never got a good ending in the history.’ ”

Large pro-democracy marches in Beijing and other Chinese cities during the past several weeks have sought independent student unions, freedom of the press and an end to government corruption. The students have called for government recognition of their groups and negotiations with them.

“Chinese people now want a real government system, not just a good king like (Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping) was,” Dan Hu, a graduate student in electrical engineering at UCSD, said Thursday.

Added colleague Sen Li, working for a doctorate in biochemistry: “I think the concerns of Chinese students have changed, and we are now as concerned about the political future as well as the economic future.”

Guyang Huang, a University of Massachusetts biochemistry graduate student, said that overseas scholars have raised $15,000 among peers in the United States, Canada, West Germany and Norway to send the letter to students in China.

The Voice of America said Thursday that it has received calls from Chinese students at 30 American universities asking the agency to broadcast the letter. The VOA has requested a copy and its East Asian division chief will decide whether to put it on the air based on the letter’s “newsworthiness,” a VOA spokesman said Thursday.

There is strong support for the demonstrations among the 20,000 or so Chinese students in the United States, according to interviews with students at several universities. All are anxiously awaiting the Chinese government’s response to the demonstrations.

Organized Students

Xiaoyong Chai, a University of Chicago graduate student in sociology, used the computer network last week to help organize students at 11 Midwestern universities into a support group for students in China and to demonstrate in front of the Chinese Consulate in Chicago.

“All students abroad have the same feeling, the responsibility to do whatever we can to support those back in our country, sort of to give them courage and a loyal boost,” Chai said.

The large number of Chinese students who have received degrees abroad since 1980--an estimated 30,000 in the United States alone--are contributing to the demands for more openness, several UCSD students said. “I think there is a large indirect influence, and, because of our country’s more open policy on travel, etc. we are much more able to make comparisons,” said mathematics graduate student Zhengxu He.

There is considerable uncertainty over China’s future, despite what the students say are improvements in China during the past decade under Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms.

Zhengxu He has accepted an assistant professorship at Princeton next year, choosing not to return to China for the indefinite future.

“Everyone is excited about what is happening in China but many students are still unsure whether they will go back, in part because of the freedom here to do the research you want and to make the money you want,” Hedong Yang, a UCSD bioengineering graduate student, said.

“It’s a difficult decision that a lot of us postpone making now because we hope there will be gradual improvement in China.”

The government’s attitude toward press freedoms will play a major role in how students judge their futures, engineering student Jianbo Zhou said. “We want our own newspapers, we don’t want them all controlled by the government,” he said.

Dependent on VOA

Chicago’s Chai said the lack of press freedom leads Chinese students to place great dependence on the VOA, “which is why we would like to have VOA broadcast the letter.”

A reporter from the People’s Daily newspaper in Beijing--the largest government newspaper--who is studying communications at UCSD, said that freedom of the press is an idea whose time has come in China.

“I guess that things are changing, and I think it is abnormal in any country where all the newspapers are run by the party or government,” Xiaoguang Shi said. Several hundred journalists demonstrated along with students in Beijing Thursday, an event unprecedented among the Chinese press.

“My reaction is that it is a good idea to push the government for freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” Shi said.