The Whole World Watched

“The Chinese people have stood up,” proclaimed Mao Tse-tung in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square 40 years ago as he celebrated the triumph of the Communist revolution. This week, in that same place as well as in other cities around China, the people stood up once more. They did so in widely supported student-led protests that defied authority, challenged the political legitimacy of the nation’s rulers and demanded guarantees of free speech and an end to official corruption. A divided and clearly disturbed leadership responded first by sternly ordering the demonstrators in Beijing to disband, then by pleading with them to do so, finally by sending in troops, ostensibly to protect government and party offices. The threat to those camped in the square was implicit, but the protesters remained uncowed.

In a midnight speech announcing the regime’s decision to take a hard line, Premier Li Peng referred repeatedly to “rioting” taking place in Beijing and elsewhere, warned that the entire country was threatened by anarchy and instability and denounced what he said was a small band of “agitators” who are intent on misleading and manipulating large masses of people. In fact, the protests were broadly based and, from all appearances, determinedly peaceful, thanks to the self-control that held in check the anger and frustration that sent so many into the streets.

At the core of the demonstrations was the hunger strike by as many as 3,000 young people, and the undisguised fear on the part of top leaders that any deaths among these protesters would be a moral and political calamity for the regime. Thanks in part to the expanded presence of the international news media in Beijing, drawn there originally to cover the visit by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the world was an eyewitness to the regime’s growing embarrassment. The protesters, a large number of whom spoke fluent English, did not hesitate to press their demands in front of the television cameras. Foremost among them was a demand for guaranteed freedom of speech, the freedom that authoritarian regimes most fear to grant.

In the hours immediately following Li Peng’s speech, the issue remained in doubt. What is already clear, however, is that the regime has been shaken to its foundations by the protests that began more than a month ago as part of the mourning for the late former Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang and built to the climax of recent days. Not since Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic in 1949 has China seen such open expressions of popular discontent. It has been an astonishing episode, perhaps a watershed, in China’s history, and this week the whole world has been watching.