Scholars See China Events Turn Into a Nightmare

Cal State Northridge history professor Ron Davis said that after watching first hand thousands of Chinese demonstrators risk their lives in the embattled country’s pro-democracy struggle, he felt torn between his family’s pleas that he return home and his desire as a scholar to remain.

But what began as an exciting, eyewitness look at a revolution had turned into a nightmarish Alice-in-Wonderland adventure. Overnight, former supporters of the Chinese student demonstrators turned on them, calling them criminals and then blaming foreigners--such as Davis--for the violence that has shaken the embattled country.

So Davis said he chose his family ahead of his profession.

“It was history, but my family was worried to death,” said Davis, who flew back to Los Angeles from China with six CSUN colleagues Monday.

Arrived May 30

The six professors and a program administrator cut short their planned stay in the Chinese city of Xian, leaving the country at the request of CSUN President James Cleary. The group arrived in China on May 30 and was scheduled to stay until June 20.

The university is still trying to find one student in an academic exchange program who has not been heard from since the trouble in China started, CSUN spokeswoman Gloria Welles said. One CSUN student remains in hiding in Beijing with the family of a Chinese friend; another has been located in an unidentified Chinese city, and four others have decided to stay in Xian, she said.

The professors, all from the school’s department of social and behavioral sciences, were scheduled to give talks at the Foreign Language Institute in Xian to a conference titled “Understanding America.”

“It turned out to be an exercise in learning about China,” said Ralph Vicero, associate dean and head of CSUN’s faculty delegation.

Vicero said members of the CSUN group became fearful after hearing rumors that the Chinese army was preparing to enter Xian, about 600 miles south of Beijing. But those fears failed to prevent the group from venturing into the city from the university.

Visited Demonstration

Early last week, several of the group members told the driver of a van who was supposed to take them on a tour of the countryside to instead drive them to the city’s square. The driver took the group past blockades to where 20,000 students were demonstrating, Davis said.

The chanting, speeches and fervor of the Chinese students reminded him of American students protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Davis said.

“But students protesting the Vietnam War risked maybe a year in jail,” said Davis, who began teaching at CSUN in 1970 at the height of the school’s anti-war movement. “The Chinese students knew they were asking for something that could jeopardize their lives.”

The group of Americans was at first approached frequently by Chinese, Davis said. “They would say, ‘You’ve got to tell the world about us,’ ” he said.

Students at the university where the group stayed gathered around bulletin boards in front of the main administration building and read copies of Hong Kong newspaper articles posted there, Vicero said. Voice of America broadcasts were played at full volume out of dorm windows, and students angrily denounced the killing of Beijing protesters.

But Davis and Vicero said they noticed a dramatic change in attitude among students, Chinese citizens and officials by the end of last week, after Communist Party officials seemed to regain control of their troubled country.

Several Chinese at the university who had earlier praised the Beijing students now call them “hooligans and criminals,” Davis said. Loudspeakers on Thursday suddenly blared messages that urged students to confess to participating in the demonstrations and to turn in other students who were also involved, Vicero said.

“By Friday, it had become very tense,” Vicero said.

The group that day witnessed about 100 Chinese students, dressed in black, marching solemnly down one street and carrying a large banner that said: “Shoot us, we are here.”

Rapid Change

The overnight rejection of the pro-democracy demonstrators by many Chinese was especially chilling, Davis said. The killing of students in Beijing, which had been referred to in conversation as a massacre, suddenly was called an “incident,” he said. Then people started saying that no students were killed.

“They started blaming ‘outside agitators,’ and then people started asking us, ‘Why are you here?’ ” Davis said.

Finally, after several days of unsuccessful attempts to leave the country, the group booked space on a flight home via Hong Kong. The flight took more than 20 hours. Vicero was weary from jet lag.

Still, he said, “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”