The Shattered Dream: CHINA /1989 : CHAPTER 4 : For Freedom! For Democracy! End Corruption!

“Beware of the consequences to yourself, your parents and your family.” -- Official warning broadcast to protesting students at Beijing University

Tuesday, April 18, dawn, Tian An Men Square. A young man rose to proclaim the students’ demands to 1,000 fellow protesters and to the massive, shadowed public buildings surrounding the square.

Hu Yaobang’s reputation must be restored, he demanded. The party must apologize for the excesses of the recent reform campaign. The nation’s senior leaders must resign.

The young man gave voice to a vague but powerful idea. He demanded that the Chinese people be granted democracy and freedom.

The concept was not entirely new. It had been central to the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and to the protests of 1986 and 1987.

In late 1986, Beijing students carried placards quoting American Revolutionary War patriot Patrick Henry. Henry’s renowned slogan--”Give me liberty or give me death”--appeared on banners in Beijing this spring.

This time, China’s rulers would emphatically make their choice.

As daylight spread across the ancient square, about 200 students moved to the sidewalk in front of the Great Hall of the People, which faces the plaza, to stage a sit-in to press a new catalogue of demands. They called for disclosure of government leaders’ income, for a formal rejection of anti-liberal political crackdowns of the 1980s, for more spending on schools, for legalization of street rallies. For freedom of speech and of the press.

By Tuesday night, the crowd had swelled to 5,000.

“Long live freedom! Long live democracy! Down with corruption!” the students chanted as they moved from Tian An Men Square toward the ornate, red-columned gate of the nearby Zhongnanhai compound, where many of China’s top party and government leaders live and work.

A line of police blocked the 15-foot-wide gate. The students made no effort to breach the line. They silently laid wreaths in memory of Hu and began a peaceful sit-in at midnight.

The students and police faced off for more than four hours. Just before dawn on April 19, about 1,000 police officers appeared and cleared the area. One student who resisted was manhandled, but the crowd generally moved away quietly.

Wednesday evening, April 19, Tian An Men Square. The protesters reappeared, a crowd of 20,000 or 30,000 demonstrators and onlookers, China’s biggest pro-democracy rally in more than a decade.

As darkness fell, about 8,000 of the protesters marched from the square to the boulevard in front of Zhongnanhai.

The police again broke up the demonstration, this time using more force and briefly detaining about 150 protesters, who were forced onto buses and later driven back to their campuses. The operation took nearly four hours; officers were seen slapping, beating and kicking several protesters, who were then allowed to flee.

Students later said that as many as 200 were beaten during the police action, with about 30 students suffering injuries.

Wednesday, April 19, provincial cities. Simultaneous protests broke out in Shanghai, China’s biggest city, with 3,000 students rallying at Fudan University. Smaller marches were staged in Tianjin, Nanjing, Wuhan and Hefei.

Thursday, April 20, Beijing University. Students resumed their action with a midday rally, protesting the police breakup of the previous night’s rally. About 3,000 students, marching behind a banner proclaiming “peaceful petition,” began a procession from the campus to Tian An Men Square.

This time, the weather intervened. An unseasonably cold rain sent most of the marchers home. Only about 1,500 made it to Tian An Men to gather around the Monument to the People’s Heroes to hear pro-democracy speeches.

“Heaven must be on the side of the Communist Party,” said one rain-soaked marcher.

Clear leaders among Beijing’s students had begun to emerge. Wuer Kaixi stood up in the middle of a throng of Beijing students and workers confronting police during the pre-dawn April 20 protest and urged his fellow protesters to begin a nonviolent sit-down strike. “We are in a struggle,” he said. “We need to carry on firmly.”

The pudgy, bespectacled student’s leadership and defiance were noted by plainclothes police. A few weeks later, he was one of China’s most-wanted men.

Other student leaders imposed a remarkable discipline on the huge crowds that faced police and troops despite threats of violence from authorities. Among them was Wang Dan, from Beijing University, who for months had been organizing “democracy salons” on campus to discuss how to open China’s political system.

Protesters formed one group to supervise the use of the student-operated loudspeaker at Tian An Men Square, and another to seek a dialogue with top government officials. But ultimately, the numbers of protesters outstripped the ability of the students to control them.

“I think our organization is still very weak,” an official of Beijing University’s independent student association, said early in June, just before the protests were crushed. “It is entirely spontaneous, and the leaders are simply the bravest students--the people who were willing to stand up and sacrifice themselves.”

Thursday, April 20, Beijing. Authorities grew worried about the size and frequency of the demonstrations. In a statement publicized in official newspapers and on television, city officials declared that those who persisted in demonstrating would be “dealt with severely according to the law.”

And in a foreshadowing of later explanations for the marches and the savage crackdown, the city officials laid the blame for the rallies on “a small number of people with ulterior motives.”

Further protests, officials warned, “absolutely will not be allowed.”

Friday, April 21, Tian An Men Square. The threats were ignored. The crowds grew. As many as 100,000 demonstrators and onlookers gathered in the square.

“People are praying for the awakening of a legal system,” said Ren Wanding, who had been sentenced to prison after authorities cracked down on those who plastered a brick wall several blocks west of Tian An Men Square with political wallposters in 1978 and 1979. “This is a historical necessity. Democracy Wall lives again!”

Ren was to be among the first arrested in June, but that night, singing and defiant political speech-making at the Monument to the People’s Heroes went on into the night.

Saturday morning, April 22, Great Hall of the People. China’s top officials gathered in the Great Hall, on the west side of Tian An Men Square, for a funeral service for Hu Yaobang.

Outside, student leaders announced plans to organize a nationwide boycott of classes until their demands were met. They chanted for Premier Li Peng to come out to face the crowd of 30,000.

After the service, three student representatives spent 15 minutes kneeling on the steps of the Great Hall, with one of them raising above his head a yard-wide rolled scroll listing student demands.

“This is how petitions were presented to emperors,” said one of the students in the square. “What era is this? We still have to use this method. It means we have no freedom.”

Saturday, April 22, provincial cities. Outside Beijing, Hu’s funeral sparked the first violence in a week of protests.

In Xian, in central China, a student demonstration turned violent when protesters tried to force their way inside the provincial government compound. A group of protesters or their supporters attacked a bus containing foreign tourists.

Violence also broke out during a student march honoring Hu in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, in southern China. Later official reports said that police arrested 98 “looters” who attacked 22 shops and a shopping arcade in downtown Changsha. Among those arrested were six students, 32 urban workers, 26 peasants and six self-employed people.

Monday, April 24, Beijing campuses. As the second week of protests began, students in Beijing launched their boycott of classes with hopes that it would spread nationwide. Students at a dozen universities in the capital stayed away from classes. An estimated 5,000 of Beijing University’s 16,000 students turned out for a midday political rally.

“The people of all sectors of society have no confidence in the government and are dissatisfied with its performance,” one Beijing University student said. “This fire will spread very quickly all over China, I think. It is very possible this time. Even our teachers support us, openly and covertly.”

At the Beijing Foreign Language Institute, one poster called for “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Tuesday, April 25, Beijing. The government issued its first explicit condemnation of the protests and its leaders. The style and language of the bulletin, reminiscent of previous periods of political repression, laid the basis for the coming crackdown.

In a warning announced by loudspeaker to students on university campuses, read over nationwide television and printed as a front-page editorial in the next day’s edition of the official party newspaper People’s Daily, the government said China was locked in a “grave political struggle.”

The demonstrations, the People’s Daily editorial said, were part of a “planned conspiracy which, in essence, aims at negating the leadership of the party and the socialist system.” If it succeeded, the editorial warned, “a promising China would become a turbulent and hopeless country.”

The April 26 editorial was said to reflect the views of Deng and other hard-liners in the Communist Party leadership.

Loudspeakers at Beijing University blared the government warning. School officials urged students: “Go back to your classes! Don’t give in to pressure from your fellow students! Beware of the consequences to yourself, your parents and your family!”

Students jeered and ridiculed the official warnings.

Thursday, April 27, streets of Beijing. Thousands of student demonstrators confronted police. Without violence, the students pressed ahead as police lines yielded. The orderly and highly disciplined crowd chanted “Thank you, policemen!” Some police officers returned the students’ V-for-victory signs.

By the time the procession reached the square, the crowd had grown to more than 100,000. It was one of the largest displays of anti-government sentiment in nearly 40 years of Communist rule.

China’s leaders, stunned by the rebuke from the nation’s elite students, announced late in the day that they would open a dialogue with student leaders to discuss their demands.

The students returned triumphantly to their campuses, exhausted and exhilarated. “Nothing like this,” one student said as he marched, “has ever happened before.”

Saturday, April 29, Beijing. The promised “dialogue” took place in the offices of the All-China Youth Federation, an official body comprising several youth groups. Second-level officials met with 45 student leaders from 16 universities. But nothing was resolved, and many protesters dismissed the session as a sham designed to end the demonstrations without any concessions.

That day’s People’s Daily warned that continued disruption could lead to another “tragedy” like that of the decade-long Cultural Revolution.

“If we allow the spread of slandering, cursing and attacks on party and government leaders, the widespread appearance of political posters and the grabbing and seizing of power, if there are classroom strikes everywhere . . . then China very likely will fall again into overall chaos,” the newspaper declared.

Monday through Wednesday, May 1-3, Beijing campuses. In the face of the People’s Daily’s warning, the boycott of classes continued. The students and the government prepared for another protest scheduled for May 4, the 70th anniversary of the 1919 movement for science and democracy.

Thursday, May 4, Tian An Men Square. A joyous pro-democracy celebration was joined by an estimated 150,000 students, supporters and onlookers.

“Today is a very big victory,” said a man in the crowd after police abandoned efforts to close off the square. “To have such a big demonstration after the government tried to stop it is no simple thing.”

The rally was spearheaded by about 40,000 students, who approached the square in orderly columns from various directions and pushed through lines of police, who offered only token resistance. Beijing student leaders announced that the boycott of classes launched April 24 had been a complete success and would therefore end.

May 4, provincial cities. Comparable rallies were held by students demanding democracy in Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Xian and Changsha.

May 4, Great Hall of the People. Zhao Ziyang, who two years earlier had replaced Hu as Communist Party general secretary, made comments interpreted as sympathetic toward the students.

“Though demonstrations are still under way in Beijing and some other big cities in the country, I still believe there will be no big riots and the demonstrations will gradually calm down,” Zhao told officials of the Asian Development Bank, gathered in Beijing for an annual meeting. “I’m very confident about this.

“The students are satisfied with the achievements of China’s 10-year reform and economic construction and with the progress and development of the country. What they are most dissatisfied with are errors and mistakes in the government’s work. . . . The students’ demands for correcting errors so as to march forward coincide with those of the party and the government.”

For these comments and other alleged softness on the protesters, Zhao would soon be stripped of his power as head of the Communist Party.