China Students: Quiet Defiance, Open Despair and Pursuit of a Way Out

A few students, talking politics one night at a Beijing campus, told a foreign guest the legend of an emperor who brought a deer before his assembled servants in a special test of loyalty.

“This is a horse,” the emperor declared.

Then, one by one, he asked each servant, “Is this a horse?”

Those answering “Yes” were praised. Those who said, “No, it’s a deer,” were killed.

“Now our government is doing the same thing,” one of the students declared, picking up a glass of water. “If the government tells me, ‘This is an apple,’ I will say, ‘Yes, it’s an apple!’ The government tells me, ‘One plus one is 10.’ I will say, ‘Yes, it’s true! It’s a wonderful new method of calculation!’ ”

The students broke up in hysterical laughter.

The storyteller continued, serious again: “Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing now? They tell us to read the speeches of (Communist Party General Secretary) Jiang Zemin and (senior leader) Deng Xiaoping. They tell us that what they say is true, even though we’ve all seen with our own eyes that it is false. And then they ask us, ‘Is it true?’ And we all say, ‘Yes, of course it’s true! We believe it!’ ”

Six months after martial-law troops brought a bloody end to Beijing’s spring of student-led pro-democracy protests, the enforced ideological remolding of university students has not gotten very far.

But, as in the story of the emperor’s deer, it is not clear that the purpose of political education on Beijing campuses has much to do with changing what people actually think. The point is to intimidate students enough that they will not speak out publicly and will fear to march in the streets again any time soon.

Classes aimed at imposing ideological discipline, investigations requiring students to write essays telling what they did during the seven weeks of protests and arrests of some student leaders have succeeded in wiping out virtually all traces of organized student opposition to the hard-line leaders who rule China.

Occasionally there is vague talk of shadowy underground organizations, of students who are trying to regroup in preparation for another wave of protests. But any large-scale secret organizing would appear to be impossible, given the ability of China’s pervasive security apparatus to monitor and infiltrate virtually any anti-government activity.

Campuses now are the scene of quiet defiance, open despair and a joyless search for diversions, with any serious study usually focused on trying to get out of China.

One increasingly common joke, meant at least half-seriously, is to say that there are three kinds of college students: the dancers, who spend all their time looking for lovers; the mah-jongg players, who have given up hope of doing anything significant with their lives, and the English-studiers, who dream only of going abroad.

Many students see only one escape route: to learn English well, get a high score on the United States’ Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), work through an increasingly difficult maze of bureaucratic requirements and go to America to study.

“If you go to the library study rooms, you’ll see that everybody is studying English,” commented a student at Beijing University, China’s most prestigious educational institution and a key center of the spring protests. “The science students are the worst; they just spend all day cramming new vocabulary. Nobody wants to study anything else. . . . What’s the use of studying anything else?”

A student at another campus joked about the English-study rage, which is focused on the TOEFL exam and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), the key tests determining chances for admittance to American universities: “Why don’t we just change all the universities into schools for TOEFL and GRE study? ‘Beijing University of TOEFL and GRE.’ What do you think?”

There is another route of escape--marrying a foreigner. Because of this, as well as the desire to practice English, exchange students have never been more popular on Beijing campuses.

“I meet a lot of girls just by going to the dances and standing along the wall, and they come up and introduce themselves,” a foreign student at Beijing University said. “Everyone here is absolutely frantic to get out of the country. Last week I went to a dance, thinking maybe someone will come up. One girl came by and stood next to me for two or three minutes, then asked me what time it was. We talked for about 45 minutes before I walked her back to her dorm.

“She did most of the talking, and the thrust was mostly about how screwed up the country was, but in there definitely was the idea that she wanted to get out. Toward the end of the conversation, she asked me if I had a girlfriend or not. So she was very direct.”

Despite the widespread despair and anger, ordinary participants in the spring protests appear safe from arrest as long as they do not continue to publicly oppose the government. But some attempts are still being made to identify and punish middle-level leaders of the movement. Top leaders are all in prison, hiding or exile.

Three suicides this fall in which students jumped from upper floors of dormitory buildings--two at Qinghua University and one at Beijing Agricultural University--were related to despair over political investigations, according to reports that have circulated among Chinese students.

A small stir spread through Beijing University in late October when official posters went up demanding that leaders of the spring protests turn themselves in to the police. The posters also called on members of the campus community, including students, staff and their families, to inform on such activists.

It seems, however, that almost no one has responded.

“Why would anyone turn himself in now?” commented a Beijing University graduate student. “They have already caught the main people. If you haven’t been caught yet, that probably means they aren’t looking for you. They already know everything. It’s best now to just stay out of their way.”

Dormitory rooms were searched months ago, and almost all students have burned or thrown away any leaflets or other incriminating souvenirs of the movement, he said.

Serious investigations seem to be “all over now,” this student said. Then he added, with a nervous laugh: “At least, I hope so.”