Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (112 page)

In the expanding economy of the mid-1980s, many rural migrants were streaming into Beijing and other urban areas to work—especially in construction where machinery was not yet widely available and large numbers of laborers were needed. But the tight readjustment policies that had begun in late 1988 took away dramatic numbers of job opportunities for these laborers, and many of those who were laid off struggled to remain in the cities, where they observed profiteering officials and entrepreneurs displaying their newfound wealth. In short, to many, the results of the drastic new changes wrought by market forces were deeply upsetting.

But in addition to those sources of discontent, many people wanted more than freedom of movement. They were tired of living in fear of being criticized and punished for “political errors.” The calls for freedom and democracy, and the celebration of Hu Yaobang, tapped into a desire to be liberated from the surveillance and criticism sessions of the intrusive state.

From Mourning to Protesting, April 15–22

In the evening of April 15, within hours after the announcement of Hu Yaobang's death, the walls of Peking University were full of posters mourning
his passing.
⁸
The next day, April 16, an estimated eight hundred students marched to the foot of the Monument to the People's Heroes in the center of Tiananmen Square to lay memorial wreaths. The police did not interfere with the mourners who marched from their universities to pay their respects.

As more students began assembling in the square, the mourning began to take on more political overtones. Early in the morning of April 18, several hundred students went across Tiananmen Square to the Great Hall of the People to deliver to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) several demands, including allowing more freedom and democracy, ending the campaign against burgeois liberalization, reversing the decision to punish the 1986 protesters, and publicizing the incomes of party leaders and their children. That night, around 11 p.m., several thousand angry protestors walked the few hundred yards from Tiananmen Square to the Xinhua Gate at Zhongnanhai, the seat of the party and government. There they continued to shout and demand that they be allowed to enter. Despite requests to leave, they refused and the crowd persisted until 4 a.m., when police finally forced their dispersal. This marked the first time since the Communists' 1949 takeover of the government that protestors had demanded access to Zhongnanhai. As Li Peng noted, April 18 was the day the tone of the demonstrations changed from one of mourning to one of protest.
⁹

The rowdy shouting at Xinhua Gate could easily be heard within Zhongnanhai, and high-level officials soon realized the seriousness of the situation. Li Peng, who had rushed back from Japan as soon as he was notified of Hu Yaobang's death, disagreed with Zhao Ziyang about what should be done. Li Peng told Zhao that they needed to respond firmly. But Zhao Ziyang, who as general secretary remained in charge, believed that it was better not to provoke the students, and that as long as there was no hitting, smashing, looting, or destruction of property, the leadership would be wise not to take any strong actions.
¹⁰

By April 21, the demonstrations had grown in size and speakers in the square had begun calling for more democracy.
¹¹
In their efforts to calm the students, Li Tieying, head of the State Education Commission, directed university officials to carry on normal campus activities and to restrain the student demonstrations. A regiment of troops was sent into Zhongnanhai as a precaution against the danger that students might break through the gates. The
People's Daily
announced that demonstrations were banned and warned students “not to mistake the regime's forbearance for weakness.” But the officials had badly miscalculated, and the students, flaunting their power, refused
to quiet down. On April 22, the day of Hu's funeral, an estimated 200,000 people listened attentively to the twenty-minute memorial service as it was broadcast on loudspeakers in the square. Hu Yaobang was given an honorable memorial service in the Great Hall of the People, and his body was taken to Babaoshan, the burial place for high officials. After the memorial service, three student representatives kneeled on the steps of the Great Hall of the People and waited some three hours to talk with Li Peng. They later complained that they had been encouraged to believe that Li or another high official would meet with them, although Li Peng and other officials claimed that Li was unaware of this.
¹²
At the time, Li Peng did not agree to meet any groups of students for fear that it would give the student organizations a legitimacy he refused to grant. He also worried that doing so would weaken the official student organizations sponsored by the party, over which the party had more control.

Li Peng and Deng's April 26 Editorial

Deng Xiaoping did not take any steps to curb the students when they were mourning Hu Yaobang. Whatever criticisms Deng had of Hu Yaobang during his last years in office, Hu was still considered a dedicated official who had made a contribution to reform and opening. Deng knew that the students would become incensed if their mourning were curtailed, just as the April 1976 protesters had become inflamed when their attempts to mourn Zhou Enlai's passing were blocked. But as soon as the period of mourning ended, Deng was ready to issue a warning to the students, and at this point Li Peng, who favored taking a hard line, temporarily replaced Zhao Ziyang in managing the demonstrations.

Zhao Ziyang's trip to North Korea had long been scheduled to begin on April 23, the day after Hu's funeral. Zhao reports that when he met Deng shortly before departing for North Korea, Deng told him that he should still make the trip and that when he returned, he would be promoted to head the Central Military Commission, a sign that at the time Deng still expected Zhao to be his successor. Right on schedule, then, Zhao left for Pyongyang from the Beijing train station on April 23.
¹³
Li Peng, to dampen talk of conflict with Zhao, saw him off at the station. Zhao told Li that in his absence he should feel free to call a Politburo meeting.

Zhao Ziyang and others had hoped that after Hu Yaobang's funeral the crowds would disperse, but they did not. On the day Zhao left Beijing, despite
the ban on forming student organizations, students from twenty-one universities met to form what they called a “United Students' Association,” which decided that in 1986 students had given up the protests too easily; the current group of students would be more steadfast. Reversing their earlier announcement that the students would return to classes after May 4, the student organizers declared that the boycott of classes would continue for an indefinite period.
¹⁴

After Zhao left the country, Li Peng, who was then in charge, realized the weight of his responsibility. He consulted with Yang Shangkun, who advised that in view of the seriousness of the situation they should report to Deng. That very evening, Li Peng and Yang Shangkun communicated to Deng their view that the protests required firm and swift action. Li Peng said that students were criticizing Deng Xiaoping personally, and that there were other troubling developments: scuffles at Xinhua Gate of Zhongnanhai, the report that 60,000 students were still boycotting classes, the obstruction of traffic, and the reports of “black hands” who wanted to bring down the Communist Party and the socialist system all signaled serious problems.
¹⁵
Deng agreed that the demonstrators should be warned of the gravity of their actions. From then on, Deng became deeply involved in decision-making about how to respond to the demonstrators.

The next day, Li Peng called a meeting of the Politburo to hear reports by Chen Xitong and Li Ximing, the Beijing municipal officials responsible for monitoring developments in the capital. Some observers have argued that the two men, worried about the danger of being held responsible if something were to go wrong, exaggerated the gravity of the demonstrations and so misled Deng about the actual situation. But other officials believed that the developments were indeed serious and that Li and Chen were reporting accurately on what was happening in Tiananmen Square.

At 10 a.m. on April 25, Deng met Li Peng and Yang Shangkun in his home to hear their report of the situation. Li Peng wrote in his diary that by April 23 Deng had already decided that a firm warning was needed.
¹⁶
After listening to their report, Deng said that the turmoil had to be stopped—that in other Communist countries where protests had been tolerated, such as Poland, party authority had simply collapsed. Chinese leaders therefore needed to be clear and firm in ending the turmoil and in bringing things under control. Deng then said an authoritative editorial warning the students of the dangers should be released immediately. Party leaders in the region were to be told to remain firm, and party and administrative leaders in the universities were to be directed to quiet things down.
¹⁷

Deng personally directed what he felt the editorial should include and as usual with important decisions, he prepared his comments carefully. Hu Qili was put in charge of preparing the editorial and the master drafter Hu Qiaomu edited the final version. The editorial was broadcast that very same night and appeared the next day, April 26, in the
People's Daily.
¹⁸
It praised the majority who had mourned Hu Yaobang, but it also accused some of the mourners of making improper statements and engaging in inappropriate actions. According to the editorial, protestors were attacking the leadership of the Communist Party and the socialist system, going so far as to form illegal organizations to try to seize power from the government-approved student associations. They were engaging in strikes and causing turmoil
(dongluan)
to overthrow the leadership of the Communist Party and using the banner of democracy to undermine Chinese-style democracy. If such turmoil went unchecked, there would be chaos. The struggle was serious, and all illegal organizations were to be disbanded and unlawful parades banned, immediately. Any persons fabricating rumors would be investigated for criminal liability.
¹⁹

Li Peng and his allies were counting on the editorial to intimidate and subdue the students; after all, the serious accusations articulated in the editorial constituted an open threat by the government that many student leaders would be arrested. But to Deng's dismay, the plan backfired. Instead of backing down, the student leaders dug in their heels and recruited massive numbers of additional students to join them. In his diary Li Peng wrote that the April 26 editorial had succeeded, but reports from the square concluded that it had only served to inflame the students. University presidents and administrators, who were more in touch with the student mood than Li Peng, felt that the editorial had removed the basis for dialogue that might have led to a peaceful resolution of the student grievances. In their view, the April 26 editorial was too harsh.
²⁰
At age eighty-four, Deng went out less, talked to fewer people, and no longer had a keen sense of the public mood. Had Zhou Enlai been alive, some officials believed, he could have reached an understanding with the students. But in April 1989 no leader had both the authority to offer a solution and the ability to bridge the communication gap between the senior revolutionaries and the youth. Even Zhao Ziyang, who later advocated dialogue with the students and a retraction of the April 26 editorial, had been aloof and at the time was not seen by the students as a sympathetic ally. Students accused his sons of corruption and criticized him for playing golf.

With the appearance of the April 26 editorial, the battle lines were drawn. The leaders of the demonstrations identified Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng as their enemies. The demonstrations grew, to the extent that they easily broke
through the line of police who had been told to be restrained in their response, for fear of causing bloodshed.
²¹
Meanwhile, the officials would not budge. Deng would not retract the editorial for fear of weakening the party's authority. And although Li Peng and other officials overcame their initial reluctance to meet the students, while meeting with them the officials held their line and failed to calm the situation. For instance, when Yuan Mu, State Council spokesperson, and He Dongchang, vice minister of the State Education Commission, met with forty-five students on the afternoon of April 29, Yuan Mu refused to admit that corruption was a serious problem and denied the existence of any censorship. Students left angrier than ever.
²²

Sympathy for the students was so widespread that Li Peng had difficulty retaining support of lower-level officials for the crackdown. Hu Qili, the Politburo Standing Committee member who supervised propaganda work, explained to his fellow officials that many newspaper reporters were upset because their articles about what was actually happening in the square were not being published. University officials who were told to quiet down the demonstrations dutifully passed along the message to the students, but for many their hearts were not in it.
²³
Li Peng could not even count on the official media to support him. For several days no newspapers of any kind appeared. On one national television station, reporters describing what was taking place in the square were interrupted, and for a brief time the picture went dark and the voiceover simply stopped. One day, an announcer said, “There is no news today.”
²⁴
After June 4, the head of the Propaganda Department and the editor of
People's Daily
, who were considered too sympathetic to the students, were both removed from their positions.