From
The Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the
Provinces, edited by Jonathan Unger (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.,
1991).
In the fall of 1988, this rhymed jingle appeared on a wall in
Xi'an: 'Mao Zedong's son went to the front. Zhao Ziyang's son
speculates in colour TVs. Deng Xiaoping's son demands money from
everyone'. By the spring of 1989, this little ditty - or
variations upon it - could be seen and heard across China. But in
1988, it caught one's attention. Private, discreet complaining
was nothing new in China. Most frequent travellers had heard
enough of that over the years. But public attacks on China's
highest leaders were rare. Attacks which compared Deng Xiaoping
unfavourably to Mao Zedong were rarer still. In the fall of 1988,
trouble was brewing in China, and this wall slogan was not the
only indication.
Inflation was galloping ahead at such a rate that urban salaried
workers felt wage increases were being eaten up by rising prices.
A few people were certainly getting very rich off the reforms,
and one could see them in the fancy hotels, or riding about in
shiny Toyotas. But the vast majority of urban citizens saw their
real incomes standing still, and - with the government wrestling
to bring huge budget deficits under control - scant hope for
improvement in the near future. In the cities, the reigning
popular sentiment held that the reforms had reached an impasse.
They were failing and the leadership was, in Deng Xiaoping's
oft-cited phrase, 'groping for submerged stepping stones to cross
the river'. 'If Deng can only grope for submerged stones', one
intellectual told me, 'that means he doesn't even know if he's
following a route which will get to the other side. If he cannot
give us a plan for reaching the other side, then he should step
aside in favour of someone who does have a plan'.
Such repeated expressions of discontent with Deng and the
national leadership were something I had never encountered in
almost annual visits to China since 1979. Usually people would be
critical of local leaders, disdainful of incompetent provincial
authorities, but confident that China's central administration
was in reasonably good hands. That confidence was gone by the
fall of 1988. One cab driver complained that amid all the talk of
establishing a younger leadership group, Yang Shangkun replaced
Li Xiannian as President, and Yang was even older! Meanwhile, in
Beijing, rumours (apparently unfounded) circulated that Yang had
had a face lift to conceal his advancing years. If the age of the
national leaders was one concern, the corruption of their
families was another. Here the most frequent foci of complaint
were the wheeling-dealing activities of Zhao Ziyang's sons; and
the forced contributions that virtually everyone had to make to
Deng Pufang's foundation for the support of the handicapped.
Chinese outrage at corruption in high places reminded one that an
integral part of China's political culture is still to be found
in that famous passage from
The Great Learning
: 'The ancients...wishing to order well their states, first
regulated their families...' (1) Leaders who could not check the
corrupt dealings of their sons were not qualified to rule China.
At the very least, it was everyone's firm belief that no official
campaign against corruption could ever be effective if it did not
begin with the families of the nation's leaders.
Deng Xiaoping's position in such talk was particularly notable.
In the words of one Xi'an worker: 'People have different views of
him. Businessmen love him. But ordinary workers hate him. They
have seen through the Party's line'. For years Chinese have
expressed fears over what might happen after Deng's death. Could
the reforms continue after Deng was gone? Deng's appearances on
television would be watched anxiously for any sign of frailty.
Now sentiments had changed 180 degrees and no one saw any reason
for hope while Deng was still around. Instead of fearing Deng's
death, they looked forward to it. Press accounts of the trials of
Brezhnev's son-in-law in the Soviet Union, and of Chun Doo Hwan's
associates in Korea attracted great attention. Perhaps, critics
thought, once Deng passes from the scene, then we can take care
of his corrupt family and friends.
To understand the events of China's spring of 1989, it is
necessary to begin with these sentiments of the previous year.
Discontent was growing at an alarming rate; and the government
was certainly aware of the powder-keg it was sitting upon. Though
complaints could be heard from throughout the urban population,
student unrest was particularly feared. In early December, I
learned that the Shaanxi vice-governor in charge of culture and
education, whom I was trying to see, would be unavailable. He and
all other provincial officials in charge of educational affairs
had been going virtually without sleep for a week, as they
prepared to head off feared student demonstrations. There had
been a couple of isolated incidents already: students marching
out to complain about the quality and quantity of food in their
dining halls. Now it was feared that larger and more political
protests might burst forth on the anniversary of the December 9
(1935) student demonstrations.
The authorities were undoubtedly correct that discontent was
building to the point where student demonstrations could break
out at any excuse. But the excuse would not come until the
spring, with Hu Yaobang's death on April 15. Almost immediately,
students at Xi'an's three major universities - Northwest, Shaanxi
Normal, and Jiaotong (Communications) - and the College of Law
and Administration began gathering in small informal groups. Big
and small character posters appeared on the walls and, by 18
April, small contingents of students set out to demonstrate on
the streets. These demonstrations reached significant scale on 20
April - within hours after a small group of students had tried to
force their way into the government compound at Zhongnanhai in
Beijing. Whether the Xi'an activists were in contact with their
Beijing comrades at this time I cannot say. By late April,
regular contacts through friends in Beijing were well
established. But at this early stage, the common knowledge that
memorials to Hu Yaobang provided an ideal opportunity to
demonstrate may have been enough to account for the coincidence
between events in Beijing and the provinces. The Xi'an students'
organization was very loose, however, and only in late May did
they succeed in building a city-wide federation (
Gaozilian
) linking student groups at the various schools on the Beijing
model. Informal contacts between activists at the different
schools was all that held the movement together through its early
stages. (2)
On 20 April, several thousand students forced their way into the
compound of the provincial government building. Their
representatives went inside the building to present demands for
the improvement of education in Shaanxi, and for an explanation
of the reasons for Hu Yaobang's resignation as General-Secretary
of the Party in 1987. Outside, activists delivered impassioned
speeches against government corruption and the failure of the
reforms. Around mid-afternoon, a student representative from
Northwest University emerged to announce the response from the
provincial department of education: it appealed to the students
to return to classes, promised to consider improvements in
education, and noted that the Central Committee had already
issued a statement on Hu's resignation. The student asked the
crowd to leave the government compound, but he was shouted down
in favour of a popular speaker who had been attacking the
failings of the government.
On 21 April, students from Northwest University brought a large
memorial wreath to the New City Square (
Xincheng guangchang
) in front of the provincial government headquarters. The
compound gates were closed and guarded by a line of police, so
the wreath was left outside. That evening, three young men took
the wreath, put it on the front of a pedicab and set out on a
route which took them down several of the main streets of town
yelling out slogans that probably included 'Down with the
Communist Party'. A group of about one hundred followed in their
wake and engaged in some minor vandalism along the way, throwing
rocks at buses and allegedly overturning two taxi cabs. They
ended their journey at the train station, where other youths
joined them in pilfering cigarettes, drinks and fruit from a
refreshment stand. None of those involved were students, and it
is unclear just how much looting or destruction actually took
place, but it was clearly enough to alarm the authorities and
prepare them to take harsh counter-measures against any further
violence. (3)
The April 22 Incident
April 22 was the day of Hu Yaobang's funeral and memorial service
in Beijing. The entire nation could follow the service in a 10 am
television broadcast. In Xi'an, about 40,000 students and
onlookers gathered in New City Square - with different
contingents arriving between 10 am and 2 pm. The government had
augmented the usual police guards with military and riot police.
The military police, called to Xi'an from surrounding counties,
numbered several thousand. Mostly young men from the countryside,
they were now in the big city, confronting a crowd of aroused
students and urban youths such as they had never seen before -
and clearly were not trained to cope with.
The students were in general orderly; but with little
organization, there was great diversity in their slogans. In
addition to expressions of grief at the loss of Hu Yaobang, there
were calls for the elimination of corruption, and for the
overthrow of official profiteers (
guandao
). A few individuals again certainly shouted anti-communist
slogans; and many made direct or indirect attacks on Deng
Xiaoping. For example a popular couplet said 'Hu Yaobang will
never be forgotten; Long live Deng Xiaoping' - with the latter
phrase (
wanshou wujiang
) nicely ambiguous: 'Deng Xiaoping lives on forever' being an
alternative reading. In fact, in some cases, I was told the
couplet had an addition for those who like things explicit:
'Those who should die don't die' (
gaiside busi
). One poster carried a clever poem, the last characters of each
line forming the anagram 'Down with (
dadao
) Deng Xiaoping'. Since Xiaoping is a homophone for the
characters 'little bottle', pop bottles became a ready prop for
political cartoons or symbolic action. Some people smashed them
on the ground, others more subtly displayed them overturned.
The students' primary goal at the provincial government building
was to present a memorial wreath for the official ceremony inside
the building, and to petition for an explanation of the
circumstances surrounding Hu Yaobang's resignation. At the west
gate to the compound, they demanded to present their petition to
a high government official but none would come out to receive it.
As this proceeded, the police tried to push students back from
the gate; and students tried to push forward to see the progress
of their petition efforts. After much pushing and shoving on both
sides, some in the crowd began throwing stones and bricks.
Subsequent official videotapes of the incident repeatedly focused
on this rock- and brick-throwing, and the films were notable in
revealing a sort of childish glee on the faces of the young
rock-throwers. The mood was not angry at all; these young men
(almost certainly not students) had simply discovered, in the
momentarily protective anonymity of the crowd, a means of
expressing their disdain for the routines of authority.
Before long, the authorities responded. The police and military
police removed their thick leather belts and started lashing out
at the crowd, driving it back. Then two trucks were parked in
front of the gate, and the police withdrew inside. Quickly, the
tarpaulin on one truck was set alight - then pulled from the
truck and allowed to burn out on the ground. A fire truck twenty
metres inside the gate did not move. As the afternoon progressed,
a see-saw battle between crowd and police began, with the police
driving the crowd away, and then falling back as they became
over-extended.
At about 2 pm, the main contingents of students arrived at the
square from Northwest University and Jiaotong University. They
marched once around the square behind their school banners, and
then gathered in the middle. At this point, the conflict with the
military police stopped, and the square returned to a semblance
of order. Half an hour later, the loudspeakers in the square
began broadcasting a warning from the municipal government; and
the vice-secretary of the Northwest University Party committee
and the president of Jiaotong University spoke, urging their
students to leave.
About three o'clock in the afternoon the gatehouse to the
provincial government compound was set alight. The surrounding
police curiously did little to stop this arson, and nothing to
put out the fire. The nearby fire truck moved to extinguish the
blaze, then turned its hose on the crowd. Soon the two trucks,
which had been driven away when the gatehouse was set ablaze,
returned to block the gate again. Some wondered why such
attractive targets were put before the students after arson had
already been committed; and in the aftermath, many compared the
incident to the Nazi's Reichstag fire. Whatever the reason, the
two vehicles were quickly set afire and allowed to burn long
enough to produce a thick smoke over the entire square.
Again the administrators of Northwest and Jiaotong Universities
appealed for the students to leave the square, saying that their
demands (to present the wreaths and petition) had been met,
although it is unclear at what point the wreaths and petition
were accepted. At this, most of the students gathered together
and marched from the square. But several thousand people
remained; and around 4 pm, governor Hou Zongbin arrived on the
scene, reportedly after phoning Qiao Shi in Beijing - the
Politburo member responsible for security matters. That Hou was
in charge at this point is certainly plausible, but it is also
worth recording that he is not a Shaanxi native. (4) In a
province whose bureaucracy and Party establishment have a
reputation for resisting outside direction, it is possible that
rumours targeting Hou were started by rivals within the
apparatus, who wished to make him a scapegoat for the riot which
ensued. Whether Hou was responsible or not, it is certain that at
this point, the police started getting more aggressive.
Riot police and military police with helmets and shields started
charging the crowd with night sticks and clubs and even started
throwing stones back into the thick of the crowd. Men and women,
boys and girls were alike struck down, and some were seized and
pulled behind police lines and beaten further. Observers with
cameras came under particular attack, their film being exposed
before they were themselves clubbed. But news reporters behind
the government lines recorded much of the violence, and in May,
Xeroxes of remarkably clear close-ups of police kicking and
beating bloodied students
after
they had been brought inside the government compound were widely
displayed about the city. The scene degenerated into a classic
police riot, and a few officers and cadres who tried to restrain
the official violence were cursed or ignored.
Gradually the remaining students in the crowd left the scene, but
at 5 pm, employees from enterprises and shops in the city began
to pass through the square on their way home from work. Some of
them got swept up in the melee. A China Travel bus with tourists
from Taiwan passed through the square, and was apparently stoned
by the crowd. Around 7:15 pm, three or four hundred from the
crowd broke down the gate around the People's Procuracy, just to
the west of the provincial government offices. Several
automobiles and buildings were set on fire, in actions which the
police did almost nothing to interrupt.
Sympathizers within the provincial administration later provided
activists with an explanation for this police behaviour.
According to these accounts, the head of the Procuracy had
previously appealed for the police to stop beating the youths in
the crowd. Not only had the Public Security Bureau rejected the
appeal, but it had deliberately delayed its assistance when the
Procuracy was attacked.
Finally, around 8 pm the central square was sealed off, and the
crowd chased from the scene. One popular clothing store was
ransacked by the police as they chased fleeing citizens inside.
The official version in the press claimed that the 'mob' went in
to loot this store; but more plausible reports say that, at most,
people from the crowd hid behind glass counters which the police
then smashed, or grabbed clothing from racks to try to shield
themselves from the blows of the police. It was midnight before
the disturbances fully came to a close.
The biggest unknown remains the extent of casualties from the
April 22nd incident. The government has claimed that none were
killed, and that all injuries were slight. The students say that
11 or 13 were killed - and argue that before the official version
came out, a directive instructing Party leaders in the
universities to help restore order had referred to casualties
along these lines. I spoke to several people who claimed to have
second- or third-hand knowledge of specific victims, but it
proved impossible to confirm anything. Many students simply
disappeared from their dormitories. Some were sent home because
they were injured. No one knew of any deaths among the students,
and I suspect that had there been such casualties, I would have
learned of them in mid-May, when official control of information
from the universities broke down almost totally. Any fatalities
are more likely to have been among urban youths than among
students. With the government refusing all cooperation and
warning families against talking about it, it is at least
possible that there were fatalities which the government
succeeded in covering up. That there was widespread police
brutality is unquestionable: I have seen photographs confirming
that. The students had many sources inside the press and
government who were disgusted by the police brutality, and who
fed photographs and information to the protesters.
The day after the incident, the entire area around the square was
sealed off. Troops were called in to straighten things up, and
especially to clean the blood off the pavement. The students
returned to their campuses (but not always to classes), and their
activities began to focus on demanding an official accounting for
the police action of April 22nd.
The Xi'an 'riot' had significance far beyond the city itself. A
crucial grievance of the Beijing students' movement in May was
the insult to their 'patriotic' movement implied in the
People's Daily
editorial of 26 April
. That editorial accused the student movement of creating
'turmoil' (
dongluan
), and the Xi'an incident (along with an apparently more limited
incident in Changsha) was a key exhibit in the government's case.
As an instance of 'assault, vandalism, theft and arson', it stood
as a perfect example of the violence that would allegedly flow
from continued demonstrations.
For this reason, the students and many young faculty members in
Xi'an were particularly intent to expose the 'true story' of
student innocence and police brutality in Xi'an. When students
later travelled to the capital in mid-May, one of their
objectives was to assure the Beijing students (many of whom had
initially believed the official version of events) that Xi'an
students were also intent on peaceful protest, and that most of
the violence on April 22nd had been committed by the police.
The incident is of interest to anyone concerned with the study of
collective behaviour. The political context and official
sensitivity prevented my inquiring into the matter as closely as
I would have liked. Nonetheless, a number of important
characteristics of the April 22nd incident are clear enough and
worth noting.
First, in a political system which prevents routine expressions
of dissent through the formal political apparatus, informal
groupings become the common setting in which 'griping' (
fa laosao
) is likely to occur. For most adults these groups are likely to
form around family, friends and neighbours; but young students
living together in dormitories and eating together in dining
halls are more likely to form wider networks and produce more
volatile solidarities. Since their time in the universities is
limited, students feel less constrained by the Party apparatus
than do workers or government employees, who are likely to live
and work in the same unit for their entire lives. For students, a
political error at most means a bad job assignment (which could
be escaped by moving into the growing private sector); for a
worker, it could mean a lifetime of political persecution. All of
these factors make students the most likely segment of urban
society to initiate political protest. In addition, both
traditional culture and the requirements of a developing society
(where the skills of college graduates are in high demand)
enhance the status of students in the eyes of the general
populace, and lend substantial weight to such political protests
as they initiate. Twentieth-century Chinese history is replete
with student-initiated protests (May 4th, May 30th, December 9th,
etc.), and the spring of 1989 fits well within that mold.
Second, although routine dissent is denied group expression,
there are some cases in which it is impossible to prevent
students and others from engaging in collective public action.
These cases include official anniversaries of events on the
revolutionary calendar (December 9th and May 4th being the most
critical for students), and ceremonies to mourn the passing of
Party leaders (the Qingming memorials following Zhou Enlai's
death in 1976, and the response to Hu Yaobang's death in 1989
being the obvious examples). These are always occasions for
political theatre, and the Party tries very carefully to control
the script. But the students are inevitably key actors in any
such script, and there is always the danger that the creative
abilities of the actors will overwhelm the authority of Party
playwrights or the power of official directors.
Third, even as students adapt the official script to their own
purposes, they act within certain repertoires of collective
action which are closely analogous to legitimately recognized
collective behaviour. Thus, in this case, they marched behind and
offered memorial wreaths to Hu Yaobang, and they presented
petitions to the highest available official authorities. In part
this repertoire of collective action is selected because the
actors know it will be very difficult for officials to prohibit
it; in part it allows activists to mobilize more timid or
apolitical colleagues for an officially tolerated mass action.
For some activists, the adoption of orthodox repertoires
deliberately mocks the official ceremonies. In this case, by
demanding an explanation of Hu Yaobang's fall from power, the
students demonstrated greater loyalty to Hu's legacy than did the
national leaders who had removed him as General Secretary, but
who now claimed Hu as their hero in the televised Beijing
memorial. (5) However, this orthodox repertoire also reflects the
likelihood that even the more activist organizers of political
theatre are not fully alienated from the institutionalized
political culture. They still hold out hope that their petitions
might be accepted and help to spur positive political change.
Fourth, when the only permissible repertoire of collective action
is street theatre in the form of mass demonstrations, it is
impossible to predetermine the limits of participation. Anyone
can join in. Later on, in Xi'an as in Beijing, students made more
serious attempts to control participation: linking arms around
the perimeter of the marchers, or surrounding them with a line of
string. Such exclusionary attempts become particularly notable
after the government has expressed explicit fears that the
intrusion of non-student elements increases the chance of
disorder. When such official expressions carry with them the
implication that purely student demonstrations will be tolerated,
students are likely to attempt to limit participation -
especially when those limits are supported by anti-working class
prejudices widely shared within the intellectual community. But
such exclusionary tactics are of limited efficacy, and quickly
break down if the government indicates that even student
demonstrations will not be tolerated (as happened throughout the
country after the declaration of martial law in Beijing on 20
May). In any case, these limits are not likely to be significant
in the first stages of the movement, when activists are anxious
to expand participation as much as possible. Thus in Xi'an, the
students' April 22nd demonstrations were quickly joined by a wide
variety of individuals, including many young men from the ranks
of the unemployed or marginally employed.
Fifth, when even the organizers cannot dictate the cast for their
street theatre, there is the likelihood that the new actors who
join during the course of the drama will be acting out scripts of
their own choosing. In this case, although we lack systematic
data to establish the point unequivocally, it does seem that
non-student youths who joined the April 22nd demonstration were
responsible for much of the violence of the incident. Official
accounts stressed that many of these youths were trouble-makers (
bufa zhi tu
) and hoodlums (
daitu
) who had been in trouble with the law before. Such accounts are
of course designed to discredit the movement, and to appeal to
intellectuals' prejudices toward the lower classes - prejudices
which are the authorities' best hope of isolating the student
movement from working-class supporters. Nonetheless, the reports
are detailed enough (and sufficiently supported by the
impressions of eye-witnesses and the publicly broadcast videotape
record) to have a degree of plausibility. Furthermore, it must be
admitted that there are concrete reasons for these youths to turn
violent. Several observers, sympathetic to the demonstrators,
suggested to me that such youngsters were quick to start throwing
rocks at the police because of their pent-up hostility over
mistreatment received in earlier arrests or incarceration.
Finally, although there is indisputable evidence that many youths
threw bricks and stones at the police, and a few engaged in acts
of arson against public property, the major escalation of
violence was initiated by the authorities, and the violence of
the official suppression far exceeded that of the youthful
demonstrators.
May Days: Reviving the Movement
The April 22nd Xi'an riot (or 'police riot') was crucial to the
dynamics of the entire movement in the city. In late April, the
Xi'an student demonstrations were more firmly and effectively
suppressed than movements elsewhere in the country. After the 26
April
People's Daily
editorial, Beijing students responded immediately and massively
with major demonstrations on the following day. But Xi'an saw no
marches at all. Even on the campuses, big character posters were
strictly forbidden, and one student who decided to test the
policy by putting up an ambiguous 'Long Live Deng Xiaoping' (or
'Deng Xiaoping lives forever') poster was called in by the
administration and threatened with expulsion. The news media
appealed for citizens to turn in participants in the violence,
reported periodic arrests of young 'hoodlums', and on 5 May
announced a death sentence for one Wang Jun, accused of burning
several cars. The authorities did permit orderly student marches
on 4 May, but after this, an uneasy quiet resumed until 17 May,
when large-scale demonstrations broke out again. A central theme
of these renewed protests was the call to 'Reveal the True Story
of the April 22nd Massacre'.
In the first half of May, although the city was quiet, the
students were not quiescent. There was considerable resentment of
the official New China News Agency account of the April 22nd
incident, which was published locally on 28 April. It maintained
that no one had died, stressed the insult and injuries to the
police, noted counter-revolutionary slogans including 'Down with
the Communist Party', and generally portrayed the incident as the
work of young hooligans out to destroy socialism. Many of the
activities on the four big campuses amounted to efforts to gain
an accurate account of what had actually happened on April 22nd.
Students and young faculty members, with the cooperation of
friends in the provincial administration, prepared their own
accounts of the incident; and these began to circulate in
mimeographed versions on the campuses. In addition, individual
and collective petitions were prepared asking the Centre to send
an impartial team to investigate, a team which was to be
independent of any interference from the provincial authorities.
Letters were sent to Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng, Zhao Ziyang and the
Central Administrative Office of the Chinese Communist Party.
Others prepared to press lawsuits through the courts.
Meanwhile, the students in Beijing remained active and as the
Gorbachev visit approached, a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square
attracted the attention of the entire nation. By the middle of
the month, Xi'an students were increasingly aroused - closely
following events in Beijing by way of both the Chinese news media
and the Voice of America and BBC - but still they were not on the
streets. Then on 15 May, the authorities authorized a march by
the Xi'an Muslim community to protest the publication in Shanghai
of a volume,
Sexual Customs
(
Xing fengsu
), which they found insulting to Islam. With banners calling for
death to the 'Chinese Rushdies' who had authored the book, and
shouting slogans praising the Communist Party and its policy
toward national minorities, about 20,000 Xi'an Muslims marched
behind their
ahong
in orderly columns and strictly gender-segregated groups through
the central streets of Xi'an. (6)
In comments to Jimmy Carter in June 1987, repeated almost
verbatim to President Bush in February 1989, Deng Xiaoping had
argued that China could not practice American-style democracy
because if you let one group demonstrate on the streets, in a
country as large and heterogeneous as China, soon there would be
demonstrations all year round. (7) In this case, the events of
Xi'an suggested that there was some logic to his position. No
sooner had the Muslims been allowed to demonstrate than the
students prepared a massive march of their own. There was still
no formal organization linking the institutions of higher
learning in the city, but it is clear that informal networks were
working very efficiently, both within and between campuses. Few
students at the big universities had returned to classes after 4
May, and the intensity of political activity picked up
significantly after the Beijing students began their hunger
strike on 13 May. Still, it took the Muslims to break the ban on
street theatre in Xi'an. On the morning of 17 May, big and small
character posters appeared on the walls of dining halls and other
central meeting places, even at the smaller colleges of Xi'an.
(8) The students' account of the April 22nd incident was
prominently displayed (and everywhere read with great interest).
There were criticisms of official corruption, poems ridiculing
the nations leaders, and announcements of the schools which would
demonstrate that day. Soon the students were on the streets
again, marching to and through the New City Square, with
delegations from the various campuses setting out around noon and
arriving throughout the afternoon.
Discipline was good and the propaganda preparation excellent.
Slogans for the march had clearly been unified, and the virtual
identity of slogans in Xi'an and Beijing suggests that student
leaders had contacted friends in the capital and were following
Beijing's lead. Provocative slogans attacking the Communist Party
or the socialist system were scrupulously avoided. Instead there
were the ever-popular 'Down with official profiteers' and
'Eliminate corruption', appeals for 'freedom' and 'democracy',
calls for the press to speak the truth and the cry that
'Patriotism is not a crime'.
The concrete focus of the demonstration was really two-fold:
'Support[ing] Beijing', and appeals to reveal the true story of
April 22nd. The latter would remain a central and unique
preoccupation of the Xi'an movement, and activists were certainly
well prepared to press their case. As noted above, Xeroxed photos
of police brutality (the most graphic obtained from official
and/or press photographers who were
inside
the provincial government compound) were pasted on power poles
throughout the city, and held up by propaganda teams moving about
on pedicabs. Two-page printed copies of the student version of
April 22nd were also pasted along the streets, and every copy
attracted a small group of readers. There can be little doubt
that by the end of this day, there was almost nobody in Xi'an who
had not seen or heard, first- or second-hand, the activists'
answer to the official view of April 22nd.
In this second stage of the movement, beginning 17 May, the
students' repertoire of protest was significantly expanded. The
marches followed the standard format: headed by official
university, departmental, faculty and graduate student standards
of yellow-fringed purple felt; including many privately prepared
banners with the usual mix of slogans painted on white sheets;
and sprinkled with large numbers of small red and yellow
triangular paper flags with a great variety of messages. Walls
and power poles along the main streets and billboards at major
intersections were also covered with posters, leaving a more
permanent record of the protesters' concerns. Pedicabs toured the
streets exhorting the crowd with bullhorns and distributing
leaflets. At various spots throughout the city, student speakers
addressed crowds of 50-100 onlookers. Delegations went to
factories, where they made speeches, distributed leaflets, and
appealed for support. At the New City Square, a hunger strike
began in the Beijing manner; and soon a large tent city had grown
up with over a thousand fasters. At the Bell Tower, the central
city's busiest intersection became the site of another form of
protest: a silent sit-in (
jingzuo
). On 18 May, a final mode of protest was adopted from the
Cultural Revolution (and pre-1949 student movements):
commandeering seats on trains to Beijing, to support the struggle
in the capital. Almost 2000 students packed trains on the 18th
and 19th, most of them travelling without tickets.
The popular response to these protests was overwhelmingly
positive. Small restaurants set out bowls and buckets and
provided boiled water for the marchers to drink freely. Crowds
two and three deep lined the streets downtown to applaud the
students. Boxes that students carried to collect contributions
were quickly filled, and the students themselves told how in the
previous days they had been going to factories and had collected
over 10,000
yuan
from the workers of Xi'an. Much of this enthusiastic response
can be attributed to the sentiment that the students were acting
selflessly. In the words of one onlooker, 'The students are not
asking for promotions, or housing, or an official appointment to
get rich. They want nothing more than to save the nation'.
Implicitly, their strike was compared favourably to an economic
strike by workers - and also to a Party leadership now viewed as
entirely self-serving.
The popular response expanded on the 18th and 19th. As the
temperature rose past 30 degrees Celsius, even more water was
offered and I passed one truck from a soft drink factory
distributing free orange soda. Now all the major march routes
were lined with home-made banners in support of the students,
usually simple statements affirming the patriotic aims of the
protesters. And the contributions increased. I was told on the
19th that workers from the massive Yellow River Television
Factory not far from Xi'an had come in with 100,000
yuan
- though that figure was almost certainly exaggerated. The
students were exceptionally careful in thanking their supporters:
vowing to fight for democracy for
all
the people - without claiming that they themselves were
qualified to
represent
the people. The most effective students delivering this message
were often young women, who managed an impressive combination of
courtesy and conviction as they addressed the crowd through
bullhorns.
On the 18th, and especially on the 19th, non-students began to do
more than just line the streets and contribute money. More and
more trucks filled with workers toured the city, plastered with
slogans of support for the students. Middle and even primary
school students marched in large numbers under the direction of
their teachers, usually beginning in the late afternoon after
school was out. Some students came to Xi'an from outlying
counties. Most strikingly, on the 19th I encountered a group of
young peasants from the county bordering Xi'an to the south,
marching in support of the students to enthusiastic applause from
the crowd.
The worker participation brought with it an interesting shift in
the symbols of protest. I must have seen a dozen groups marching
or riding in trucks behind massive posters of Mao Zedong. The
other favourite poster was a 1950s scene of the old leadership
group that had died in 1976: Mao, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De. Few
intellectuals would march in Mao's name, but to many workers and
peasants he still represents a strong leader personally committed
to rooting out corruption and official privilege, a lost model of
selfless dedication to China and its revolutionary
transformation. In the little rhyme with which I began this
narrative, we can see how discontent with China's present leaders
was already, in the fall of 1988, beginning to produce a certain
nostalgia for Mao. Now in the spring, these sentiments freely
blossomed forth. The rhyme comparing the sons of Mao, Zhao and
Deng frequently appeared on wall posters, to be taken up and
repeated by members of the crowd; and in one poster I saw, it was
further embellished to include Zhu De and his sons, and Peng
Dehuai and Zhou Enlai, who died without heirs, among the positive
examples.
By 19 May, criticism and ridicule of China's national leaders had
become a major unifying theme of the protest, eclipsing the
concern over reversing the official verdict on April 22nd.
Several banners and posters called for the resignation of Deng,
Li and Zhao. Zhao Ziyang was repeatedly ridiculed for his
expensive golfing habits and corrupt sons. This criticism is
notable, given the Party Central Committee's accusations in June
(following Zhao's dismissal) that he had secretly supported the
demonstrations. Presumably most Beijing students were cognizant
of the inner-party struggles, including Zhao's softer line toward
their movement. Some may even have tried to coordinate the
struggles on the street to those going on within the Politburo.
But that was almost certainly not the case in Xi'an. BBC and VOA
broadcasts left the Xi'an demonstrators aware of the power
struggle in Beijing. But before the declaration of martial law,
their view of Zhao Ziyang remained unaffected: he was still very
much one of the enemy.
The other major target was Deng Xiaoping. Many posters politely
suggested 'Xiaoping, take a rest'; or commented directly
'Xiaoping is old!' One turned an old Deng saying against him:
'Black cats or white cats are OK [as long as they catch mice],
but what about old cats?' During the Cultural Revolution, the
much lauded oil workers of Daqing had chanted 'When the oil
workers shout just once, the whole world shakes three times'. Now
a group from an oil refinery chanted 'When the oil workers shout
just once, Deng Xiaoping should go right away'.
More generally, in Xi'an as throughout the country the 'nepotism
poster' was widely displayed, with its list of China's major
leaders and the jobs that their sons, daughters and close
relatives held. On it, for example, the current Secretary-General
of the Party, Jiang Zemin, was identified (incorrectly, it seems)
as Li Xiannian's son-in-law. Wherever it appeared, this small
mimeographed poster attracted large crowds, with many people
copying down the details.
The streets were totally in the hands of the people. Uniformed
police were scarcely to be seen. On the 17th, there were still a
fair number of police trying vainly to direct crowds and traffic,
but most of these were older men. Younger officers had apparently
already been instructed to circulate through the crowds in plain
clothes. By the 19th, there were almost no uniformed police to be
seen. Xi'an was 'out of control' (
shikong
) - but it was also very peaceful and friendly. In fact, this was
one of the most dramatic human aspects of the movement in Xi'an,
as elsewhere. As any visitor to China knows, crowded conditions
in Chinese buses, trains and other public places are not usually
conducive to civil behaviour. In many cities, the slightest bump
can elicit streams of verbal abuse or angry (if largely
theatrical) shoving matches. But during the height of the
demonstrations, a festive carnival atmosphere prevailed. Amid all
the confusion of the pressing crowds, people were extraordinarily
polite. Again and again, after a bump on the streets, people
would say 'Excuse me!' Before the demonstrations, I do not think
I ever heard that phrase in a public place. Now, even drivers
caught in the mobs retained remarkably good humour.
A common argument of those questioning China's readiness for
democratic reform is that the 'quality' (
suzhi
) of the population is deficient - using a term which encompasses
everything from educational level to civic virtues, and is
sometimes used in a manner analogous to the notion of 'national
character'. Before the demonstrations broke out, this was even a
theme in reformist circles, among those arguing for a more
gradual approach to China's problems. (9) Now, in May, it was
almost as though the crowds were consciously demonstrating the
people's capacity for self-control. More likely (since the
behaviour was so automatic and unselfconscious), there was
something infectious about the atmosphere in the streets - where
people felt a genuinely liberating release from the official
supervision which pervaded their prior existence, and at the same
time a new fraternity with their fellow citizens. There was
something of the revolutionary moment here, which Robert Darnton
has described for France of 1792. The crowds in China's cities of
May seemed to create one of those 'moments of madness, of
suspended disbelief, when anything looked possible and ...
[people] moved from
vous
to
tu
'. Such moments, Darnton argues, permit 'the social
reconstruction of reality' and breed the conviction (in China, I
would say, the
hope
) 'that ordinary people can make history instead of suffering
it'. (10)
It was difficult to avoid infection by the exhilaration of the
crowds on 19 May. But after returning from a tour through the New
City Square and the central streets, a Chinese friend said
knowingly: tonight something will happen. I thought him wrong: it
would take longer for the Politburo deadlock to break. But of
course, he was absolutely correct. At about 11:40 pm, an
'important announcement' was said to be forthcoming on the
television. Then came a long interlude of travelogue fillers.
Finally, beginning around 12:20, Li Peng's hard-line speech
calling in the army was broadcast twice. The next morning,
martial law went into effect in Beijing. In the capital, the
hunger strike was called off, and the Xi'an fasters followed
suit. They also withdrew from the New City Square, which was
sealed off by police and military police on the morning of 20
May.
(On 20 May, I left Xi'an for several days on a previously
scheduled trip to Jinan, Shandong province. There, when I arrived
on the 21st, several hundred students from the two major
universities (which, as in the Cultural Revolution, were
consistently unable to coordinate their activities) were on the
streets shouting 'Down with Li Peng!' and 'Li Peng, step down (
xiatai
)!' The universities were all on strike; and in the evening the
students would sally forth, especially to block the bridge across
the Yellow River whenever there were rumours of a troop train
heading to the capital. I arrived back in Xi'an on 25 May.)
After Martial Law
The declaration of martial law in Beijing certainly represented a
turning point for the movement in Xi'an. It significantly reduced
the number of demonstrators, as many of the less dedicated or
more timid students simply left school and returned to their
homes. But the substantial remainder of dedicated students got
better organized. On 25 May, Xi'an formed a union of the city's
autonomous student unions (
Gaozilian
); and 'Democracy Forums' sprouted up on the larger campuses.
The Bell Tower became the focus of public activities. The tower
itself was plastered on all sides with posters calling for the
downfall of the Li Peng group in Beijing, though I was told that
these were torn down every night, only to be replaced the next
day. In the plaza in front of the central Post Office, which
faces the Bell Tower, the students had set up a powerful
loudspeaker system for their propaganda. From it they broadcast
news from Beijing (much of which came from foreign radio
broadcasts), statements of support from citizens (a significant
number of which seemed to come from small private entrepreneurs [
getihu
] and retired cadres), and eyewitness accounts of people returned
from Beijing (for which, again, retired cadres seemed a favourite
source). A central theme of these broadcasts was that only true
democracy could prevent corruption in high places. Since the
authorities could certainly have shut these broadcasts down by
cutting the power, the fact that they continued operating until 9
June indicated a significant continuing official toleration of
dissent.
On the college campuses, all classes had stopped throughout the
city. Small groups gathered to discuss events in Beijing, the
fate of the movement, and what all these developments would mean
for China and for themselves. At this point, the consensus was
that events in Beijing would have a controlling influence. Thus
the power struggle in Beijing became a much more common focus of
concern. In this, of course, Zhao Ziyang was quickly transformed
from being a symbol of corruption in high places to a sponsor of
political change. Yang Shangkun's speech to the Central Military
Commission, in which Zhao's crimes were outlined, quickly leaked
out of the Party committees which were to study it and was
transcribed onto big character posters. The effect was of course
to enhance Zhao's standing among the students.
The period after 20 May also saw the spread of the movement to
colleges in Shaanxi outside of Xi'an. In Yan'an, the university
and medical school both went on strike, and there were sizeable
demonstrations through the city. One of these attempted to
present a statement in support of the Beijing demonstrators to
the prefectural government. The gate was locked, and the students
broke it down. In Yulin, students from the Normal School launched
a similar demonstration, but there the authorities were more
enlightened. They accepted the students' petition and gave them
something to drink; and the youths left peacefully. There were
also student demonstrations in Weinan and Baoji - in fact in
every city in the province with a post-secondary school. In most
of these cities, young people carefully followed the foreign
short-wave news broadcasts as a key source of information. In
Yan'an, where I arrived on 5 June, the demand for access to this
information was so strong that the city was sold out of
short-wave radios. Even cadres of some importance in the
prefectural government were supplementing the Party's internal
sources of information with news from the BBC and VOA.
June 4-10: End Game
Since 20 May, most of Xi'an's attention had been riveted on
events in Beijing. Everyone watched the standoff between the
citizens of the capital and the martial law troops trying to
enter the city. No one missed the evening television news, where
the scope of the popular resistance was obvious in scenes of
troop trucks surrounded by massive crowds. Foreign broadcasts
provided more details. Hope fought against logic as people tried
anxiously to believe that somehow splits in the leadership or
insubordination in the army would force the hardliners to back
down. Then on the evening of 3 June came news of troops trying to
approach Tiananmen and being driven back by the crowd. Another
clip prominently featured a visit to the martial law troops by
Qin Jiwei, Defense Minister and former commander of the Beijing
garrison, who was widely believed to oppose the use of force
against the students. With Qin apparently on board, the army was
now sufficiently united to act forcefully. At that point, all
politically sensitive observers seemed to realize that the moment
of truth had come, and a violent suppression was all but
inevitable. Many stayed up, or woke up in the early hours of the
morning, to listen to foreign broadcasts. By dawn, most of the
population (certainly virtually everyone who lived at an
educational institution) knew that a massacre had taken place.
On the morning of 4 June, Xi'an was exceedingly tense and quiet.
There were widespread rumours of troops ready to enter the city,
but in the end none would appear. Small bands of students on
bicycles toured the city spreading the news, one behind a large
red banner inscribed with the words: 'The national flag is
bleeding'. It was Sunday, and some people were going about their
normal business: families out on bicycles visiting friends or
relatives. But there were far fewer people on the streets than a
normal Sunday in June, and the large stores downtown were
particularly empty.
Power poles had small posters attached to them: most reported
events in Beijing, often just relaying information from VOA.
Others expressed a determination to resist a violent dictatorship
to the death. As was characteristic of wall posters throughout
the movement, few contained coherent calls for action. Most were
emotional statements of conscience and determination, relying on
literary devices to proclaim their fervor, rather than logical
argument to chart a course. Painted on poles, doors and buses
were the major slogans of this period, the most prominent being
'Strangle (
jiaosi
) Li Peng'. Others called for strikes of workers and merchants,
and the overthrow of the 'reactionary regime'.
At the Bell Tower, the student loudspeaker which had been torn
down two days earlier, only to be replaced the next day,
continued its proclamations. It said that funds were adequate and
asked for no more contributions, thanking those who had already
given. It read simple poems of patriotism, agony and
determination, and relayed news from Beijing.
Students were on the streets but not in great numbers, or at
least only in relatively small groups of at most one hundred.
They moved quickly to stay ahead of the authorities, sometimes on
bicycles, sometimes jogging. Chants of 'Down with Li Peng' were
greeted by enthusiastic applause from the crowds lining the
streets. Especially east of the Bell Tower, an unbroken crowd sat
along the rails waiting for passing demonstrators and greeting
each small band with cheers.
As the day wore on, small gatherings of people throughout the
city engaged in tense discussion - groups of ten, twenty,
occasionally more. Mostly the subject was exactly what had
happened in Beijing. VOA and BBC were the main sources of
information, but some people had received phone calls - or more
often, knew someone who had received a phone call - from Beijing.
People proclaimed openly on what might be done: a general strike
might topple the hardliners, but would enough workers strike? Was
there any hope in the rumours of division within the military? In
their hearts, however, most people seemed to realize that the
fight was now over. Together with that realization came the
sentiment, sometimes expressed with downcast eyes and shaking
heads, sometimes with direct stares and a firm jaw: 'This wound
will never heal'.
Despite the sense of resignation among the population at large,
many young workers and students clearly had not given up.
Throughout the night, as the city slept uneasily and everyone
wondered when (not
if
) troops would enter Xi'an, small bands of chanting youths passed
through the streets, usually on bicycles. The next morning, new
posters appeared on our campus: attacks on the 'fascist' methods
of the small group of power-holders in Beijing. Students appealed
to their teachers to resist the reactionary Party leadership, so
that the students of Beijing would not have shed their blood in
vain. They proclaimed their own willingness to die.
On the streets, the youths adopted the methods used so
effectively in Beijing after 20 May: buses, trucks and any
available vehicles were commandeered, parked across key
intersections, and then immobilized by letting the air out of
their tires. At the blockades I encountered, the activists seemed
from their appearance to include more workers than students.
There were also widespread reports of strikes, and it is believed
that for a few days after 4 June, quite a few workers at some of
the larger Xi'an factories stayed away from work. There were a
few large student demonstrations, of perhaps 1000-2000 people.
Behind funeral wreaths and red banners protesting the massacre in
Beijing, they marched with grim faces and white headbands. The
mood was now utterly different from the carnival atmosphere of
mid-May. That had been replaced by feelings of grief and sad
resignation. If there was any spirit of resistance, it was a
determined readiness for suicidal self-sacrifice. There were no
jokes, no smiles. These young people had heard of the bloodshed
in Beijing, and now they too were prepared to die.
But the Xi'an authorities handled the situation more adroitly
than their counterparts in Beijing. Perhaps their own experience
on April 22nd had taught them not to move precipitously.
Certainly the example of Beijing left Xi'an residents less
prepared to launch massive resistance, so the Xi'an impasse was
easier to resolve. In any case, the authorities made no immediate
moves to arrest activists. The roadblocks were removed one by one
in the middle of the night; and then the buses were simply kept
off the streets for about a week. By the ninth, the students were
ready to abandon the struggle (for the time being). The
twenty-three campus representatives of the Xi'an student
federation were to meet, but only seven showed up: the rest had
gone into hiding. Those who attended disbanded the organization.
The loudspeaker system at the Bell Tower was taken down. For
their part, the provincial authorities seemed anxious to
reciprocate these signs of moderation. The governor and the first
Party secretary left for the countryside to inspect the wheat
harvest, and evening television reports on their activities
served to inform the population that there was no one in Xi'an
capable of making decisions for a major crackdown.
Crackdown: A Matter of Appearance
Around 11 June, the authorities began making arrests: first 48,
then 128, then over 200 within a week. The leaders of the student
federation and those responsible for the loudspeakers at the Bell
Tower were the first targets, and most of them are believed to
have been caught. Worker activists were another target. After the
first 48, most of the arrests were not publicly announced, so
hard information was sparse and rumours numerous. In general, it
appeared that more workers than students were arrested. One
certainly got the impression that the authorities were much more
worried about workers disrupting production than about students
missing classes.
One of the primary obstacles to an accurate estimate of the
number of people arrested in the crackdown is the deliberate
disinformation campaign of the provincial authorities. This
disinformation seemed directed as much at the central government
as at the general population. From the very beginning, the
central and Beijing authorities had justified their violent
crackdown by pointing to 'unreformed ex-convicts, gangs of
hooligans, and persons with criminal records' among the
demonstrators. Such 'dregs of society' were allegedly responsible
for much of the turmoil since April, and for the violence in
Beijing. (11) By this standard, provincial authorities could
claim to be suppressing unrest just by arresting petty criminals.
Accordingly, the Shaanxi authorities soon broadcast an
announcement of 7000 arrests in the province since April. But it
was clear that this figure included everyone arrested for
anything at all during the past two and one half months.
Shaanxi also ostentatiously 'rounded up the usual suspects'. On
17 June, I passed a caravan of police vehicles and three trucks
parading convicted prisoners through the streets. Their crimes,
listed on the front of the trucks and announced by loudspeaker,
were mostly robbery and assault. But their arrest was portrayed
as part of the suppression of 'turmoil' (
dongluan
). The seriousness of the security forces' effort was highlighted
by a heavy machine gun, trained on the convicts, which was
mounted atop the cab of a following truck. I doubt that this
parade impressed many citizens. One onlooker muttered loud enough
for me to hear: 'Look at that! A machine gun to guard a couple of
kids!' But by running up the number of arrests, such measures
probably helped convince the Centre that Shaanxi was serious
about cracking down on the roots of unrest.
By July, as life began to assume the surface appearance of
normality, a major preoccupation in the schools and government
organs of Xi'an was learning to cope with the incessant political
education and the occasional arrest of friends. Most striking
about the arrests was the quick mobilization of friends and
connections to try to free the individual. Any university student
or graduate had an automatic network of classmates, all with
their own familial networks, who might be called upon for
support. University graduates all had classmates scattered
throughout the provincial apparatus which, in order to raise the
educational level of key administrative personnel, had absorbed
large numbers of university graduates in the 1980s. I was told of
one previously apolitical teacher, who had become involved in the
operation of the Bell Tower loudspeaker after 4 June. He had been
arrested with a number of documents on his person. Once the
arrest was known, his former classmates began contacting friends
in public security, in the legal system, and even in the
subordinate organs of the provincial committee to try to get him
free. In past political campaigns, the victims and their families
have often been made into social pariahs, and subjected to
various degrees of ostracism. But this time, the regime has been
unable to mobilize that sort of moral support for its crusade
against 'bourgeois liberalism'. (12)
The government's efforts at political education initially relied
upon television. The first video footage of the Beijing violence
- mostly shots, with little commentary, from the surveillance
cameras along Chang'an Avenue - began to air on 5 June. For the
rest of the month, there was a gradually escalating barrage of
videotapes from Beijing - featuring burning trucks and tanks,
rock-throwing youths, and the charred corpses of PLA soldiers -
until four hours of evening television was taken up with the
subject. The propaganda was not without effect. Some older people
were troubled by the evident violence of the demonstrators, and
were prepared to believe that the government had had to do
something to preserve law and order. But most television (in
urban areas) is watched in the privacy of the home, and there
viewers are relatively free to interpret the films in their own
way. Since everyone knew that eyewitnesses from foreign news
agencies put a very different interpretation on events, it was
not unusual to see people doing running critical commentaries as
they watched the government's televised propaganda.
By the end of June, formal political study was underway in most
Xi'an units. The key text was of course
Deng Xiaoping's 9 June speech
to the officers of the martial law troops
. In addition, people were to report their activities,
day-by-day, for the entire course of the movement. Carried out in
small groups of colleagues from the same unit, this political
study was a public political ritual quite different from watching
television at home. At the heart of the ritual was the obligatory
biaotai
: announcing one's position - inevitably in support of the
government. But this time, the ritual had become theatre: in the
place of believers were performers, acting out lines memorized
from the morning paper. (13)
Sometimes, the political apparatus was not even capable of
inducing its actors to spout the proper lines. I heard of two
examples of study in which the text was the opening lines of Deng
Xiaoping's speech, in which he refers vaguely to the
international 'macro-climate' (
daqihou
) and the Chinese 'micro-climate' which had given rise to the
turmoil of the spring. (14) In one university small group, the
cadre leading the study guessed that the international
'macro-climate' must mean movements toward political reform in
the Soviet Union, Poland and Hungary; and the Asian democratic
movements in the Philippines and Korea. All of these, he thought,
were quite praiseworthy. As for the domestic 'micro-climate', he
did not see how liberal thinking among a few intellectuals was
enough to explain such a massive popular movement, so the
'micro-climate' must be dissatisfaction with corruption in the
government. Given this interpretation, he could not see what was
so dangerous about Deng's 'climates' and he had to confess that
he was himself still confused. Needless to say, there was no
dissent from the students, so this little exercise proved quite
counter-productive from the standpoint of the Centre.
Presumably less direct attacks on the appointed wisdom were more
common. One creative approach analysed Deng's 'climates' in the
following manner: The earth's climate is strongly affected by a
variety of phenomena of which sun spots are very important. This
is a year of unusually intense sunspot activity, as a result of
which the climate has become greatly disturbed. This disturbed
climate has affected human beings as well, causing great
confusion in their thinking. Bourgeois liberalism is a prime
example of confused thinking, and it produced the confusion from
which the counter-revolutionary riot resulted. When one is
dealing with political theatre, this sort of tongue-in-cheek
nonsense is presumably very difficult to combat.
The net effect of all this political education of the students in
Xi'an was nicely illustrated by the graduation ceremony held for
the seniors of Northwest University in mid-July. The number of
students being rather large, they could not be accommodated in
any university hall, so they had to proceed to a nearby theatre.
As the students lined up to walk to the theatre, they quite
spontaneously began singing 'The Internationale' and marched to
the theatre chorusing it, much to the surprise (and quiet
approval) of citizens along the route. Inside the hall, the
students' emotions continued high and they sang on for more than
an hour. Finally the university president quieted them and began
his speech. Naturally it contained an obligatory reference to the
'counter-revolutionary riot', at the mention of which the
students broke into very orderly but sustained applause. No one
led. No one stood up. But the clapping continued for many
minutes, despite the president's effort to restore silence.
Finally, it was felt that the president (who was quite popular as
a result of his efforts to protect students and faculty after 4
June) must be given some face. The applause stopped, and he was
allowed to finish. The head of the Communist Youth League then
rose to speak, and again mentioned the 'counter-revolutionary
riot'. Again applause broke out, but this time it did not stop
until the speaker abandoned the podium without finishing. A
student speaker was third. He eliminated his reference to the
'riot', read his speech at top speed and sat down quickly. In
that way the ceremony was finally concluded.
The lesson of this ceremony was clear: whenever students are
brought together for a ceremonial occasion, they will try to
transform the ritual into an opportunity to affirm their own
identities and express their own views. 'The Internationale' was
the most important anthem of 1989, and it will remain the anthem
of the students. It is very hard to ban 'The Internationale' as a
symbol of 'bourgeois liberalism'.
The problem goes beyond a specific song. Ritual has always been
central to Chinese governance, especially given the Confucian
preference for ritual over law. In the twentieth century, when
Confucian ritual began to lose force in the political realm,
politicians tried to substitute political theatre. Ceremonial
occasions in the national calendar commemorated the revolutionary
moments and great heroes of the Kuomintang and the Republic of
China. Frequently, however, students seized these occasions for
their own purposes, and soon the calendar was marked by the dates
of student street theatre: May 4th, May 30th, December 9th. To
this day, we still chart the narrative history of
twentieth-century China in terms of these incidents, for each one
fundamentally altered the political discourse of the times and
the dynamic of Chinese politics. (15)
After 1949, the Communist Party sought to re-ritualize this
political theatre, with campaigns directed by the
Party-controlled mass organizations. This mobilization style has
been characteristic of politics in the PRC. It feeds upon a
cultural preference for rule by ritual (not law) and a
twentieth-century repertoire of political theatre on the streets.
But it is also related to certain structural characteristics of
the Chinese state. Just as the small size of the imperial
bureaucracy (only 40,000 officials) forced the Confucian state to
rely heavily on ritual, so has the PRC's shortage of highly
trained technical and administrative personnel (and her senior
cadres' distrust of the technical cadres China has) impelled the
regime to rely on political mobilization more than administrative
rule. (16) This mobilization style of politics has made political
theatre unusually important in the Chinese case. Despite all the
attempts at administrative routinization since the present
reforms began in 1978, in the end Deng's regime is forced back to
the ritual of political study, and the theatre of 'announcing
one's position' (
biaotai
). But the spring of 1989 has shown us that young people schooled
in a politics of theatre will adapt the official repertoire to
scripts of their own making. Once they bring their theatre to the
streets, they are strikingly creative in devising new repertoires
of symbolic protest. The tanks in Tiananmen Square brought down
the curtain on this particular drama. But the creative potential
of China's young actors was proved beyond a doubt. History will
certainly recall them for an encore.
Endnotes
* The material in this article and all directly quoted passages
not otherwise identified are taken from the journal that I kept
through my ten months in Shaanxi. For obvious reasons, no Chinese
informants are identified by name. I would like to thank Dawah
and Elizabeth J. Perry for their helpful comments on an earlier
draft.
1
The Great Learning
(
Daxue
) 1.4, translation from James Legge,
The Chinese Classics
(Taipei reprint, 1971), vol. 1, p. 357.
2 At the time demonstrations broke out in Xi'an, I was conducting
field work in the countryside of Northern Shaanxi. Though I heard
about the demonstrations in a phone call on April 22nd, an
unreliable power supply and irregular television transmitter in
the area left me pretty much out of contact until my return to
Xi'an on 4 May. Most of the account here is based upon
conversations with Xi'an students, teachers, intellectuals and
ordinary citizens after my return, and on a printed account of
the April 22nd incident prepared by some of the activists. For
the official version, see the New China News Agency account,
'Xi'an "4-22" dongluan jishi' [An Account of the April 22nd Riot
in Xi'an],
Shaanxi ribao
[Shaanxi Daily, hereafter
SXRB
], 28 April 1989.
3 The account here is largely based on 'Xi'an "4-22" dongluan
jishi' (see previous note), an official account which naturally
sought to exaggerate vandalism.
4 Zhang Boxing, the first secretary of the Party in Shaanxi, was
in Beijing for Hu Yaobang's funeral (
SXRB
], 21 April 1989), so Hou was the ranking provincial leader.
5 I owe this insight to Jeffery Wasserstrom, 'Taking it to the
Streets: Shanghai Students and Political Protest, 1919-1949',
University of California, Berkeley, PhD dissertation, 1989.
6 See 'Xinwen chubanshu chajin "
Xing fengsu
" yishu' [The Newspaper and Publishing Office Bans the Book
Sexual Customs
],
Renmin ribao
[People's Daily, hereafter
RMRB
], 16 May 1989, on the controversy surrounding this book.
7 See selections from these talks in
RMRB
], 24 June 1989.
8 I was living with my family at Shaanxi College of Education
(Shaanxi jiaoyu xueyuan), a small college training secondary
school teachers. Most of the students already have jobs, and are
older than students at the comprehensive universities. With
families and careers already set, they tended to be more
conservative than students at other schools; and 17 May was the
first day that posters appeared in our compound. I went out to
take a few minutes of videotape, fearing they might soon be torn
down. Within ten minutes I received a phone call telling me to
cease and desist, and within half an hour officials from the
municipal foreign affairs police were in my room questioning my
intentions and credentials. (I was told that since I was not an
accredited newsman, I was not to take pictures.) I talked my way
out of trouble, however, and as the police became increasingly
invisible over the next few days, I became increasingly bold in
following and recording the demonstrations on film and tape.
9 See an interesting recent article by Su Xiaokang in
Wenhui yuekan
, no. 6, 1989, also Xue Dezhen and Yuan Zhiming, 'Jingshen
wenming jianshe shi yizhong zhutixing de jianshe' [The
Establishment of a Spiritual Civilization is a Fundamental Task],
RMRB
], 14 November 1986, reprinted in
Xinhua wenzhai
, no. 1, 1987, pp. 3-5; and 'Tigao rende suzhi zhi wei zhongyao'
[The Importance of Improving the Character of the People],
SXRB
], 19 April 1989.
10 Robert Darnton, 'What Was Revolutionary About the French
Revolution',
New York Review of Books
, vol. 30, nos. 21-22 (19 January 1989), p. 10. I would like to
thank Resat Kasaba for calling this article to my attention.
11 See the announcement of the Central Committee and the State
Council, 'Gao quanguo gongchan dangyuan he quanguo renmin shu',
RMRB
], 5 June 1989; and the speech of Beijing Mayor, Chen Xitong,
'Chen Xitong tongzhi de guangbo jianghua',
RMRB
], 6 June 1989.
12 If fact, Xi'an's most famous pariah was a woman who had turned
in her brother, for whom a national arrest warrant had been
issued on account of his activities in the Beijing student union.
The media tried to make her a hero; but the population responded
with ostracism and abuse. (Nicholas Kristof reported the story in
the
New York Times
, 10 September 1989.)
13 My thoughts on this process owe much to Victor W. Turner,
From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play
(Performing Arts Journal, New York, 1982).
14 See
RMRB
], 28 June 1989, for the substantially abridged public version of
this speech.
15 For a most insightful treatment of this history, see Jeffery
Wasserstrom, op.cit.
16 See Andrew G. Walder,
Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese
Industry
(University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986), pp.113-22.
