Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (113 page)

The Li Peng–Zhao Ziyang Split, April 29–May 12

Under the strain of the growing popular demonstrations against the government and party, high-level officials became polarized between those who feared chaos and believed tighter control was necessary, and those who believed they should be more accommodating to the student demands. Li Peng was the symbol and rallying point for the former, and Zhao Ziyang for the latter. Li Peng's diary is filled, day after day, with criticisms of Zhao Ziyang; he notes that by the fall of 1988 Deng was already dissatisfied with Zhao's handling of the economy, his political softness in failing to give strong support for the campaign against bourgeois liberalization, and his reluctance to accept full responsibility for the rampant inflation and the public's reaction to the lifting of price controls.
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Zhao, by contrast, stated the problems became
worse after he left for North Korea and Li Peng reported to Deng on the ominous threats from the demonstrations.
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Deng, the other party elders, and the security forces all supported Li Peng. Zhao, who after returning from North Korea advocated that the April 26 editorial be retracted, won the support of the intellectuals, reformers, students, and the general public.

Li Peng and Zhao made a serious effort to avoid displaying their differences in public. Just as Li Peng had dutifully seen Zhao off at the train station on April 23, so too did he dutifully welcome him back home on April 30. But their personal differences, rivalries, and the pull of separate constituencies were far stronger than their desire to cooperate with one another. Tensions between the two had been escalating since the summer of 1988 as the economic problems mounted and Zhao was held responsible for China's high inflation. At the time, Zhao officially kept his position as head of the Finance and Economics Leadership Small Group, but control of China's economic bureaucracy, which formerly had also rested with Zhao, shifted to Li Peng. The overlapping responsibilities became a battleground between Zhao the reformer and Li Peng the cautious planner.

Li Peng, a sober official, was trained originally as a hydraulic engineer and was known to be a responsible and effective administrator. He held special status as the son of a revolutionary martyr and as one of the many godsons of Zhou Enlai and his wife, Deng Yingchao. Li Peng, in fact, had to have had a high level of ability to have attended a very selective program to study advanced science in the Soviet Union, but among leaders he was not renowned for his brilliance. He was unassertive in offering independent ideas and he was thoroughly loyal, hard-working, and dedicated—ready to carry out the wishes of the senior leaders, no matter how unpopular their message. Li's dour, careful nature was in sharp contrast to the warm and sympathetic Hu Yaobang or the more aloof but gentlemanly and analytical Zhao Ziyang. Because Li Peng found it hard to hide his disdain for the student protestors, his encounters with them did more to incite them than to quell their anger.

On April 25, when Deng laid out to Li Peng his views on the importance of publishing an editorial, the summary of Deng's comments was sent to Zhao in Pyongyang where in a secluded room, surrounded by a black curtain, he read Deng's message. Zhao immediately wired back, “I completely agree with the policy decision of Comrade Xiaoping with regard to the present problem of turmoil.”
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In his diary, Li emphasizes that Zhao had approved of the editorial, though in reality he had only approved of Deng's comments, upon which the editorial was eventually based.

Once Zhao returned from his trip to North Korea, he quickly concluded
that the battle lines between the party and the students were so sharply drawn that there was little hope for reconciliation without retracting the editorial. At one point he even agreed to take full responsibility for the April 26 editorial if it could be withdrawn.
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Zhao, who knew Deng well, must have realized that the prospects of getting Deng to withdraw the editorial were very slight. Indeed, Deng, who believed that indecision and reversing decisions could only weaken party authority, refused to consider a retraction. On the student side, Zhao did what he could to ease the tension. He tried to reassure the students that they would not be punished by stressing that the vast majority of them were patriotic; he also encouraged them to leave the square and return to their classrooms.

On May 1, just two days after he returned from Pyongyang, Zhao chaired a Politburo Standing Committee meeting to discuss how to respond to the anticipated demonstrations on the seventieth anniversary of the May 4, 1919, protests. Zhao advocated adapting to the changed times by issuing a statement stating that the party supported increasing democracy and transparency in political life. Li Peng, however, argued that the government's primary emphasis should be on stability. He criticized the illegal organizations and the spreading of rumors. If the young people got their way, he insisted, China would take a huge step backward. Zhao countered that although China did need stability, the students' slogans—which advocated upholding the Constitution, promoting democracy, and opposing corruption—were also the positions of both the party and the government.
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In contrast to the stern, disapproving, and disciplinarian tone of Li Peng's pronouncements, Zhao's attitude was that of an understanding parent giving advice to children who were basically good. On May 3 and May 4, in two important public addresses, Zhao laid out the larger case for responding positively to the student demands. On May 3, at a conference celebrating the anniversary of the May Fourth movement, Zhao said that just as seventy years earlier the demonstrators had promoted science and democracy, the current demonstrators should also stress the essential roles of science and democracy in the modernization of China. He emphasized the importance of stability and Deng's four cardinal principles, but he also declared that “the vast numbers of youth . . . hope to promote democracy and call for punishing people who . . . are guilty of corruption. This is also the exact intention of our party.”
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As always, party leaders attempted to present a united front. Zhao's speech was so skillfully worded that it was difficult for the conservatives to find any criticism.

In his speech to the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank on May 4, Zhao also made an effort to reassure foreign investors that China's social and economic systems were not disintegrating into turmoil and that the student demonstrations would soon be brought under control. Unlike Zhao's May 3 speech, which had been sent to other leaders for comments before delivery, this speech was not vetted by other officials, since Zhao was not required to clear in advance a presentation to an economic institution like the Asian Development Bank. Even so, Zhao faced criticism later for not sending the speech to senior party leaders for review before he delivered it.
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This carefully worded speech, written by Bao Tong, was also broadcast to the students. In it Zhao acknowledged that there were problems with corruption in the party, problems that he attributed to imperfections in the socialist legal system and to a lack of openness and democratic supervision. He reiterated that the students were patriotic.
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The students were calmed by Zhao's speech; afterward the numbers demonstrating in the square fell off sharply.

By this time, the Hong Kong press had picked up on the difference in tone between Zhao's speech and Li Peng's conversations with the students, and began speculating about conflicts between the two. A July 6 report to the NPC on the “counter-revolutionary rebellion” by Chen Xitong, the Beijing municipal official allied with Li Peng who was presenting reports to the top officials on the demonstrations, claimed Li Peng was ready to be tough while Zhao was trying to be more understanding. Chen Xitong joined the allies of Deng and Li Peng in criticizing Zhao's May 4 speech; like the others, he said that it departed from the message of the April 26 editorial. Chen stated that many grassroots officials like himself who had been attempting to control the unruly students felt that they had been betrayed by Zhao's speech. These officials had been trying to get the students to back down, but in their eyes Zhao was far too sympathetic. Chen Xitong also claimed that many intellectuals, encouraged by Zhao's speech, had begun speaking out more openly, causing a new wave of demonstrations and promising more turmoil.
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Zhao's followers felt that Li Peng and his allies were making their task of winning the cooperation of the students more difficult.

Preparing for Gorbachev and the Hunger Strike, May 13–May 24

Gorbachev's visit to Beijing on May 15–18 marked a historic turning point in Sino-Soviet relations and a personal triumph for Deng Xiaoping. The threedecades-long
estrangement of the world's largest Communist powers was coming to an end and normalized relations were in sight. In the early 1980s, Deng had summarized the conditions necessary for China to resume normal relations with the Soviet Union: the Soviets had to pull out of Afghanistan and remove their troops from China's northern border area, and the Vietnamese had to leave Cambodia. Deng's earlier view that the Soviet Union was overextended and would need to readjust its foreign policy had proved correct. Gorbachev had agreed to all of the conditions and was coming to Beijing on Deng's terms. The event would be one of the capstones to Deng's career. In his triumph, Deng was prepared to be the gracious host, welcoming the press from around the world to the celebration.

As Gorbachev's arrival approached, reporters and photographers from around the globe assembled in Beijing in large teams to cover the event. American TV anchorman Dan Rather, who rarely went abroad, appeared, as did other Western celebrities. Not surprisingly, then, Deng was ready to try almost anything to clear Tiananmen Square before Gorbachev's arrival. After Zhao's speech on May 4, when students began returning to their campuses, there was reason to be hopeful. Moderate students from the Beijing area had voted with their feet and returned to their classrooms. Yet more radical locals and students who had traveled from distant regions persisted in camping out in the square.

On the morning of May 13, two days before Gorbachev was scheduled to arrive, radical student leaders, desperate to keep their dwindling movement alive and confident that they would not be arrested while Gorbachev was in Beijing, announced a novel addition to the Chinese protest tradition: a hunger strike to start that very afternoon. Over a thousand students marched to Tiananmen, where they stated that they would not eat until the government met their demands. The students declared, “We do not want to die. We want to live and live fully. . . . But if the death of a single person or of several people will enable a greater number of people to live better or if these deaths can make our homeland stronger and more prosperous, then we have no right to live on in ignominy.”
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Most hunger strikers did drink liquids and some pretended to fast but in fact ate solid food. Others took no food or water and before long, fainted. Their readiness to die elevated their struggle above practical politics and gave them a moral superiority with the public. The pictures of hunger strikers on television evoked sympathy both at home and abroad. Some viewers who had blamed the students for interrupting Beijing traffic began to sympathize with
those who were ready to sacrifice their lives, seeing them not as troublemakers but as heroic victims. Government officials, aware that any deaths from hunger could inflame the public, were restrained in dealing with the strikers. None of the students were attacked or arrested, and the government supplied buses to shelter them when it rained, provided toilet facilities, and assigned government workers to help clean up the square. Sympathetic medical workers treated those who were fainting and moved the more serious cases to nearby hospitals. According to official statistics, between May 13 and May 24, some 8,205 hunger strikers were taken to hospitals.
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With such good medical attention, none of the students died, but the risk of death added drama to the demonstrations.

The hunger strike caught party leaders completely by surprise. On May 13, the day the hunger strike began, a worried Deng Xiaoping met with Zhao Ziyang and Yang Shangkun. Deng declared that the movement had dragged on for too long; he wanted the square cleared before Gorbachev's arrival. When Deng inquired about the mood of the public, Zhao replied that the vast majority of students were aware that the honor of their nation was at stake and would be unlikely to disrupt the welcoming ceremony. The pressure was on Zhao to ensure that Beijing would remain quiet during Gorbachev's visit, and he was given considerable leeway to do whatever he thought necessary to clear the square.

On May 14, several well-known Chinese intellectuals, aware of how important it was to empty the square before Gorbachev arrived and fearing a violent confrontation, did their best to mediate the dispute. Twelve of China's most famous writers and commentators, including Dai Qing, Liu Zaifu, and Yan Jiaqui, issued an announcement criticizing the government's treatment of the students and failure to publish the truth about the movement. In an attempt to reach a reconciliation, they advocated that the government recognize the independent student organizations. But they also urged the students remaining in the square to return to their universities.
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They pleaded with the students: “Democracy is erected gradually . . . we must be completely clear-headed . . . we beg that you make full use of the most valuable spirit of the student movement, the spirit of reason, and temporarily leave the Square.”
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