Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (117 page)

In explaining his rationale for sending in the troops, Deng acknowledged that political reform was needed, but he was firm about maintaining the four cardinal principles: upholding the socialist path, supporting the people's democratic dictatorship, maintaining the leadership of the Communist Party, and upholding Marxist–Leninist–Mao Zedong Thought. If the demonstrations and the pasting up of posters continued, he said, there would not be enough energy left to get things done. He said that leaders should explain their decision to restore order and persuade all levels that it was correct to take action against the protesters.
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In the days before June 3, students began to get some hint of troop movements, but they had no idea how many soldiers had already infiltrated the center of Beijing. Moreover, most students could not imagine that their protests would lead to shooting. On several occasions before June 3, the students had voted whether or not to continue to occupy the square. The majority always voted to stay, for most of those who advocated leaving simply voted with their feet. Yet in the days before June 4, some student leaders, fearing
punishment, tried to bargain with the government, saying that as a condition for leaving the square they should be guaranteed that they would not be punished and that the student organizations would be given official recognition.
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They received no such guarantees.

On the night of June 2, word spread on the streets of Beijing that some troops were entering Beijing. Demonstrators and their allies sent the word out, and many PLA vehicles were blocked, overturned, or even set on fire as the troops tried to make their way through the city. Meanwhile, government officials pushed ahead. On the afternoon of June 3, Qiao Shi called an emergency meeting to discuss the final plans for clearing the square. Yang Shangkun presented the plans to Deng, and Deng quickly approved them.
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The leaders had expected some resistance from demonstrators on June 2, but they had underestimated the strength of the opposition: Chen Xitong reported that people “surrounded and beat soldiers. . . . Some of the rioters even seized munitions and military provisions. Offices of the Central Government and other major organs came under siege.” Li Peng was so distraught at the scale and determination of the resistance that for the first time he used the term “counterrevolutionary riot,” indicating that those resisting would be treated like enemies. He declared, “We have to be absolutely firm in putting down this counterrevolutionary riot in the capital. We must be merciless with the tiny minority of riot elements. The PLA martial law troops, the People's Armed Police, and Public Security are authorized to use any means necessary to deal with people who interfere with the mission.”
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On June 3, the commanders of the various group armies met at the headquarters of the Beijing Military Region to go over the details of their assault plan. Three waves of soldiers in motorized vehicles would enter Beijing. In each wave troops would move in from the north, south, east, and west. The first wave would move from the third and fourth ring roads between 5:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.; the second between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.; and the third between 9:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Some of the earlier trucks would not contain weapons, but two waves of armed soldiers would follow the three earlier waves; one would set out at about 10:30 p.m. and another after midnight.
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The soldiers were to clear the square before dawn.

The launch proceeded as planned. At 6:30 in the evening on June 3, an emergency announcement was made on radio and TV that workers should remain at their posts and citizens should stay at home to safeguard their lives. Chinese state television (CCTV) broadcast these emergency announcements nonstop, while loudspeakers made the same announcements in the square.
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The announcements did not say specifically that troops were moving in, however, and since the government had already issued many other warnings, many people did not attach sufficient weight to the phrase “safeguard your lives.”

On June 2 and June 3, the student protesters used tactics they had developed since May 19. Few had walkie-talkies, but they did make good use of motorcycles to spread the word of troop movements. Several hundred motorcyclists, known as the “Flying Tigers,” made themselves available to speed from one site to another, warning of troop movements, so that the people had time to set up new roadblocks. When the roadblocks forced the lead trucks to stop, people rushed to slash tires or simply to let the air out, thus bringing the trucks to a halt. Then the people cut wires or ripped out parts of the engines and began taunting and throwing bricks and stones, and in some cases assaulting the soldiers on the back of the trucks. These roadblocks proved effective in some cases, stopping not only the first wave of trucks, but also later waves that could not get around the first group of disabled vehicles.
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The greatest resistance and the greatest violence on the night of June 3 and the early morning of June 4 took place on a main street four miles west of Tiananmen Square, near Muxidi Bridge and next to tall apartment buildings where retired high-level officials lived. At about 9:30 p.m., troops from the 38th Group Army reached Muxidi, where they found several thousand civilians gathered to resist any advance. Buses were stretched across the road at Muxidi Bridge, blocking further movement by armored vehicles. The PLA first tried firing tear gas and rubber bullets, which had little effect; people responded by boldly throwing rocks and other objects at the troops. An officer used a bullhorn to order the crowds to disperse, but to no avail. The 38th Group Army that had approached from the west, like the Guomindang turncoats who had joined the PLA during the Chinese civil war, were under special pressure to prove their loyalty: their commander, Xu Qinxian, had excused himself, saying that medical problems made it impossible for him to lead his troops. At about 10:30 p.m. the troops near Muxidi Bridge began firing into the air and throwing stun grenades but there were no deaths.

By 11:00 p.m. the troops, still unable to advance, began firing live weapons directly at the crowds (using AK-47 automatic rifles that can fire ninety shots per minute). As people were shot, others carried the wounded to the side of the battle area and took them to ambulances, or put them on bicycles or pedicabs to rush them to nearby Fuxing Hospital. PLA trucks and armored
cars also began charging ahead at full speed, running over anyone who dared to stand in their path.
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Even after they began shooting with live rounds, using deadly force against their countrymen, it took the troops some four hours to advance the four miles eastward from Muxidi to Tiananmen.
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At Tiananmen Square, troops did not arrive in sizable numbers until after midnight, but some police and plainclothes military were already in place, having arrived several hours earlier. At 8 p.m., lights lit up the square and the adjacent Chang'an Boulevard that runs east of the square, and by 9 p.m., this boulevard was mostly deserted. In armored vehicles and tanks, the troops began to move toward the square. Several miles out, as they approached from the east, some rifle shots hit the windows of buildings where foreign photographers and reporters were located; the troops were warning them to keep away from the windows, where they might take pictures of killings near the square. Foreigners were also stopped by plainclothes officers, who told them to get off the streets so that they would not get hurt and warned them not to take photographs of military action. Many photographers had their cameras and film confiscated.
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An estimated 100,000 demonstrators were still in Tiananmen Square just before the troops began to move in. By 1 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, soldiers had begun arriving from every direction. Around the edges of the square, on Chang'an Boulevard and at the Great Hall of the People, soldiers opened fire on civilians who had begun taunting, throwing bricks, and refusing to move. The protestors had not expected that the troops would fire real bullets, but when some died and when wounded protesters were carried away, the remaining people panicked.

By 2 a.m., only several thousand people remained in the square. Student leader Chai Ling announced that those who wanted to leave could leave, and those who wanted to stay could stay. Hou Dejian, a popular singer from Taiwan who along with several well-known intellectuals had entered the square on May 27 for what they all thought would be the final days of the occupation, took the microphone to warn those still there that armed troops were now pressing into the square.
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Hou said that those listening had proved that they were not afraid to die, but that there had already been enough bloodshed; those remaining should withdraw peacefully without leaving behind anything that could be used as a weapon.

At about 3:40 a.m., as the soldiers approached, Hou Dejian and three others met with the martial law troops to negotiate a peaceful exit from the square. After a brief discussion, the PLA officer agreed. At 4 a.m. the lights
went out in the square. Hou Dejian returned to the microphone shortly thereafter to announce their agreement and told those who remained to evacuate immediately. Some three thousand persons hurriedly followed Hou out of the square. At 4:30 a.m. troops and military vehicles moved forward, and the students who stayed behind retreated toward the southwest. At 5:20 a.m., only about two hundred defiant demonstrators remained. They were forced out by the troops and by 5:40 a.m., just before dawn, as ordered, the square was completely clear of demonstrators.
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Some observers reported that people were shot in the square, but government spokesmen denied that anyone had been shot in the square between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m.—implicitly acknowledging that some may have been shot before or after that time.
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The government also did not deny that people were killed on Chang'an Boulevard, adjacent to the square. Many have tried to determine the number of people killed during that night, but estimates vary widely. Official Chinese reports a few days after June 4 stated that more than two hundred were killed, including twenty soldiers and twenty-three students, and that about two thousand were wounded.
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Li Peng told Brent Scowcroft on July 2 that 310 had died, including some PLA soldiers and thirty-six students.
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Ding Zilin, the mother of one of those killed, later tried to collect the names of all those killed that night, and as of 2008 she had collected almost three hundred names. Li Zhiyuan, chief political commissar of the 38th Group Army, reported that in addition to the killed and wounded soldiers, some sixty-five trucks and forty-seven armed personnel carriers were destroyed, and another 485 vehicles were damaged.
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The most reliable estimates by foreign observers who have carefully studied the event are that somewhere between 300 and 2,600 demonstrators were killed and that several thousand were wounded. Some initial foreign reports of tens of thousands killed were later acknowledged to have been greatly exaggerated. Timothy Brook, a Canadian scholar then in Beijing, drawing on estimates by foreign military attachés and data from all eleven major Beijing hospitals, reported that at those hospitals there were at least 478 dead and 920 wounded.
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Some believe that the number of deaths may have been higher than the numbers documented at these hospitals, however, because some families, fearing long-lasting political punishment for the wounded or themselves, would have sought treatment for their loved one, or disposed of his or her body, outside of regular channels.
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For several days after clearing the square, the PLA and the police cleaned up the area that had been trashed during the demonstrations, crushing the
Goddess of Democracy in the process. There were a few scuffles with local citizens, but following the bloody crackdown, an uneasy calm returned to the square and to Beijing.

Student leaders of the demonstrations were rounded up and arrested: some were detained briefly, others were placed in jails. Even some prominent intellectuals like Dai Qing, who had been in the square encouraging the students to withdraw, were arrested and jailed. Deng personally decided on a seven-year sentence for Bao Tong, Zhao Ziyang's assistant; but after serving his seven years, he has remained under strict surveillance. Other subordinates of Zhao's were jailed and after more than twenty years some demonstrators had still not been released. Some student leaders, including Chai Ling and Wu'er Kaixi, and intellectual leaders such as Yan Jiaqi and Chen Yizi, with the help of an “underground railroad” of safe houses and brave friends, managed to escape from the country. Wang Dan, however, was jailed for several years before being released and exiled to the West, where he continued his studies.

The Hothouse Generation and a Postponement of Hope

The students and older intellectuals who took part in the 1989 demonstrations—like intellectuals throughout Chinese history—felt a deep sense of responsibility for the fate of their country. They were, however, a hothouse generation, with little experience outside their schools and universities. Unlike the students of the late 1940s, they had not spent years building an organization to attain power. Unlike the students of the early 1980s, they had not been tempered by political campaigns, struggles during the Cultural Revolution, or work in the countryside. They were the ablest students of their generation, but they had been tested by examinations instead of experiences—they were the sheltered beneficiaries of academic reform in the best middle schools and universities of the country.