"Charter of 08" Co-signers Pledge to Share Responsibility

As Liu Xiaobo is facing trial for his role in initiating the "Charter of 08", some of his fellow co-signers of that document issued an open letter to pledge that they will shoulder the same responsibilities for their actions. "Should Liu Xiaobo be judged to be 'guilty', it would mean that each of us would have been judged as 'guilty'. We will have to serve the same terms as Mr. Liu Xiaobo," says the open letter.

Among the many signatories of this open letter are a few prominent names who were involved in the 1989 student movement and are currently still live in China: Bao Tong, Ding Zilin, Jiang Peikun, Chen Ziming, Gao Yu, Zhou Dou, Ma Shaofang.

Book Review: Zhao Ziyang Falls Short in Telling His Story

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre, the book Prisoner of the State, the Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang was published with great fanfare. There have been many instant reviews in the mainstream media hailing for the importance of the book, especially that it tells the "real story of Tiananmen."

According to the book's publishers and editors, Zhao Ziyang had spent parts of his last years recording his thoughts in secret. The audio tapes were only discovered after his death. He left no words on the purpose and intention of these tapes. Bao Pu, the son of Zhao Ziyang's long-time political assistant Bao Tong, led the efforts in transcript the tapes and make them into this book, published separately in Chinese and English versions.

Bao Pu has since refused to make the tapes themselves available to the public, other than a few excerpts. So there are no independent means to assess the authenticity of the book material. As memoirs of Chinese leaders are usually non-existent, it is also almost impossible to cross-examine the content against other similar books.

Nevertheless, I did not have high expectations when I started reading the book and yet still came away disappointed. I did have a few questions related to the 1989 student movement that I had hoped to find the answers from Zhao Ziyang's own words, for example,

1. Did he actually agree and approve the infamous April 26 People's Daily editorial before its publication while he was away in North Korea?
2. During the critical period in early May when he was personally in charge and conducting dialogues with the public to defuse the tension, why did he not make any such efforts to reach out to the protesting students before the hunger strike?
3. After the hunger strike, did he direct and/or authorize Yan Mingfu's dialogue with student leaders? What was the strategy for that dialogue?
4. Why did he disclose the "state secret" that Deng Xiaoping was still the supreme leader in China during his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev?

Actually, the 306 pages long book only has its first part, merely 49 pages, dealing with the 1989 student movement. That certainly could not, and did not, do justice to the greatest event which would dominate Zhao Ziyang's historical legacy.

That short passage read in a very defensive, and indeed self-pity, tone. Zhao Ziyang tried to blame a conspiracy, led by then Premier Li Peng and supported by Deng Xiaoping, which undermined his strategy and led to the martial law and the eventual massacre. But it was unclear what his strategy or leadership was. Being the General Secretary at the time, the book showed a leader who was lost, soft, and lack of ideas or willingness to take any meaningful action on his own.

More specifically, on the questions I was looking for answers:

1. Zhao Ziyang did confirm that he had approved the publication of the editorial. He attempted to explain that he could not have done anything else because he was away and did not know all the facts.
2. Zhao Ziyang blamed Li Peng and other leaders not to contact student leaders. There was no words explaining why he did not try to do it himself.
3. The book did not mention Yan Mingfu's dialogue attempts at all. It was as if that important facets of the movement had never happened.
4. The book did dedicate a whole short chapter to the Gorbachev meeting. He tried to downplay its significance. But the rationale presented there sounded contrived and weak. It also contradicted to Bao Tong's own testimony that Bao Tong had intentionally inserted the statements at last minutes.

As far as the Tiananmen is concerned, this is a rather uninformative book. It is not surprising since the "real story" of that magnificent movement did not happen within the walls of the government compound. It happened on the campuses, on the streets, and in Tiananmen Square. That is a story that Zhao Ziyang, or any other government leaders at the time, is unable and unwilling to tell.


Books about Tiananmen

This Day in 1989: May 19, Zhao Ziyang Makes Farewell, Li Peng Announces Martial Law

Before dawn of May 19, 1989, in the darkness, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang showed up on the edge of Tiananmen Square unexpectedly. The exhausted and downbeat national leader was accompanied by Premier Li Peng, Chief-of-Staff Wen Jiabao, and other aids and guards. The entourage caused quite a stir. Zhao Ziyang boarded one of the buses housing hunger strikers, shook hands, and gave an unprepared speech to a few cameras. He rumbled through begging students to stop the hunger strike but offered nothing other than the famous farewell-ish line, "I am old, I really don't care any more..."

The student leaders near the center of the Square did not get a chance to meet these leaders, who disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as they showed up. They poured through some notes taken by students at the scene and could only imagine what Zhao Ziyang had personally gone through. They knew bad things were on the way.

Indeed, throughout the day, rumors about an impending martial law were coming from all directions. (In the aftermath, Zhao Ziyang, along with his aid Bao Tong, was accused of leaking state secret including the martial law. There were evidences that the information was quite widely available, even outside of Beijing.)

In their typical dramatic fashion, student leaders finally came to a decision to call off the hunger strike. Despite opposition of their messes, the fast was broken. Chai Ling was happy that their decision was announced hours ahead of the martial law. She regarded as a great tactical victory. As the hunger strikers were carefully removed from Tiananmen Square for treatment and rest, thousands other students came to participate a continued "sit-in" protest.

The martial law was formally announced late that evening in the Great Hall of People, where Li Peng addressed thousands of government cadres. The martial law troops would be entering the city that night while the martial law itself would take effect the next morning.

The students remaining at Tiananmen Square braced for a brutal and violent night. They expected to be forced evicted. They hoped that they could last until after daybreak.


Days of 1989

Zhao Ziyang Speaks, Posthumously.

With much media fanfare, Simon & Schuster just released a memoir of the late Zhao Ziyang, who was acutally the General Secretary at the time of 1989 student movement. The book, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang, was purportedly made from a series of audio recording from Zhao Ziyang himself, and translated and edited by Bao Pu, the son of Zhao Ziyang's aid Bao Tong, and Bao Pu's wife Renee Chiang.

The book is currently climbing into the best-seller list at Amazon.

At the Cusp of the Great Reform

The Third Plenum of the Eleventh CCP Congress (十一届三中全会) was held on December 18, 1978. This meeting is widely regarded as the defining milestone that kicked off Deng Xiaoping's reform movement after the end of Culture. In China, preparations are already being made for the big 30 year anniversary celebration near the end of this year.

However, Bao Tong (鲍彤), a long time Policy Secretary of Zhao Ziyang, just published an article on his recollections of that historical meeting. According to the article, that meeting was planned as a routine meeting to discuss some economic policies in agriculture and central planning. Before the meeting, Deng Xiaoping and then Party Chairman Hua Guofeng had agreed that they should not discuss any issues left out from Culture Revolution, especially those that had been decided by Mao Zedong himself.

As it was common in such meetings, the actual agenda and decisions were determined in preparatory meetings in advance. In this case, the preparatory meeting was held in early November. Deng Xiaoping did not think it was important enough to attend. Rather he spent the first half of that November in Southeast Asia on a state visit.

But it was during that preparatory meeting, that Chen Yun and Hu Yaobang rose to the occasion and changed the course of the meeting. At the time, Chen Yun had just been "rehabilitated" but had not yet returned to the top leadership. Hu Yaobang was the "younger" generation who had just been put in charge of the Party's Internal Affairs. Together, they advocated that many of the wrongs during the Culture Revolution must be corrected before the nation could move forward.

By the time Deng Xiaoping returned to Beijing in mid-November, he found the agenda totally out of control. In a swift maneuver, he scratched his own planned speech and had a new one drafted. In which, he took hold the new momentum as his own and laid all blames of the previous conservative agenda to Hua Guofeng.

As a result, the Third Plenum meeting became something Deng had not envisioned. It established a new policy of "a liberation of thoughts" (解放思想). Hua Guofeng was forced to make a self-criticism.

For his handy work, Chen Yun was immediately elevated to the high position of Vice Chairman of the Party. In the 1980s, Chen Yun was the chief rival of Deng Xiaoping in the Party leadership.

In 1980, Hua Guofeng finally was purged from the leadership. With the position of Party Chairman abolished, Hu Yaobang became the General Secretary.

Seven years later, in 1987, Hu Yaobang himself would be purged by Deng Xiaoping for being too liberal and tolerant to student movements. His death in 1989 triggered the largest-scale student movement in the history of China.