Pictures of 1989: Dialog with Yan Mingfu on May 14, 1989

A "hunger strike" black flag, made by Feng Congde, hangs in Tiananmen Square.

Hunger strike students meet Yan Mingfu and other leaders.

Hunger strike students at the dialog.

Hunger strike students at the dialog.

Students at Tiananmen Square wait for news about the dialog.

Hunger strike students from Tiananmen Square march to stop the dialog for lack of live broadcast.

Pictures of 1989

Pictures of 1989: Dialogue Delegation Meeting on May 7, 1989

The Dialogue Delegation held a meeting at University of Political Sciences and Law.

Pictures of 1989

Pictures of 1989: Dialogue Delegation Submit Petition on May 6, 1989

Xiang Xiaoji (second from right), Shen Tong (third from right) and others on their way to submit dialogue petition.

Shen Tong (right) distributes petition to foreign reporters.

Shen Tong (left) talks to foreign reporters.

Posters in Peking University call for continued class strike. (Photo by Philip Cunningham)

Students at Peking University read posters calling for continued class strike.

Pictures of 1989

People of 1989: Shen Tong (沈彤)

When Shen Tong was still a high school kid in 1985, he was already doing his own business on the campus of Peking University, selling books of poems printed underground. He happened upon a student movement that year which left an impression on him. These two experiences seem to foreshadow his later life: participating social movements and conducting business in the arts market.

Shen Tong became a freshman in biology at Peking University in 1986 and quickly became an active student. On the New Year's Day on 1987, he witnessed another student protest at Tiananmen Square. Later, he got himself in trouble in a round of campus protest following a student's death and was stripped his position in the official student union. He ended up organizing his own club "Olympia" to study social issues and cooperating with the "Democracy Salon" organized by his fellow student Wang Dan.


As the death of Hu Yaobang ignited the 1989 student movement, Shen Tong joined the newly founded Preparatory Committee to lead the movement. But he was never able to find his position there and was always at the bubble of being voted out of it. On April 22, when most students were at Tiananmen Square participating Hu Yaobang's funeral, he set up a new broadcasting station at his dorm room overlooking at The Triangle, the center of the campus. This station became the media center at Peking University throughout the entire movement.

After the publication of April 26 People's Daily Editorial, Shen Tong was one of the Preparatory Committee members against of a planned protest march. But with the persistence of Wang Dan and others, he joined them at the front of the formation and launched the most glorious demonstration of the entire movement.

Later after once again being voted off the Preparatory Committee, Shen Tong took Feng Congde's advice and moved on to form a new Dialogue Delegation and became the co-chairman with Xiang Xiaoji. Under their leadership, the delegation adopted a relatively independent and moderate stance and kept its distance from the movement while seeking and preparing for a dialogue with government. On May 6, they submitted their first petition for dialog and was warmly received. However, they never received a positive response, until after students launched a hunger strike.

On May 6, 1989, Shen Tong (left) and Xiang Xiaoji submitted petition to Chinese government

With hunger strike underway, Shen Tong and his Dialogue Delegation finally had a series of contacts with government officials such as Yan Mingfu which culminated into a formal dialogue. Yet the session failed due to the unyielding stands of the government side and the disruption from the hunger strikers. The Dialogue Delegation dissolved after that and Shen Tong left the movement with deep disappointments. By then he had already received an acceptance letter from the Brandeis University in the US. He applied for and got an approval for visa.

When the army shot their way toward Tiananmen Square on the night of massacre of June 3, Shen Tong was at his home near Xidan. He rushed onto the street and witnessed a girl being shot dead standing next to him and a young man being executed by a band of soldiers.


After the massacre, Shen Tong quickly left China and arrived in the US with his student visa. He was the first student leader reaching the west and received tremendous attention from the American society and media. Soon, he published his memoir Almost a Revolution, recounting his young life and his experience during the movement. He also founded a foundation to support Chinese democracy and participated in oversea movements while attending school. In the Fall of 1992, he made a trip back to China to visit dissidents there but was arrested by the Chinese government. He was expelled out of the country after two months' detention. (Some of the dissidents he met were jailed for more than a year.)

By 2000, Shen Tong had finished his school and left the oversea democracy movement. He founded the VFinity company and became a media entrepreneur. His products, including image technologies and TV programs, had reached markets inside China. He made a few low-profile trips to China under government surveillance and with a promise of never involving in political matters. Later he decided to abandon that market.

His success in business did not fully wipe out his passion for social movement. In 2011, he plunged into the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in America.

In 2011, Shen Tong in Occupy Wall Street movement

At present, Shen Tong is an angle venture capitalist. In late 2014, as a partner in SOSventures, he co-founded the FOOD-X project, aiming to "Feeding a Food Movement."

Shen Tong in 2015

People of 1989

People of 1989: Chen Wei (陈卫)

When the 1989 Chinese student movement broke out, Chen Wei was just a freshman in the Beijing Institute of Technology. From the very beginning, he actively participated in the campus activities in memory of Hu Yaobang. He helped leading about 4,000 of students from his school to attend the funeral at Tiananmen Square. Soon after, he played a key role in organizing an independent student organization at his school.

At the end of April, he took a trip to his hometown in Sichuan to spread the messages from Beijing movement. When he got back to the capital, he joined the effort of the Dialogue Delegation as a representative from BIT but soon joined in the hunger strike. During that time, he fainted several times and had to be taken to hospitals.

At the night of the massacre, he was on the streets trying to block the advancing troops. He later vividly described how he saw a girl being gunned down, execution style.

Chen Wei returned to his hometown soon after the massacre. He attempted to form an underground organization but was soon captured. He was later released without charge after almost a whole year of detention. That's when he started his career and life intertwined with prison terms. In 1992, he was arrested for organizing opposition parties and sentenced to 5 years. After the completion of his term, he still continued his work in local and regional organizing and became a signatory of the Charter of 08.

He was arrested this past February in a round of suppression in Sichuan. On December 23, 2011, Chen Wei was sentenced to 9 years in prison for "inciting of subversion."


People of 1989

Book Excerpt: Dialogue with Yan Mingfu

The following excerpt is from my book Standoff at Tiananmen, chapter 8, describing the dramatic failure in a dialogue between student leaders and government officials.

In that same morning Yan Mingfu learned that a decision had already been made to move the welcoming ceremony for Mr. Gorbachev out of Tiananmen Square. He was stunned. The summit was not only a diplomatic milestone for China, it had also attracted a huge crowd of international media. It would be worse than a slap in the face for the government. Visibly angry, he was nonetheless still clinging to hope. Encouraged by the previous meeting, he thought he might still have time. But he had to act even more boldly and quickly.

Yan Mingfu found Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, and Wang Chaohua still in the compound of his United Front Department. He gathered them in a small conference room. Calmly but officially, Yan Mingfu told them that the government was now ready for a formal dialogue. Students were free to select their own representatives. Yan Mingfu, and several other minister-level officials would represent the government side.

The students could not believe what they were hearing. It was a major concession to the demands of the students, something Yan Mingfu was not ready to do even the night before. Essentially, he was holding this dialogue completely on the students' terms: not only had he recognized them as legitimate student leaders, he also framed them as an equal party. Only a week earlier, the State Council Spokesman Yuan Mu had sworn to the world that this would never happen. In a state of shock, Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi murmured that the representation on the government side might not be high enough. They would prefer either General Secretary Zhao Ziyang or Premier Li Peng. Yan Mingfu would have none of that. He cut them off and vigorously defended his own rank. Wisely, the students did not insist.

But they did have another request. The dialogue had to be broadcast live. Because of censorship rules, very few events were broadcast live in China. Everything, from government proceedings to the popular gala for Chinese New Year, was taped and edited before it could be shown to a general audience. The student leaders had no choice however. Rumors of contact with Yan Mingfu had been circulating in Tiananmen Square. The hunger strikers were worried that they might be sold out behind their backs. Without a live broadcast, they told Yan Mingfu, they might never be able to keep the confidence of their own people.

It was Yan Mingfu's turn to be reasonable. He was open to the idea but not sure if it would be technically feasible. Most equipment had been allocated to the summit. They might not be able to set up a live broadcast in time. He proposed an alternative that the dialogue would be videotaped. As soon as each tape was completed, it would be sealed and transported to CCTV under students' monitoring. So, even though it was not live, it would be a faithful delayed feed to be shown in its entirety. In the mean time, students could also make audio tapes on their own and send them to Tiananmen Square for replaying.

While the student leaders were still pondering the idea, Yan Mingfu dropped the bomb: the Gorbachev welcoming ceremony might not be held at Tiananmen Square whether if they withdrew from it or not. That sealed the deal.

The very possibility that the government might call their bluff on such a grand scale weighted heavily on Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, and Wang Chaohua. They had never intended to interfere with the nation's diplomatic work and never thought that it could even be possible. Not only would they bear the responsibility of embarrassing the nation, they would also lose the biggest bargaining chip in their hand. Without it, how could all this come to an end?

Wang Chaohua volunteered to find some prominent intellectuals to help persuade students to leave. Yan Mingfu was ready to help. He dispatched an office vehicle for Wang Chaohua to use. Another van was sent out shortly after to the University of Political Science and Law. Its mission was to fetch the Dialogue Delegation.

Wang Chaohua was familiar with the intellectual circle in the capital from her family background. She was particularly fond of Dai Qing, a famous journalist at the intellectual-oriented newspaper Guangming Daily. Ten years younger than Yan Mingfu, Dai Qing was also a child prodigy. After her father was martyred in the early years of revolution, Dai Qing was raised by Ye Jianying, one of the ten marshals of the People's Liberation Army who was instrumental in the coup that deposed the "Gang of Four." Yet Dai Qing had acquired a strong sense of independence. Taking advantage of the protection from her background, she published many daring essays echoing the views of dissidents such as Fang Lizhi. She also made a name for herself with a staunch, Quixotic opposition to the plan of building the Three Gorges Dam on environmental grounds. Wang Chaohua had known Dai Qing since her childhood. The two also worked on the same floor when Wang Chaohua interned at Guangming Daily.

On the night when the hunger strike decision was made, Wang Chaohua had visited Dai Qing and did nothing but cry in her tiny living room. She was hoping Dai Qing, with her name recognition, could provide needed guidance to the much younger students.

But Dai Qing had her own agenda in mind. This had been a couple of very good weeks for journalists. With Zhao Ziyang's blessing, the decades-old censorship policy melted away over night. With much personal nagging, Dai Qing had managed to get Hu Qili's approval for Guangming Daily to publish a full page of opinions by prominent but controversial intellectuals, an opportunity that was unthinkable just weeks earlier. She was busy assembling them into a symposium. Her invitees included many big names, such as Yan Jiaqi, a political scientist who had written a book on the history of the Cultural Revolution, and Bao Zunxin, who had spearheaded a series of enlightening books introducing ideas from the west. A month earlier, a similar but unauthorized symposium with many of the same attendees had convened to commemorate Hu Yaobang's death. The proceedings were published in the Shanghai-based World Economic Herald and resulted in its shutdown. Now, Dai Qing had the approval from a Politburo standing committee member to do the very same thing.

Wang Chaohua arrived at Guangming Daily just as Dai Qing was greeting her distinguished guests in a conference room. Dai Qing was in an exhilarated mood. She could see the paper, carrying the words of these people, causing a storm in its readership. She was not, however, prepared to see Wang Chaohua.

With one look at Wang Chaohua's tired and sad face, Dai Qing knew why she was here. Although sympathetic, Dai Qing was not about to have her little symposium hijacked by the student movement. Nonetheless, she invited Wang Chaohua into the room and introduced her as a student leader from the Square. But before Wang Chaohua could say anything or even shed a tear, Dai Qing laid out the purpose and importance of their symposium. With great excitement, she announced the deal she had struck with Hu Qili. A full page on Guangming Daily! Her enthusiasm was shared. To her audience, this was a tremendous breakthrough.

One by one, the intellectuals in their fifties and sixties read through their prepared speeches. There was little discussion or interruption. Wang Chaohua felt excruciating pain with the slow and dull pace of their lofty words with no substance. But she had to bite her tongue. She was raised with the greatest respect and deference for learned scholars. Hours were ticking away.

Finally, all of them finished what they had planned to say. As a courtesy, they asked Wang Chaohua for a few words. That was when she choked up. Tears streamed down her cheeks before she could utter a single word. In a rambling, bumbling voice, she told the meeting that the situation at Tiananmen Square was not the glorious and historical event the intellectuals had been fantasizing in their talks. Rather, it was extremely dire. As she went on, she was getting more and more upset because she knew her words were incoherent. She felt panic because she was failing to express what she needed to say. But through her teary eyes, she sensed that many in the room were also crying. As she begged the intellectuals that they must go to the Square and persuade students to withdraw, everyone echoed, "Yes, we have to go. We can't just sit and watch."

As Wang Chaohua was regaining her composure, the intellectuals set out to do what they did best. In a matter of minutes, they came up with a draft statement. Addressing the students in a parental manner, it expressed that the authors were "very understanding, very sad, and very worried" after hearing the news of the hunger strike. Since democracy could not be achieved in one day, and for the sake of long-term interests of China's reform and the Sino-Soviet summit, it appealed to students "to carry on the spirit of rationality and temporarily withdraw from Tiananmen Square."

It was not clear what the term "temporarily" meant. But it would not matter anyway, as the statement changed its tone right after that and spelled out its own demands of the government. It asked top leaders to make a public speech praising the student movement as patriotic and democratic and promise not to punish student leaders after the dust settled. It also demanded that the government recognize the autonomous organizations and pledge never to use force against students engaged in hunger strikes or sit-ins. If the government could not fulfill these demands, the statement said, its authors pledged to "fight to the end along with the students."

Perhaps the ending statement was just an empty slogan thrown in to appease students or to satisfy the authors' own egos. But it appeared that these intellectuals were ready to join the movement, thereby negating the appeal for students to withdraw. Their demands actually went beyond of those of the students, who had already consolidated theirs into two core items: "Not Turmoil, Equal Dialogue."

Wang Chaohua knew something was not right with this statement. But with her state of mind she could not quite put her finger on the flaw. It started to dawn on her that her hopes with these intellectuals might have been misplaced. They were hopelessly out of touch with reality. Reluctantly, she expressed her worry that a statement like this would not be able to persuade students to withdraw. Her voice was weak. She knew that she was not convincing anyone. Yan Jiaqi was already frustrated with the statement as it was. He smashed his palm on the table and declared that they were barking up the wrong tree. It was the government, not the students, he shouted angrily, that they should appeal to.

Wang Chaohua held a last bit of hope. Maybe she could get these intellectuals in a room with the hunger strike leaders. If they could persuade Chai Ling privately, the mission could become more hopeful. Dai Qing called the United Front Department, a natural place for such a meeting. She only heard a frantic voice on the other end claiming that nothing was available. After a few more phone calls, Dai Qing secured a small place for the meeting. Wang Chaohua took off in her designated car toward the United Front Department. She thought she would find Chai Ling there at the dialogue with Yan Mingfu.

But she was not prepared for what she would encounter.


It was finally the time for the Dialogue Delegation to shine. They were founded for this very purpose and had been preparing for several weeks. They had assigned designated speakers, each with a supporting team, to address specific issues. They had practiced and rehearsed. They felt confident and even comfortable to sit across a table with government officials to voice their issues reasonably and rationally.

In order for that to happen, though, Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong understood that they had to control the crowd on their own side, especially the hunger strikers. Yet they did not have much leverage. It was the hunger strike that had finally brought Yan Mingfu to the table. It would be impossible to exclude the hunger strikers, who distrusted the Dialogue Delegation, at this point.

The hunger strikers, on the other hand, had their own ideas. The prospect of a national broadcast, even with tape delay, had gotten them excited. What a great opportunity to get their voices heard! Chai Ling hurriedly collected banners from Tiananmen Square, including the one saying "Mom, I am Hungry" and rushed to the United Front Department. She placed them in the conference room as a backdrop on the students' side. She also brought a tape of her reading the Hunger Strike Manifesto. If they got to play the tape during the session, it would be broadcast nationwide and recorded permanently in history.

The large conference room on the second-floor was now set up like a diplomatic meeting with a long oval table. Yan Mingfu was not at the head of the table this time. Rather, he sat in the middle on the government side, flanked by the State Education Commissioner Li Tieying and ten other minister-level officials. Across the table, Shen Tong sat down directly facing Yan Mingfu. Xiang Xiaoji sat opposite Li Tieying. They were flanked by the assigned speakers from the Dialogue Delegation. Xiang Xiaoji had made sure that the arrangement demonstrated the equality of the two sides in the dialogue.

Wang Juntao was sitting in another room in the same compound. He and other young intellectuals were not invited to this formal dialogue. Perhaps in Yan Mingfu's mind, they had already served his purpose.

In the conference room, the formal, diplomatic atmosphere was broken by a group of hunger strikers standing right behind the Dialogue Delegation. They wore signatory headbands and solemn expressions. Xiang Xiaoji had made a compromise to allow a limited number of them in the room, presumably only to listen in. Many tape recorders were scattered about on the conference table. They were already running. In one corner of the room was a video camera with a CCTV logo. Shen Tong made sure that he saw a little red light blinking on the camera as he opened the meeting.

Initially, the dialogue was cordial and gracious. Speakers from the Dialogue Delegation presented their prepared cases. Yan Mingfu and Li Tieying listened intently and answered most questions with sincerity. But pretty soon Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong were flooded with little paper notes passed in from the hunger strikers behind them, who were getting impatient and wanted to raise their own concerns instead. It did not take long for the session to deviate from a focused theme. Both sides at the table tried to be patient but the discussion was getting more and more scattered.

Soon the hunger strikers were dissatisfied with simply passing the notes. Someone spoke up and suggested that the meeting hear them directly. Wuer Kaixi volunteered that he had a letter from a hunger striker with him. Without asking for permission, Cheng Zhen, a female student from Beijing Normal University and one of the initiators of the hunger strike, read the letter aloud.

Chai Ling had been quiet as usual. But she was upset about Wuer Kaixi's unilateral move. The letter was moving but lacked substance. She thought that Wuer Kaixi had wasted a golden opportunity. As the session moved on, Chai Ling could not wait any longer. Jumping on an opening, she asked Yan Mingfu pointedly: "What do you really think of the student movement?" Being put on the spot, Yan Mingfu struggled with being honest but not crossing the party line: "Personally, I would very much like to say that you are patriotic. But I can't say that."

Some more heated arguments erupted. A finger finally pressed down the play button on a tape recorder. All of sudden, Chai Ling's emotional voice, reading the Hunger Strike Manifesto, filled up the room:

We would like to ask all upright citizens of this country, ask every worker, peasant, soldier, resident, intellectual, celebrity, official, police, and those who made up the labels for us, place your hand over your heart and ask your conscience: what crimes had we commit? Did we cause turmoil? We boycott classes. We march and protest. We go on hunger strike. We give our lives. For what? But our emotions have been repeatedly played by others. We suffer through hunger to pursue the truth but only get beaten by soldiers and police. Our representatives knelt down to appeal for democracy but were ignored. Our requests for an equal dialogue are being delayed again and again. Our student leaders are facing grave danger.

As if another button had also been pushed, the rowdy room fell silent. For ten mesmerizing minutes, nobody made any sound or move. Everyone in the room, including Yan Mingfu himself, was in tears. At the table, Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong held hands.

We do not want to die. We want to live nicely because we are at the most beautiful age of our lifetime. We do not want to die. We want to study hard because our motherland is still so poor and we can't just die like this and leave her behind. Death is definitely not our desire. But if the death of one or a few could make the lives of many better, make the motherland rich and prosper, then we have no right to live shamelessly.

As soon as the recording was finished, a voice came from the hunger strikers: "The only thing we ask for is that the government stop calling us instigators of turmoil."


It had been more than an hour into the dialogue session. Students at Tiananmen Square were becoming restless. They had been told of the compromise that they would hear the proceedings with an hour delay. But there was no sign of any broadcast.

Feng Congde had completed a new broadcasting station in the Square with their own loudspeakers rigged up on flag poles. With others at the dialogue session, he became the de facto leader there. Anxious, he dispatched runner after runner to the United Front Department for updates. None of them had come back.

Another hour passed. It was now seven o'clock, time for the regular evening news broadcast on CCTV. There was no mention of the dialogue in the news. That was the last straw. Spontaneously, all hunger strikers in the Square gathered up and marched toward the United Front Department, which was only two to three miles away. They chanted "Stop the dialogue," "Direct Broadcast!" along the way.

Wang Chaohua arrived at the United Front Department and immediately found her car blocked by the raging hunger strikers on the street. She ran inside and saw Xiang Xiaoji stepping out of the conference room. They were separated by a throng of hunger strikers, some of whom were runners dispatched by Feng Congde. More and more of them were pouring in. It was at the verge of a disaster. Xiang Xiaoji was doing everything he could to dissuade the crowd from storming the conference room. He was obviously fighting a losing battle. In desperation, he proposed to have Wang Chaohua, who he had known as a mature and rational leader, into the room as a representative for everyone outside. The crowd did not really know or trust Wang Chaohua either. They demanded to have two of their own to accompany her.

Xiang Xiaoji was not aware that Wang Chaohua was already in a daze herself. After an exhausting day, she could no longer comprehend what was going on. In a rush, the three of them burst through the door and startled everyone inside. Without missing a beat, Wang Chaohua declared, "Stop the dialogue! There is no Broadcast!" We students must stay together as a whole, she explained, the dialogue could not go on without the approval of the hunger strikers.

It was the second time the room fell into a dead silence. Shen Tong lost his cool. He stood up, slammed his palm on the table, and pointed his finger directly to Yan Mingfu's face: "Why aren't you broadcasting this? You knew full well that we can't continue if there is no broadcast!"

Yan Mingfu's face turned ashy pale. He appeared to be genuinely puzzled. Surveying the ministers on his side, he got no answers. After a painful while, he muttered: "If we can't continue, then we can't."

He stood up and slowly walked out of the room.

This Day in 1989: May 12, the Launching of Hunger Strike

On May 12, 1989, Wang Dan hosted his Democracy Salon as usual, the guest speaker is Bao Zunxin. It turned out that this was to be the last time this Salon would ever be held.

Wang Dan and Chai Ling got together on this day to launch a hunger strike. The reaction was lukewarm at first. Most students including both the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and the Preparatory Committee at Peking University were against the idea. Only dozens signed up during the day.

That changed in the evening when Chai Ling made an impromptu and passionate speech on her personal motivation. She inspired many more to join the ranks of hunger strike and persuaded even more to support their cause.

See an excerpt of my book on how the hunger strike decision was made and gained momentum on this day twenty years ago.

With the hunger strike materializing ahead of the state visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the government finally showed its first sign of willingness to deal directly with the students. The Dialogue Delegation was contacted after midnight for a potential dialogue with the government.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 8, Two Schools Continue to Strike

May 8, 1989, was the first Monday after the publicly, but not so officially, announced end of class strike. Class resumed in every college in Beijing except for Peking University and Beijing Normal University. At Peking University, students continued to vote in affirmation of a continued class strike. On this day, its Preparatory Committee published a list of  conditions that have to be met before classes could be resumed there. The conditions were similar to those in the earlier Seven-Point Petitions.

Meanwhile, the Dialogue Delegation was cruising smoothly in their organizational efforts. They divided into three issue groups and launched a studying efforts on subject matters in anticipation of a comprehensive dialogue with government officials. Its co-leaders Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong visited State Council office again to follow up on their own dialogue request. They did not get an official response but were received cordially and given hope for a positive outcome.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 7, the Movement Heads into a Low

Not much is going on in public on Sunday, May 7, 1989. New student leaders continue to struggle with their independent organizations and directions for their next move. The new autonomous organizations are unable to function effectively due to increasing empathy.

Meanwhile, the Dialogue Delegation keeps busy in preparing for a dialogue with the government.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 6, Dialogue Delegation Submit Petition

On Saturday, May 6, 1989, most colleges in Beijing had resumed their regular classes and the emerging movement seemed to be moving toward an end. Except for at Peking University. In a campus-wide vote at that school, 64.2% of students chose to continue their class boycott. So the strike continued there. Beijing Normal University followed suite as a solidarity measure. Those were only two schools that continued the class boycott.

The newly formed Dialogue Delegation was slowly finding their footing. Its co-leaders Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong delivered a dialogue petition of their own to the government. Compared to the ultimatum authored by Beijing Students Autonomous Federation a few days earlier, this one was significantly more moderate.

Growing pain continued in the student organizations. For his "unilateral" decision of announcing the resume of classes, Zhou Yongjun was formally expelled from Beijing Students Autonomous Federation. Feng Congde also resigned from both the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and the Preparatory Committee at Peking University. He was tired and thought he was not quite up to the job. Wuer Kaixi resumed the leadership role.

Things were also changing on the government side. Official press started to report the ongoing student movement in positive tunes. Zhao Ziyang made an internal speech to encourage reporters and editors to exercise their rights in fair and truthful reporting.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 3, Government Rejects Students Petition, Students React

In the morning of May 3, 1989, State Council Spokesman Yuan Mu publicly rejected the dialogue ultimatum by the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation at a press conference. He said the government would neither be threatened nor recognize the "illegal" student organizations.

As a response, Beijing Students Autonomous Federation announced their plan for a demonstration next day, seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. The class strike on college campuses that started after Hu Yaobang's funeral on April 22 is showing signs of weakening. Some small colleges had already resumed classes. At other schools, student marshals were sometimes needed to picket against students who wanted to go to classes. But in the rush of planning for the demonstration, Beijing Students Autonomous Federation officials debated but failed to make a formal resolution on this issue.

In the meantime, a new Dialogue Delegation was formally established that evening to seek and prepare for a formal dialogue with the government. Delegates came from various colleges including Shen Tong and Xiong Yan from Peking University. Most other delegates, however, were graduate students who appeared to be older and mature. They elected Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong as the co-organizers. Shen Tong advocated for this organization to keep a healthy distance from the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and the ongoing movement so that they would be more acceptable to the government.

Also in that afternoon, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang made his first public speech since the movement at the occasion of the official commemoration meeting of the May Fourth Movement. He stroke a conciliatory tone toward the ongoing situation.

In the evening, dozens of young reporters from the official media decided to hold their own rally the next day to demand press freedom.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 1, Peking University Student Leadership Turnover

The International Workers' Day on May 1, 1989, was an observed holiday in China. It gave the students in class strike a break from their emotional movement and a chance to regroup. However, the new and emerging student leadership continued to suffer from growing pains.

In that morning, Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and the Preparatory Committee from Peking University held a joint press conference attended by more than forty oversea reporters. The students reiterated their demands for a dialogue with the government.

At Peking University, the Preparatory Committee was going through a series of re-elections for its standing committee. Both Wang Dan and Shen Tong were losing standings among their peers. During one of the ballots on this day, they tied for last place and had to have a runoff to decide which one could remain in the standing committee. Wang Dan won out narrowly. Shen Tong, who was not at the meeting, became very upset after learning the news.

Feng Congde suggested Shen Tong and Xiong Yan to join the newly formed Dialogue Delegation instead.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: April 30

On the last day of April, 1989, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang returned to Beijing from a state visit to North Korea. He had been away for a week.

The charged atmosphere of the new student movement calmed somewhat. Beijing Students Autonomous Federation busied itself in its own organizational matters. With Wuer Kaixi's absence, they elected Feng Congde to be the new president.

A decision was also made to form a new Dialogue Delegation to seek and prepare for a formal dialogue with the government. During the staged dialogue the day before, Yuan Mu had adamantly asserted that Beijing Students Autonomous Federation was an illegal organization and would never become part of the dialogue. Students hoped that a separate and somewhat moderate Dialogue Delegation could become more acceptable to the government.

Meanwhile, officials from the city government, such as the Mayor Chen Xitong, continued to hold dialogue sessions with hand-picked students, side-stepping the independent organizations such as Beijing Students Autonomous Federation. Big Posters on campuses denounced them as unacceptable to students.


Days of 1989

NYT Archive 1989: Hunger Strike Took The Center Stage

On May 15, 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Beijing. The welcoming ceremony had to be moved off the Tiananmen Square, as reported by New York Times that day,

Thousands of university students occupied Beijing's central square through the night, defying Government plans to seal off the area. They said they wanted to hold their own welcoming ceremony for Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, who arrived today for the first Chinese-Soviet summit meeting in 30 years.

Unable to seal off the square and embarrassed by the presence of the demonstrators, the Government canceled plans to hold the official welcoming ceremony there and moved it to the Beijing airport.

By then, the hunger strikers had been on the Square for two days. But the NYT still did not regard it as the prominent story of the day. It was mentioned in passing:

About 2,200 hunger strikers sat huddled in the center of the square, and more than 10,000 students from other universities spent the night crowded around to support them.

By this morning, the hunger strikers had drawn crowds of 80,000 or more, mostly supportive. Students from campuses all over the capital had marched to Tiananmen Square on Sunday to press demands for democracy and for a dialogue with the Government.

''Welcome, Mr. Gorbachev, the true reformer,'' read a banner that the students held aloft in a rebuke to China's own leadership.

Also in passing, NYT mentioned a dialog that happened a day earlier:

Senior Government officials, including the Minister of Education, Li Tieying, met with student leaders on Sunday, but students said the talks were disrupted when the Government said it was unable to meet student demands to broadcast the discussion live. On Sunday night, the television news carried a brief report on the dialogue.

That was actually a dialog led by Party official Yan Mingfu and the students' own Dialog Delegation. It was the most promising and dramatic, but yet unsuccessful, event during the 1989 movement.

The Gorbachev visit was billed as one of the most important diplomatic action of the nation, sealing the reconciliation of the two largest Communist nations. The students had hoped to use the occasion to voice their concerns by launching the hunger strike. They thought that the government had to resolve the issue, and therefore they could stop the hunger strike, before the welcoming ceremony.

Now that the government had essentially called their bluff, students had lost their biggest bargaining chip of the time. The hunger strike had to continue, with no end in sight:

Chen Subin, a 22-year-old student from Beijing University, said that he had not eaten since Saturday afternoon but that he would stay on the square indefinitely. ''I will stay as long as I can,'' said Mr. Chen.

NYT Archive 1989: Students' Ultimatum For Dialogue

The day before the anniversary of the May Fourth movement, on May 3, 1989, New York Times reported that 6,000 students marched in Shanghai, the biggest demonstration outside of the capital so far. Near the end of that report, however, was an update of what was happening in Beijing:

In Beijing today, student leaders gave a 24-hour ultimatum to the Government to approve their conditions for talks, and warned of demonstrations on Thursday if the Government did not agree. About 70 student leaders rode their bicycles together to several Government and party offices to deliver letters outlining their demands.

The letter was a response to the Government's announcement last week that it would enter into a ''dialogue'' with the students. Since then, Government officials have held three of these dialogues with students, and some delicate issues have come up.

But most students appear dissatisfied. They complain that the students whom the Government chose to take part are mostly friendly to the Communist Party, and that the Government edited the videotape of the first dialogue before showing it on national television.

Of the 12 student conditions for talks, the three most crucial were that the students themselves choose their representatives, that the talks be broadcast uncensored on national television and that the Government be represented by officials at the level of Deputy Prime Minister or Politburo member.

The "ultimatum" was the handiwork of the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation (BSAF). Emboldened by the tremendous success of the April 27 demonstration, this young organization made its first big misstep: delivering a demand for dialog that was loaded with pre-conditions. The demand was backed by the threat of another demonstration on May 4, should their conditions were not met. It did indeed sound like an ultimatum.

But BSAF also made another move at the same time. In order to prepare for the anticipated dialog, it decided to organize a separate entity, the Dialog Delegation, dedicated to the handling of the dialogs. Xiang Xiaoji (from the University of Political Sciences and Law) and Shen Tong (from Beida) were chosen to be the co-leaders of the Delegation.

Xiang Xiaoji and Shen Tong recognized from the very beginning that the confrontational stance of BSAF would lead to problems. Therefore they decided to separate the Delegation entirely from BSAF activities and adopt a more moderate stance of their own. This critical decision would unfold quite dramatically later on, in the hopeful rise and tragic fall of an dialog with an open-minded officier Yan Mingfu (阎明复). But we would be get way ahead of ourselves here.

Meanwhile, in a separate news on the same date, NYT reported on a small symposium held in California on the 70-th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. The symposium was planed way ahead of time and only happened to coincide with the ongoing student movement at the time. Many prominent intellectuals attended the symposium, including Ruan Ming (阮铭), Ge Yang (戈阳), Liu Binyan (刘宾雁).

As the situation in Beijing worsened in the coming weeks, these conferees stayed in the United States and became part of the exile community. Liu Binyan had since passed away.

According to NYT, Fang Lizhi was also invited to the symposium but was unable to make the trip because the government refused to grant permission. A video interview of Fang Lizhi was shown at the meeting, in which Fang Lizhi advocated "a new brand of patriotism":

They applauded as Mr. Fang explained his view of patriotism, saying that calls for democratic freedoms represented a higher form of love of country than did calls for party obedience.