This Day in 1989: May 1, 1990, Lhasa Martial Law Lifted

On April 30, 1990, Premier Li Peng announced the end of martial law in the city of Lhasa, capital of Tibet. The martial law was imposed on March 7, 1989, and lasted about 13 months.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: October 5, 1989, Dalai Lama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

On October 5, 1989, Norway Nobel Prize Committee announced that the Nobel Peace Prize of the year was being awarded to the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), honoring his efforts in advocating "peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect" in the Tibet struggle.

In March, 1989, riots and martial law broke out in Tibet. However, it is generally understood that the award was largely influenced by the 1989 student protest and Tiananmen massacre.


Days of 1989

People of 1989: Qiao Shi (乔石)

Qiao Shi was born in 1924 at Shanghai. He joined the Chinese Communist Party when he was not even 16 years old and quickly became active in the underground. He helped lead a few student movements in that era.

In the early 1980s, Qiao Shi's political career was reaching its peak. He held the offices of Party Central Chief of Staff, Head of Department of Personnel, Head of the Political and Law Commission, etc., as well as a member of the most powerful Politburo Standing Committee. For many years, he was in charge of the personnel and disciplinary matters of the Party.

In 1988, he had an extended work trip to Tibet, for which he was connected to the execution of martial law in Lhasa in March, 1989.

During the 1989 student movement, Qiao Shi had kept an extremely low profile. He only appeared in public a couple of times along with other Politburo members and never voiced any opinion of his own. In the few days after the massacre when an uncertain power vacuum existed at the top, Qiao Shi was once rumored to be the new General Secretary. However, when the dust settled, the post unexpected went to Jiang Zemin. Qiao Shi later became the Chairman of the National People's Congress and the number 3 leader behind Jiang Zemin and Li Peng in the new leadership collective.

On June 23, 1989, Jiang Zemin (right), Li Peng (center), and Qiao Shi (back) meet Li Xiannian (left).

In November, 1989, Qiao Shi led a delegate of Chinese Communist Party dignitaries to visit a few east European countries. They made to Romania and Bulgaria on the eve of their respective political changes, but was too late for Czechoslovak, whose Communist Party collapsed just days before.

Qiao Shi died on June 14, 2015 in Beijing. He was 91.


People of 1989

This Day in 1989: March 7, Martial Law in Lhasa, Tibet

On March 7, 1989, as a response to two days of protests and riots, the Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng declared martial law in Tibet's capital city Lhasa.

Under the martial law, People's Liberation Army moved in and quickly suppressed the protests. It is not clear how many perished in the process. The Chinese government announced that a dozen people died. New York Times reported an unofficial number of 75 (and later cited a Chinese journalist who claimed that more than 450 died).

This is the first time martial law was imposed in China since the chaotic Cultural Revolution. But it failed to garner attention both inside China and abroad. The martial law was finally lifted on May 1, 1990, more than a whole year later.


This Day in 1989

This Day in 1989: March 5, Protest and Riot Erupts in Tibet

On March 5, 1989, large scale of protests broke out in the city of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Hundreds of monks, nuns, and youth marched on the street with the forbidden Tibetan flags. Looting and arson also occurred amid the protests.

Tibet had not been quiet in the late 1980s and saw several occurrences of riot and other incidents between police and people. In the early 1989, the 10th Panchen Lama Choekyi Gyaltsen was finally allowed to visit his home state Tibet after being confined in Beijing for decades. But he passed away suddenly soon after arriving Tibet. His death led to suspicions of conspiracy and heightened the tension.


This Day in 1989

NYT Archive 1989: Tactics and Sincerity Of Students

It was a relatively quiet period in Beijing after May 4, 1989. So, New York Times took the time to examine what it had witnessed so far in its May 7 edition. In particular, Nicholas Kristof observed something odd:

For anyone tempted to think that rebellious Chinese students must be fighting for capitalism and multi-party democracy, a banner fluttering over People's University marchers on Thursday was a rude shock. It read, ''We firmly support the correct leadership of the Communist Party.''

If South Korean university students are at the militant extreme, totally rejecting the Government and battering lines of police with firebombs and wooden staves, then Chinese demonstrators are at the peaceful extreme.

They sometimes go out of their way to say nice things about the Communist Party, even when it is clear they do not believe them, and they overwhelm the police as much with courtesy as with force.

Certainly, anyone would be amused by such tactics:

When approaching lines of the police, the students try to ingratiate themselves by chanting, ''The people love the people's police; the people's police love the people.'' After some hard pushing, but never any blows, the police usually give way to the students.

That is when the demonstrators pause to bellow, ''Thank you, police.'' A few students are even assigned to pick up any shoes lost in the shoving and return them to their owners, be they police or protesters.

Such tactics, which resemble those employed in the Philippine uprising rather than those in South Korea, have been enormously successful so far. It has been difficult for the Communist Party to crack down on those who politely call on the party to uphold its own ideals of honesty and democracy. And the students' charm has won grins and support from many ordinary workers.

But Kristof was also correct when he pointed out that students' pro-Communist rule declarations were not entirely sincere. It was done at least partly for tactical reasons. Or at the best, the students were simply recognizing the reality, as Wang Dan was quoted in the article:

Several of the student movement's leaders have said that they would consider joining the Communist Party at some point in their careers. Even Wang Dan, the Beijing University student leader who is regarded as among the most aggressive in the movement, scarcely paused when he was asked if he supported the leading role of the Communist Party in China.

''You can say I support correct leadership by the Communist Party,'' Mr. Wang said, putting emphasis on the word ''correct.'' He seemed to mean that he was willing to tolerate the leading role of the party, so long as it was upright and permitted greater democracy.

In other news on that day, NYT focused on the on-going reconciliation across the strait with the visit of Taiwan's financial minister, as well as the status of Tibetans in Nepal.

NYT Archive 1989: Hu Yaobang Hospitalized

We now know that Hu Yaobang first felt sick in the morning of April 8, 1989, during a politburo meeting. He was rushed into hospital that afternoon after emergency procedures were taken right at the meeting location.

But nobody in the pubic knew it back then. Information on the health of top leaders were, and still are, regarded as top secret. It was not until April 13, 1989, that Hu's condition was revealed. New York Times on that day had only a couple of short paragraphs, stating that Premier Li Peng disclosed that Hu Yaobang had been hospitablized for an undisclosed ailment.

Hu would pass away two days later, triggering the start of the great 1989 student movement.

But on that day, the big news regarding China on New York Times was a report of a group of Tibetans had finally made out of Tibet and reached Nepal. They were the first Tibetans to exit China after the Lhasa uprising and ensuring crackdown.

Wei Jingsheng Calls on IOC to Act on China

Wei Jingsheng published an op-ed piece in Washington Post today, calling that the International Olympic Committee's refusal to take a stand against the Beijing crackdown on Tibetan protesters is "wholly unacceptable". He went on to warn that "If the IOC doesn't move to put pressure on Beijing consistent with its obligations, it risks this Olympics being remembered like the 1936 Games in Berlin."

Among the dissidents currently in exile, Wei Jingsheng is often alone in holding on positions that may appear to be radical and controversial. He has been consistently against having the Olympics in China, in contrast with almost all other dissidents.

Wei's article is also the single public voice, so far, from the dissident-in-exile community on the current Tibet riot.

Tibetan Students Held Campus Vigil in Beijing

Amid the riots and violence in Lhasa and other locations in and near Tibet, it is easy to overlook that a group of ethnic Tibetan students had staged a vigil in Beijing, at the campus of the Central University of Nationalities (中央民族学院), a college devoted to the education of China's ethnic minorities. In sharp contrast, this protest appeared to be low-profile, peaceful, and was eventually broken up by authorities without much disturbance.

Ever since 1989, it's been extremely rare to see any protests held on college campuses.

What is clear, however, is that the Tibetan students did not receive any support or even sympathy from their non-Tibetan compatriots. In China, even the best educated are not immune to nationalist pride and zeal, in which the nation's territorial integrity is held above all other values. Any thought of independence, be it Tibet or Taiwan, is automatically condemned, not only by the government in power, but also by the common mass. It is therefore unsurprising that the, as Washington Post had put it: Beijing's Crackdown Gets Strong Domestic Support. The violent nature of the current protest in Tibet certainly has not helped either.