This Day in 1989: March 4, 1991, Three Hong Kong "Yellow Bird" Sentenced

On March 4, 1991, Guangdong Province Intermediate People's Court sentenced Lo Hoi-sing (罗海星) and Lai Pui-shing (黎沛成) to five years and Li Lung-hing (李龙庆) to four years. The three Hong Kong residents were parts of the "Operation Yellow Bird," an organized attempt to rescue 1989 movement leaders from mainland. They were caught during a failed attempt to extract Chen Zimin and Wang Juntao.

Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: February 12, 1991, Wang Juntao, Chen Zimin, and Liu Gang Sentenced

On February 12, 1991, Beijing Intermediate People's Court announced that Wang Juntao and Chen Zimin had each been sentenced to 13 years of prison for their "attempting to overthrow the people's government and socialist system" during the 1989 movement.

Also announced was that Liu Gang received a 6 year sentence while Chen Xiaoping was released without prison terms.


Days of 1989

People of 1989: Zhang Wei (张炜)

Born in 1955, Zhang Wei is one of the luckier ones among his generation. When college entrance exam was re-established in 1977 after the turmoil of Cultural Revolution, he earned his entrance to Peking University as a student of economics. Two years later, he became the President of the official student union, typically a step stone to a political career in China.

In 1989, when an unexpected election campaign emerged in Peking University, Zhang Wei couldn't help to jump in, despite cautions from school officials. He joined the dissident-minded candidates such as Hu Ping and Wang Juntao but maintained his own brand of "moderate reformer" stand. He garnered third most votes, just behind Hu Ping and Wang Juntao but won deserved respects from his peers.

Zhang Wei (second from left) and his classmates at Peking University in 1982.

After graduating in 1982, Zhang Wei turned down an offer to be a youth official at the school and chose a low level position in Tianjin. In two years, he rose to be the head of a new development zone in the city and became a distinguished reformer. His work earned attentions of top-level government officials.

Zhang Wei (left) and Zhao Ziyang (right) in the 1980s.

As his star was rising, the 1989 student movement erupted. Zhang Wei was 34 then, already one of the top officials in the Tianjin city government. He did not participate in any of the protests, but after the declaration of the martial law, he wrote and submitted a short resignation letter:

I protest the decision of deploying army against unarmed people engaging in peaceful protests. I cannot agree with Li Peng's speech. Now my official duty and my loyalty to people are in conflict. I have to choose the latter. Therefore, I resign from my post.

After the Tiananmen Massacre, He wrote more protesting letters to the central government.

Zhang Wei lingered on a few years after the resignation and suffered a divorce. In 1993, he got accepted by Harvard University and left China for graduate study, while seeking treatment for his young son with leukemia. He earned a masters degree from Harvard in 1995 and then a Ph. D. from Oxford University in 2000.

Since 2002, Zhang Wei has been the president of the Center of Chinese Economics that he founded at Cambridge University. He is still not allowed to return to China.

People of 1989

People of 1989: Chen Ziming (陈子明)

Born in January, 1952, Chen Ziming grew up with the Cultural Revolution and the era of reform and openness after that. Right after middle school, he joined the wave of "send-down" students and spent 6 years in the rural area of Inner Mongolia. In 1974, he was fortunate enough to become a student in the Beijing College of Chemical Engineering. Yet, he was soon reported for having written politically incorrect material in his private letters. He was expelled from the school and sent to a reforming labor camp as a counter-revolutionary.

In April, 1976, Chen Ziming happened to be in Beijing and joined in the spontaneous mass movement later known as the April Fifth Movement. He became one of the few visible leaders and participated in the negotiations with authorities. In the ensuing crackdown, he escaped capture only because he was already back in the labor camp. Later, when the verdict of that movement was overturned, he was hailed as a national hero and promised a brighter future.

However, Chen Ziming soon participated in the Democratic Wall movement, advocating democracy and freedom. He founded the popular undergrand journal Beijing Spring. Later in 1980, he became one of the candidates in the first-ever election campaign in colleges and was elected a people's representative in his district.

In the 1980s, Chen Ziming took advantage of the freer environment and founded the Beijing Social and Economic Sciences Research Institute -- the very first private think tank in the Communist China. He grew the Institute to possess its own publishing, remote education, journals, and opinion-polling operations and research efforts. Through the Institute, he also gathered and supported many young intellectuals who had participated in the democratic movements and thus had difficulties with authorities.


Chen Ziming paid close attention as soon as the 1989 student movement broke out. He made donations for the budding Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and also helped students choose their slogans in the early demonstrations. But because of his background, he kept a low profile.

After the hunger strike, Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao set up a temporary meeting place at Jimen Hotel with the resources from their Institute to facilitate communication and coordination among the many factions of intellectuals. Wang Juntao and others from the Institute would then get involved with the efforts to go-between government officials and students and later organizing the Capital Joint Conference to lead the movement directly. But Chen Ziming continued to stay behind the scenes.


After the crackdown and an unsuccessful escape, Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao were designated by the government as the "black hands" behind the movement. They each received a 13 year sentence, the harshest of any leaders of the movement. While serving his time, Chen Ziming was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  He refused the government offer of going abroad as an exile and chose to serve out his sentence in China instead.

After his release in 2002, Chen Ziming spent his time writing and participating in limited social activities, including co-signing the Charter 08. In more recent years, he was allowed to limited travel abroad as well as seeking medical treatment in Boston.

Chen Ziming died of cancer in Beijing on October 21, 2014.



People of 1989

People of 1989: Gao Yu (高瑜)

Gao Yu started her journalist career from the year 1980 at the official China News Service (中国新闻社). She mostly produced interviews with various famous personalities and provided her articles to oversea Chinese language media in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries. As a result, she was better known abroad than in her home country.

In 1988, Gao Yu joined the fledgling magazine Economics Weekly (经济学周报) which was taken over by the famous dissidents Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao. She immediately published a few popular interviews, including one with Yan Jiaqi and Wen Yuankai on political reform that December.

During the 1989 student movement, Gao Yu joined her fellow journalists in a few protest marches. After the martial law, on May 21, Gao Yu went to Tiananmen Square as a representative of Hu Jiwei to persuade hunger strike students to withdraw. She managed that with Wang Dan and drafted a statement of withdraw for him. But the effort was eventually in vain.

On June 3, just before the bloody crackdown, Gao Yu was kidnapped in front of her home and then was secretly imprisoned for 15 months. Thus, she became one of those who were arrested the earliest in that movement.

Gao Yu remained active after her release. In 1993, she was arrested for the second time for "leaking national secret" and received a 6-year prison term. While serving that sentence, she was bestowed several prestigious awards from various international media organizations.

On April 24, 2014, Gao Yu was once again arrested for "leaking national secrets." On April 17, 2015, she was sentenced to a 7-year term.


People of 1989

Wang Juntao's Ex-Wife Active in Beijing

The Daily Beast recently reported that Hou Xiaotian (侯晓天), Wang Juntao's ex-wife, is now back in Beijing as a successful businesswoman. 

Hou Xiaotian was Wang Juntao's wife when the latter was involved in a series of dissident activities that culminated in the 1989 student movement. However, she had kept a low profile herself except in the years after 1989 when Wang Juntao was sentenced to 13 years of prison. Then, Hou Xiaotian became a champion in appealing for his release and other human rights issues and was detained by the government numerous times herself.

The couple moved into exile in United States after Wang Juntao was released in 1994. But they were divorced by 1999 and went on separate career paths. While Wang Juntao earned a Ph. D. in political science and stayed active in oversea dissident movements, Hou Xiaotian went to work as a Wall Street financial analyst with a master's degree in public administration. She now has her own research and advisory firm T. H. Capital.

Daily Beast reports that Hou Xiaotian was turned back at the Beijing airport when she attempted to return to China for the first time in 1997. But she eventually gained acceptance in 1999 by "arguing that she never engaged in anti-government activities but merely sought for implementation of China's own laws." Last year, she was able to establish an office in Beijing for T. H. Capital.

People of 1989: Liu Di (刘迪)

The name Liu Di (刘迪) did not appear in many historical records or literature of the 1989 student moment. That was probably how he liked it.

Born in 1950 in Beijing, Liu Di belonged to a slightly older generation to the students at Tiananmen. He first became famous for participating in the April Fifth Movement in 1976 and landed himself in the most wanted list back then. He was captured and put in jail later that year and served 10 months until the verdict of that movement was overturned by the government.

Along with his fellow "April Fifth Heroes" Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao, Liu Di quickly got himself involved in the 1978 Democracy Wall and then 1980 election campaign in Beijing. His home in the city often served as the publishing house of the underground journal Beijing Spring and gathering place of various dissidents. Later, Liu Di helped Chen Ziming in the founding of their influential and independent think tank.

During the 1989 student movement, Liu Di was one of many older intellectuals who volunteered to assist and advice student leaders from behind the scenes. He was one of the organizers of the Capital Joint Conference which tried but failed to gain leadership to the movement as it was falling apart after the end of hunger strike.

After the massacre, Liu Di was arrested on July 10, 1989 and spent 9 months in jail. During the 1990s, he was active in raising international awareness of the human rights conditions of political prisoners in China. For the past decades, he was consistently denied of jobs or rights to travel abroad and had to survive by his wife's wage and his parents' help. But he never hesitated to help others who are in political trouble.

Liu Di died of cancer on October 19, 2011. He was 61 years old.

People of 1989

Wang Dan Refutes Media Report on Taiwan Funding

Wang Dan, who is currently teaching in Taiwan, is once again involved in a controversy of having received money from Taiwan government. This time the news came from the Central News Agency and carried in the newspaper China Times, both respectable media outlets in the island. The news report says:

The Taiwan High Court today called on mainland democracy fighter Wang Dan and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Huang Zhifang to testify in the corruption trial of former President Chen Shuibian. In the hearing, Wang Dan frankly stated that he had received $400,000 financial support from Chen Shuibian.

The report further explains: "according to sources, Wang Dan stated in court that he twice received donation from Chen Shuibian, each in $200,000, for a total of $400,000.

Within hours of the news release, Wang Dan issued a statement to rebuke the report, claiming that the report's "essential content is absolutely not factual." He pointed out that the court trial was a secret proceeding without media presence. The Central News Agency had not interviewed or confirmed with him before releasing "such a ridiculous report." He voiced a strong protest.

Although Wang Dan also indicated that, because the trial involves Taiwan government secrets, he will not provide any further explanation or response on the matter, he nevertheless provided more information today through his Facebook page. He explained that a more detailed account of his side of the story will be published in the Apple Daily on Monday.

Wang Dan stated that the money he had received before originated from Taiwan government, not Chen Shuibian's personal donation. He said, "As an oversea democracy force, we welcome all political donations that are from proper sources and not imposing political conditions." Secondly, he again stated that the amount he had received had "a very big discrepancy" with that reported by the Central News Agency. But because he has to abide the secrecy order from the court, he could not disclose the real amount. In his discussion with his Facebook followers, he repeated assured them that all the donations "have been used for efforts in pushing for democracy. All accounts are very clear." However, because some of the money had been spent for people in mainland China, he could not disclose any account due to concerns of their safety.

Chen Shuibian was the first non-Nationalist president elected by the people of Taiwan. During his presidency, he had established special account to supply government money to support mainland activists exile overseas. Because the means of money transfer was often murky, he ran into serious trouble in not being able to account for the funds. After his term, he was formally charged for corruption. He called Wang Dan to the trial in an effort to clear his name.

On the other hand, the oversea exile community is also immersed in its own financial troubles. Pretty much every significant organization had experienced serious corruption and embezzlement charges of their leaders. The investigation of such scandals are often fruitless since the leaders claim their money were spent in secret support of mainland underground.

Both Wang Dan and Wang Juntao had gone exile during the time when Chen Shuibian was the President at Taiwan. In the last few years, there had been consistent rumor that the Taiwan government had a special "Two-Wang" fund supporting them. Just last year, the long-running dissident magazine China Spring, for which Wang Dan was the Chairman, ceased its printing operation for a lack of funds. At the time, Wang Dan revealed that financial support for the magazine had stopped as soon as Ma Yingjiu succeeded Chen Shuibian as the President at Taiwan.

AP Tells the Story of Chinese Jasmine Instigators

Ever since the so-called Chinese Jasmine Revolution stirred up in mid-February, many individuals and groups have tried to claim as its initiators. Since the initial call for action was done anonymously, it's virtually impossible to ascertain the true responsible party.

In an exclusive story, Associated Press jumped into the foray today by revealing what they called "one group of campaigners behind the online petitions," led by a young Chinese student in Seoul:

The group is a network of 20 mostly highly educated, young Chinese with eight members inside China and 12 in more than half a dozen other countries.

Calling itself "The Initiators and Organizers of the Chinese Jasmine Revolution" after a phrase used in the Tunisian uprising, the group is not the sole source of the protest calls; at least four others have sprung up.

Interviews with four members of the Initiators show similar evolutions: All are young people who grew to resent the government's autocratic rule and China's widespread inequality and injustice. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt made change look possible.

"People born in the late '80s and the '90s have basically decided that in their generation one-party rule cannot possibly outlive them, cannot possibly even continue in their lifetimes. This is for certain," the lean, soft-spoken 22-year-old who goes by the Internet alias "Forest Intelligence" said in an interview at a cafe in Seoul's trendy Samcheong-dong district.

AP explained that the group has established a significant presence in the online world of social networking, but most of its 1,000+ users seem to be living outside of China. They also list Wang Juntao as one of their advisers.

The story did not present any real evidence of the group's reach and effectiveness, however.

Arab's Tiananmen and China's Jasmine

Ever since 1989, "Tiananmen" has become a catch-word depicting governments' suppressing and massacring their own people, or even the possibility of it, whenever and wherever a popular uprising occurs. The year of 2011 is no exception.

Almost as soon as people in Tunisia marched on the streets, the appearance of the word "Tiananmen" in world news skyrocketed. Fortunately, such dire predictions did not materialize there. In Egypt, tanks did roll on streets and in Tahrir Square. In most likelihood, a repeat of Tiananmen was averted only in the last minutes when soldiers disobeyed a direct order from Mubarak. Scores of protesters did perish there, but not as a result of direct military involvement.

It was a Libya the situation got much dicier. The reference to Tianamen gained a degree of formality when the dictator there, Muammar Gaddafi, made a direct link in one of his odd-ball speeches. In his immortal words, he invoked that history to justify his own stance:

People in front of tanks were crushed. The unity of China was more important than those people on Tiananmen Square.

When Tiananmen Square happened, tanks were sent in to deal with them. It's not a joke. I will do whatever it takes to make sure part of the country isn't taken away.

As his people died in the hands of government troops in his "whatever it takes," the United Nation Security Council debated on how to deal with the atrocity. China, a permanent member of the council with veto power and the origin nation of the Tiananmen massacre, was put on a peculiar position. After some initial hesitation, China reluctantly joined the rest of the world to refer the Gadhafi regime to the International Criminal Court and impose sanctions to the country.

Perhaps the only location of uprising without a link to Tiananmen is at Madison, Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, the term "Jasmine Revolution," derived from the initial uprising in Tunisia, became a sensitive word in China. There has been chatters in China's twitter world that flashmob-style gatherings were called for in many cities there first on Sunday, 2/20, and then again on 2/27. Large-scale crowd failed to materialize on either occasion. But the buzz was loud enough to attract the attention of international media and, perhaps inadvertently, the US Ambassador.

Nobody has formally come out to take the credit or responsibility of the twitter activity yet, although it is increasingly clear that it had originated from the oversea Chinese dissident community instead of the younger generation in China as it was initially reported. Indeed, one of the 1989 student leaders, Liu Gang, had claimed being the originator in an Internet forum and accused others for hijacking and misleading the "revolution." Other exiled 1989 student leaders, including Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, and Wang Juntao, have also been active in propagating the messages in their social network circles. Wuer Kaixi joined a supporting protest by a dozen or so people in Taiwan and Wang Juntao sang the "Jasmine song," literally, at the Times Square in New York City.

So far, the ones who took this so-called "Jasmine Revolution" in China seriously are the Chinese authorities, who are busy blocking related web traffic and employing various tactics to prevent public gatherings in city centers. The police have far out-numbered the onlookers at the scenes.

But there are real and far more serious threats behind the scenes. More than a dozen human rights activists have been detained by police in recent days. Their involvement, or the lack thereof, to the phantom revolution is so far unclear. In the most serious cases, a leading blog writer, Ran Yunfei (冉云飞), and others are being charged with subversion or inciting subversion, convenient crimes for government to charge dissidents in recent years. They will be facing lengthy sentences.

Szeto Wah Recalls "Operation Yellow Bird"

Right after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, the good people in Hong Kong took action and spontaneously launched a daring plan code named "Operation Yellow Bird" -- rescuing the movement leaders who were on the run on mainland and took them to Hong Kong via underground and pirate channels. Till this day, the real inside story of the operation is still in secret, as most of its participants chose silence.

After the death of Mr. Szeto Wah, the chairman of a Hong Kong alliance to support democracy for 21 years, the newspaper Ming Daily broke with a lengthy interview they had conducted with "Uncle Wah" last October in his hospital. The interview reveals a few details of the Operation Yellow Bird.

Szeto Wah recalled the experience they had in rescuing Wuer Kaixi and Chai Ling:

Wuer Kaixi, the story of his leaving Hong Kong is: after June 4, a man came looking for me, a foreigner. He introduced himself as a Portuguese policeman. He produced two photos, one is Wuer Kaixi and another is himself with Wuer Kaixi. He said, Wuer Kaixi is now at Zhuhai. You must find a way to help him.

Since he has the photo as proof, I immediately got phone number from him and then informed the person in charge. I offered 200K (HKD) for him to go pickup Wuer Kaixi. The first try, I kept in touch with him. The wave was too huge, he couldn't reach the shoreline, but he still demanded the 200K. The second time, he said there were soldiers nearby, he couldn't make contact. And he still charged 200K. The third time he was successful. I remember that he was in the Holiday Inn. I dispatched Li Yongda with 600K currency and made the exchange. Wuer Kaixi flew to France the next day. I never got to meet him.

In the entire operation, I have the deepest impression with the cases of Wuer Kaixi and Chai Ling. Chai Ling came over by boat herself, with Feng Congde and another person. They came ashore and called the student association at Chinese University to look for me. She said "I am Chai Ling, I have arrived at Hong Kong." I immediately dispatched Zhang Wenguang to get her. I then informed the French Consulate and took her to the home of the French consul. I also informed our government. Finally, we got plain tickets for them and they left the next day.

Szeto Wah summarized the whole experience as:

The whole operation was a great success. We counted that the number of people we rescued or helped to about 400 to 500. We only failed once, that was for Wang Juntao and Chen Zimin. It was not our fault. It was because a friend of Wang Juntao's betrayed him. Two of our people got arrested. We provided each with 500K compensation.

The money used in the operation was donated by Hong Kong residents:

We never made public the exact numbers. We have moved records to safe locations. The money used on the movement leaders did not come from the Alliance. All the expenses, including their arrival, room and board, daily expense, airfare, and their initial expense abroad, we covered them all.

I only look at numbers, I don't manage money. But some people when they donate, they ask me to receive it. It is perhaps because they trust me. All we receive are cash. Once I saw 600K, a suitcase full of notes. We spent quite some time counting them. Afterwards many democratic organizations apply for funds from us. We gave quite a bit to an organization in France, because they took a lot of the exiles. We paid for it, the first sum was 1,200K.

After June 4th, the big businesses did not donate money to us en mass. But there are people who would come with bags of cash silently. The man in charge of Operation Yellow Bird said that they had spent 30 million. Actually it was all our money. The most donation we received was from a celebrity concert. That single concert netted us 20 million. After that we did not do any large-scale donation drives. In 2008 we donated 780K to Sichuan [which suffered an earthquake]. We had a deficit that year. Then residents donated more than 1,100K. Our Alliance now still has 6 million.

According to Szeto Wah, the then British controlled local government had a tacit understanding with them. They allowed these exiles to stay in Hong Kong but asked to limit their local exposure. It was very difficult for the exiles to go to America, so most of them ended up in France instead. Some of them stayed at Hong Kong for months before going abroad. A few even remained in Hong Kong to this day, such as Han Dongfang.

People of 1989: Luo Haixing

Luo Haixing (罗海星) was born in 1949 in Hong Kong. His father was a prominent magazine editor there and also a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Luo Haixing spent his childhood in mainland China and became a Red Guard during Cultural Revolution while he was in high school. However, his faith in communism was shaken in the 1980s when his father became a victim of a political struggle.

During the 1980s, Luo Haixing spent most of his time in Beijing working for Sino-Hong Kong trade. He was in Beijing when the student movement erupted in 1989. After the massacre, he joined the efforts organized by people in Hong Kong to rescue movement leaders. The details of his involvement is still sketchy, but he was apparently successful in helping a few leaders reach safety in Hong Kong through a makeshift underground route.

Later that year, in an effort to rescue Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, Luo Haixing fell into a trap and was arrested by the Chinese government on October 14, 1989. He was sentenced for five years. He ended up serving only two years, when he was released on the account of British premier John Major's visit to China in 1991.

Luo Haixing passed away on January 14, 2010, at the age of 61.


People of 1989

Book Excerpt: May 27, 1989

The following excerpt is from my book Standoff at Tiananmen, chapter 11, describing the events of May 27, 1989, which in retrospect became one of the pivotal moments of the student movement.


In the morning of May 27, Liu Gang came to Tiananmen Square with a single mission in mind. He had to get the leaders of Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen Square leaders into the conference to discuss a plan for the future. Li Lu had never attended the conference after its first day. He regarded it only as a farce. Occasionally, he sent Chai Ling over so that she could get away and catch some rest during those boring meetings. With his own student parliament backing the headquarters, Li Lu had neither time nor necessity to be involved in the Capital Joint Conference. Liu Gang had come to understand that, for any plan to have a chance, it had to be with the approval of Chai Ling and Li Lu.

But Liu Gang could not persuade Li Lu to attend the meeting this morning. Chai Ling and Feng Congde went with him instead. It happened to be the best attended session in days. There were about a hundred people in a large conference room. Feng Congde, who was a stranger to this scene, recognized many familiar faces. He was surprised to find Wang Dan, absent from Tiananmen Square, playing a central role. But he did not know Wang Juntao, who was there to chair this important proceeding. The agenda was to discuss the second task he had set when he opened the conference four days earlier: a clear and unified goal for the movement.

The meeting opened with Chai Ling briefing on the current situation. To the surprise of many, she gave a depressing account of deterioration. The newcomers from the provinces were out of control. They had started their own organizations to fight with her headquarters for power. Garbage was piling up and the place stank. Chai Ling was exhausted and did not appear at all like a commander-in-chief ready to defend Tiananmen Square. Yang Tao's proposal to vacate the schools was then brought up but received only lukewarm reaction. Wang Dan thought the idea impossible to implement. Wuer Kaixi concurred but added that he would be willing to travel to the provinces himself to drum up popular support for Beijing.

Wang Juntao brought the meeting back to its agenda. A couple of writers in the group had drafted another statement, plainly titled Our Ten-Point Statement regarding the Current Situation. It was a laundry list of their collective opinions and demands. To the great dismay and frustration of Feng Congde and Chai Ling, the intellectuals proceeded to argue hours over fine wording choices point by point. At one instance, a prolonged debate erupted regarding whether to use the phrase "purely spontaneous" or "essentially spontaneous" to describe the origin of the movement. Feng Congde noticed that many of the attendees were dozing off. Now he understood what Li Lu had been saying about this conference.

Wang Juntao ordered Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch. It was a meal of luxury for most people in the room. Like almost everybody else, Chai Ling had a very favorable impression of Wang Juntao. She found him understanding and supportive. A rare person in this crowd whom she could trust. Wang Juntao had been conscientiously playing out the role of his version of George Washington. He went out of his way to make sure that everybody could have a voice in the conference and avoid making any judgment of his own. He smiled and nodded eagerly even when he was listening to something he thought ridiculous or disagreeable. While his approach was winning friends and keeping the conference together, his all-pleasing style was also frustrating his closer friends. "Unprincipled," many scoffed publicly. Liu Gang worried that frequent changes in Wang Juntao's stance could be costing them precious opportunities.

During the lunch break, they learned that Wan Li, the Chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, had issued a written statement from Shanghai in support of martial law. It was yet another major setback.

The meeting continued in the afternoon on their Ten-Point Statement. The eighth point spelled out that, if an emergency meeting of the National People's Congress Standing Committee was not called, the occupation of Tiananmen Square would continue at least until June 20, the date for a regular meeting of the same committee. There was no objection to this deadline until Feng Congde rose to speak. As the person in charge of finance, he told the conference that it was not financially possible to sustain the occupation for another three weeks. In fact, he did not think it could last even a couple more days. He proceeded to explain how they were running a large deficit. He demanded that the departed Beijing Students Autonomous Federation return donated funds to the Square.

The audience was shocked. For all their grandiose visions of revolution and victory, they had paid little attention to such details as money and bread supply. Under pressure, a student in charge of finance for the Federation promised to release some of its funds right away. But he also claimed that their fund was not large either. With the burn rate Feng Congde cited, it would not come close to sustaining them till June 20.

Wang Juntao did not think the monetary shortfall was a serious threat. Sizable donations from Hong Kong and Taiwan were already on their way. But Feng Congde's numbers coupled with Chai Ling's briefing had already caused the pendulum to swing to the side of an earlier withdrawal. To the dismay of a few die-hards, the conference quickly settled on a withdrawal date of May 30, chosen to give the headquarters a couple of days to prepare. All eyes were turning to Chai Ling. It would be this diminutive but determined commander-in-chief who would have the final say.

Chai Ling was much more exhausted than determined at this very moment. She spoke up quietly and softly. It had been a grueling time for her since the start of the hunger strike. Despite all efforts, the situation at Tiananmen Square was dreadful. She was ready to have all this over. Yes, she told the conference, as she raised her hand, she agreed with the withdrawal plan. Almost everybody else followed. It was noted as an unanimous decision.


It was now late afternoon and they finally finished with their statement. But the meeting was not yet over. Liu Xiaobo, a young professor of literature at Beijing Normal University, suggested that they needed a more visible leader for the movement. One who was to be a public hero or a Chinese Lech Walesa, the famous leader of Polish Solidarity. Only with such a figure, he declared, could this movement unite the people and sustain its civil opposition after withdrawing from Tiananmen Square. He already had a candidate and he immediately nominated Wuer Kaixi for the role to be named as the "Spokesman of the People."

The thirty-four year old Liu Xiaobo had been traveling abroad teaching Chinese philosophy and literature in Norway and the United States. He was visiting Columbia University that spring when he felt an irrepressible urge to join the emerging movement. So he hopped on a plane home. As he was transferring at Tokyo, he learned about the publication of April 26 People's Daily editorial. In a moment of truth, he hesitated between continuing onto Beijing or flying back to New York. Beijing won out.

Back home, he was happy to find students from his school at the center of the storm. Now at the conference, he showered accolades on Wuer Kaixi as a natural leader. Likewise, Wuer Kaixi was ready. He followed up with a speech to claim himself the most charismatic and recognized leader of the movement. He appeared to be well received by the audience.

But Feng Congde was beyond himself. He angrily objected the nomination and accused Wuer Kaixi of being immature, lacking experience, and, worst of all, having a strong tendency to speak for himself in total disregard of rules and regulations. He was referring to the unilateral moves Wuer Kaixi had made at Tiananmen Square that had resulted in his own banishment. To his credit, Wuer Kaixi did not dispute the charges. He defended himself by saying that he could now do a better job with teachers like Liu Xiaobo as his advisers.

That was the last straw. Feng Congde and Chai Ling had no more patience left. They had already spent seven hours in this meeting and it was time to leave. As a parting shot, Chai Ling declared that her Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen Square was no longer on the same page with this conference. As they walked out in disgust, the motion to make Wuer Kaixi the Spokesman of the People was tabled. Wang Juntao rushed out to comfort the angry couple.

Leaving the conference, Feng Congde rushed to Peking University to follow up on funds promised by Beijing Students Autonomous Federation. Chai Ling went back to Tiananmen Square by herself. The images of Liu Xiaobo and Wuer Kaixi lingered in her mind. She had seen too many instances of people trying to wrestle leadership from her. From Beijing Students Autonomous Federation to new arrivals from the provinces, they had always tried to overthrow her headquarters and seize power. Now this Capital Joint Conference, which had backed her just a few days ago, was turning against her as well. As she got closer to Tiananmen Square, Chai Ling started having serious second thoughts about the decision to withdraw in three days.

Tiananmen Square was not her sanctuary on this day either. As she was walking in, the sad realities sank in all at once. It was a dirty and pathetic place. People were tired and angry. A young student marshal came to her in anger and disgust. He told her that he had come from Qingdao, a port city in northeast China. Hundreds of his schoolmates had come together to join the movement. Because of the school uniforms they were wearing, all of them were immediately assigned duties as marshals to work on picket lines protecting the Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen Square. They all worked hard for many days, he told Chai Ling while crying. But what had they witnessed so far? Nothing good, he said. We saw you leaders come and go without doing anything of substance. We saw so much infighting and corruption. We did not see anything good at all! He told Chai Ling that most of his schoolmates had already returned home with profound disappointment. There were only a dozen or so left. Why did he choose to stay? He said, I just did not want to give up. I just wanted to see how bad things could get at the Square and whether our country still had any hope left!

There it was, an echo directly from the Hunger Strike Manifesto Chai Ling had written in her own emotional days. It was almost exactly the same language she had used to inspire hundreds and then thousands to Tiananmen Square. But this time, it came back at her. Her own movement was now turning her followers away. She did not have much to say to this teenager. All of a sudden, she thought of her husband Feng Congde. Commenting on the dreadful state of student infighting, he had once quipped, "Now I understand why Li Peng had to impose martial law." It was sad, depressingly sad.


Chai Ling was happy to see Li Lu, who greeted her at the Monument to People's Heroes. But the nice feeling did not last long. Upon hearing of the withdrawal plan, Li Lu was dumbfounded. "What are you talking about? It has only been two days since three hundred delegates voted to stay in the Square. How can that decision be overturned so quickly? It's against democratic procedures." Chai Ling tried to defend the decision but she was not particularly convincing. Li Lu was getting angrier and angrier by the minute. If they withdrew now, he screamed, it would be impossible to get students together again. The military would have total control. The National People's Congress Standing Committee meeting on June 20, if held at all, would be conducted under bayonets!

By the time Liu Gang and some of the Capital Joint Conference people arrived at Tiananmen Square, he found Chai Ling already had changed her mind. Chai Ling told him that it was Li Lu's call. Liu Gang immediately sought out Li Lu and briefed him on the plan. He emphasized that it was not going to be a total withdrawal, but a strategic diversion to campuses. Li Lu listened politely but showed no emotion. Liu Gang stared at Li Lu's dark sunglasses but could not see his eyes. He knew he had trouble on his hands.

Feng Congde had scheduled a press conference ahead of time and it became a rare occasion of the movement. For once, almost all prominent student leaders were present. At the base of the Monument, Wuer Kaixi, Wang Dan, and Chai Ling were standing in the middle. Li Lu, Zhang Boli, Liu Gang, Wang Juntao, and a group of intellectuals from the Capital Joint Conference sat behind them. There were rows of cameras facing the leaders, ready to record history in the making. Thousands of students and residents gathered behind the reporters. The occasion felt more like a mass assembly than a press conference.

Wuer Kaixi gave a speech first. He had not been seen in public for days and now appeared to have recovered from his illness. There were no more oxygen bags or nurses in tow. Liu Gang had intended to have him as a lead-in to summarize the achievements of the movement. Wuer Kaixi, however, took it as an opportunity for his own comeback. Happy and at ease, he casually launched into a sincere apology for his "bone-headed" move in screaming for withdrawal in the early morning of May 21, which he said might have cost the movement a golden opportunity to unite. His natural charisma won over the crowd. For once, he did not faint.

It was a tough act to follow. When Wang Dan came up next, he appeared to be the opposite of the charming Wuer Kaixi. Stiff and flat, with a pair of oversize glasses blocking almost half of his face, Wang Dan was holding the microphone in his right hand and several sheets of loose paper in his left. He struggled to read as the papers flapped in the wind. It was the long and drawn-out Ten-Point Statement. The crowd, warmed up by Wuer Kaixi, sat back in a subdued mood.

It was not until he reached the eighth point that he was able to catch the attention of his audience. After pausing for a moment, he slowly and softly read on, "It is suggested that the students evacuate Tiananmen Square on May 30." As Wang Dan continued with the statement, students in the crowd were exchanging confused looks and opinions.

Liu Gang got very worried. He spent the time during Wang Dan's speech to write down a detailed withdrawal plan on a piece of paper, mapping out how students would march out of Tiananmen Square. Knowing that most students were from out of town, he instructed them to go to specific local campuses based on the geographic regions where they came from. He handed the plan to Chai Ling who would be speaking next.

As Chai Ling stood up, she had Liu Gang's notes in one hand and took the microphone in the other. She did not bother to take a peek at the notes. Calmly, she stuffed the notes into a side pocket of her jeans and said, "The decision to withdraw on May 30 was not made by our Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen Square. It was not the will of the students at the Square either." Raising her voice, she turned and pointed her finger at Liu Gang, "It was them! It was only the opinion of these so-called elite intellectuals!"

The press conference ended in a confused state. Liu Gang and his fellow "elites" took refuge in a tent and could not contain their anger toward Chai Ling. When the Ten-Point Statement was printed and released publicly the next day, it had already reverted to its original language: "Unless an emergency meeting of the National People's Congress Standing Committee is convened in the next few days, the occupation of the Square will continue at least until June 20."

This Day in 1989: May 23, Mao's Portrait Defaced

On May 23, 1989, Wang Juntao put his vision of a new movement leadership into motion by rounding up all existing leaders and put them into a large conference room at the Institute of Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong Thought a couple miles off Tiananmen Square. There, they formed a new coordination group that became known as the Joint Conference. Bao Zunxin was selected as the nominal leader but it was clear that Wang Juntao was running the show.

Among the many decisions they made to consolidate power and impose order to the chaotic occupation of Tiananmen Square, the most critical one was to endorse the provisional headquarters formed the day before and formally chastised it as the Headquarters for Defending Tiananmen Square. Chai Ling and her lieutenants remained as the leaders of the new headquarters, much to the dismay of Liu Gang and others who resented her leadership styles.

It was also a hot day at the Square, as massive demonstrations continued. In the early afternoon, three men at the base of Tiananmen threw plastic shells filled with paint onto the giant portrait of Mao Zedong and left a few visible stains on the holy picture. Students, suspecting it as a government conspiracy act, detained the three men immediately. With most of their leaders absent from the scene, students made a quick decision to hand the three to police.

The three men, Yu Zhijian (余志坚), Yu Dongxiao (喻东晓), and Lu Decheng (鲁德成), turned out not to be government agents but from Mao Zedong's home Hunan Province. They were a teacher, a local newspaper art editor, and a truck driver, respectively. For their act of defacing the portrait, Yu Zhijian received a life sentence, Yu Dongxiao 20 years, and Lu Decheng 16 years in jail.

Shortly after the defacing incident, a severe thunderstorm mixed with sand and hail belted the Tiananmen Square.

Also on this day, Wan Li, the chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, cut short of his state visit in North America and returned to China. Wang Juntao, Hu Jiwei, and others had high hopes for Wan Li to open an emergency meeting of his committee to reevaluate the martial law. But Wan Li did not make it all the way to Beijing. He stopped, or was stopped, at Shanghai "for health reasons."


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 22, BSAF Lost Control of Tiananmen Square

With the martial law troops blocked by still poised to enter the city any time, Tiananmen Square was in a state of uncertainty and anxiety. During the night of May 21, 1989, leaders of the hunger strike left the Square discreetly into hiding. Yet Wuer Kaixi, who had been banished from the leadership, returned to the Square after midnight. He too had heard "credible" rumors that this would be the night of bloodshed.

At two o'clock in the morning, Wuer Kaixi had to fight for his right to speak at the students' broadcast station at the Square. He eventually succeeded with Wang Chaohua's help. Then he screamed into the microphone to urge everyone to get out of the Square and move to the foreign embassy district for safety. His emotional and incoherent call was not heeled by the thousands of students. As he fainted, many thought he had lost his min

Although Wuer Kaixi had been expelled from the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation earlier for similar erratic behavior, most people still regarded him as the public face of that organization. Wang Chaohua had been working hard in the last couple of days to resurrect the organization as the student leadership. Her effort was now irreparably damaged.

During the day, former hunger strike leaders returned and Zhang Boli suggested that they needed to form a new leadership. He persuaded Wang Chaohua to take her Federation off-site for a reorganization and promised her that she would regain the leadership in 48 hours with a stronger Federation. Meanwhile, he engineered the formation of a "Provisional Headquarters" and installed Chai Ling as the Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, the new headquarters would look exactly the same as the defunct Hunger Strike Headquarters, with Li Lu, Feng Congde, and Zhang Boli acting as the main deputies to Chai Ling.

Wang Chaohua regarded the move as a coup. She left the Square dejected and disheartened. But nevertheless, she returned to Peking University to regroup and reorganize her Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and hope for a return in 48 hours.

Wang Juntao also spent part of this day at the Square observing the power vacuum. He reaffirmed his belief that the movement had gone beyond the students and maturer leadership was required. Yet he struggled with the thought of becoming the leader himself. As someone who was pessimistic on the eventual outcome, he was reluctant to step up and lead.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 21, Li Lu Stages his Wedding at Tiananmen Square

After failed to enter the city two nights earlier, the martial law troops stayed put on their routes surrounded by students and residents. On May 21, 1989, the city of Beijing returned to a strange normal. Martial law was in effect only on paper. There appeared to be no authoritative governance in the city.

Power vacuum also existed within the ranks of the students. With the end of hunger strike, the Hunger Strike Headquarters was now defunct. There was no clear leadership among the current sit-in at the Square, although Wang Chaohua was making headway with her long-forgotten Beijing Students Autonomous Federation. Seeing the chaotic situation, she felt that her first priority was to find a way for student to withdraw from the Square and end the dangerous standoff. In a meeting of student representatives from 50 colleges in Beijing, she found a clear majority supporting her view.

Yet the chaos at the Square produced one of the more memorable scenes in 1989. Li Lu and his girlfriend staged a wedding at the base of the Monument to People's Heroes, flanked by Chai Ling, Feng Congde, and Zhang Boli. The "new couple" marched and danced around the Square, bringing a surreal happiness to the anxious crowd.

Not too long after the wedding, these former leaders of the hunger strike decided it was time for them to leave, as rumors of a bloody push by the martial law troops that night became more and more credible. They divided up the fund and gave each leader 200 RMB and sneaked out the Square. All except for Li Lu, who decided to stay himself.

Outside of Tiananmen Square, concerned individuals were also springing into action. Hu Jiwei, a high-rank official who was then a member of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, was pushing for a signature drive among his colleagues to open an emergency session of the committee to discuss the legitimacy of the martial law. He was assisted by intellectuals such as Cao Siyuan and Zhou Dou, as well as the private Stone Corp.

Wang Juntao, on the other hand, was mobilizing all his friends and connections to establish a new
leadership structure that went beyond the students. He envisioned an all-inclusive entity to coordinate the workers, residents, intellectuals, students, and alike to steer and strength the movement.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 18, Premier Li Peng Meets with Students

Tiananmen Square looked different on May 18, 1989. The hunger strike was poised to enter its sixth day, but the messy hunger strike camp was no more. Instead, about seventy city buses were parked neatly on the northern edge of the Square and all hunger strikers were moved into the buses.

The buses arrived overnight ahead of a forecast of severe thunderstorm. The Beijing city government provided the transportation buses as a temporary shelter for the hunger strikers. With millions of residents on streets continue to demonstrate in support of students daily, most public transportation had been shutdown. This would be a better use of the buses. Cui Jian, the most famous rock-n-roll star in China, showed up to perform for the striking students.

But the biggest surprise of the day happened around noon, when a few student leaders received an urgent message to go to the Great Hall of People. The unprepared group was met by the Premier Li Peng, during which Wuer Kaixi emotionally undressed the national leader. A video recording of the meeting was later shown to the general public with little editing.

The official media, meanwhile, was unquestionably turning to the side of the students. Blessed by Zhao Ziyang's request for openness, official newspapers carried emotional charged articles on the hunger strike and the demonstrations. People's Daily headlines the demonstration the day before with a title "History will never Forget this Day!" With the absence of censorship, however, the media also abandoned its objectivity and became an advocate for the cause of the student movement themselves.

At the Square, leaders of the hunger strike were also collapsing. Chai Ling, Li Lu, and Feng Congde all had spent substantial hours of this day in hospitals. Li Lu recalled in his autobiography that he had personally persuaded his hunger strikers to take food in the hospital and did it himself to set an example.

Behind the scenes, Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao finally decided that they had to get involved. At Jimen Hotel, they gathered most prominent intellectuals in town to discuss strategies. But the meeting did not arrive to any actionable conclusion or even a consensus.


Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May13, Hunger Strike Launches

On May 13, 1989, around a hundred or so students marched into Tiananmen Square and started their hunger strike. They were accompanied by an equal number of student marshals who would protect and serve them. In existing personal memoirs and recollections, there were conflicting descriptions of this entry. Some recalled that they were cheered by enthusiastic crowd, others depicted a quiet scene in which they were ignored.

The latter was more likely to be true. At this point of time, the student movement was still in its "low-tide" stage and most thought it was already over. It was a surprise when Chai Ling was able to inspire many students to join her hunger strike. At noon that day, students at Peking University, where the most hunger strikers came from, had an emotional send-off for their "warriors." But outside of the campus, there was hardly any knowledge of the new development.

The hunger strikers themselves were not prepared. They arrived most in their summer clothes without overnight supplies. They had hoped that their action would trigger an immediate response from the government and be over with in a day or so.

Feng Congde was not persuaded by his wife Chai Ling into joining the hunger strike. He did not agree with the tactic. On this day, he went to the Soviet embassy to deliver an invitation to Mikhail Gorbachev to visit his school. Then he rode his bicycle to Tiananmen Square on his own, where he saw that the crowd of hunger strikers were not able to attract any real attention in the vastness of the Square. He went on to purchase cloths and paint and would spend the entire night to make a giant flag for the hunger strikers.

It was Yan Mingfu, a bureaucrat heading the so-called United Front Office of the Chinese Communist Party, who reached out to the students, apparently out of his own initiative. He took upon himself to find a way to end the hunger strike ahead of Gorbachev's state visit. In a matter of hours, he gathered independent intellectuals such as Wang Juntao along with most of the student leaders in his office for an informal contact. Students pushed for a formal dialogue but Yan Mingfu was not yet ready to give in.

Yan Mingfu did get close to persuade the students from calling off the hunger strike that night. Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi and others were convinced by his sincerity and reasoning. But by that time Chai Ling, who was fast emerging as the new leader, had left the office and the rest of them were not able to make a formal decision on their own.


Days of 1989

Guardian Profiles Tiananmen Student Leaders

In an article titled "Tiananmen: the flame burns on," Guardian profiled several prominent leaders of the 1989 student movement. Each story provides the current whereabouts of them and their reflections of the events twenty years ago. The byline of the story states:

Twenty years ago tanks rolled into Beijing's Tiananmen Square to crush the biggest pro-democracy movement in history. Hundreds were killed, thousands jailed and many fled to escape persecution. Here exiled leaders of the student revolution tell their remarkable stories and reveal how, after being forced to build new lives, they remain haunted by its bloody legacy

The profiled include Wuer Kaixi, Wang Chaohua, Shen Tong, Wang Juntao, Wang Dan, Chen Ziming, and Shao Jiang.

Historical Events: April Fifth Movement

The year 1976 was a pivotal year in the history of modern China. The decade-old Cultural Revolution had not yet officially ended but largely faded away. Within that year, top leaders of the first-generation communist revolutionaries, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, would pass away. A devastating earthquake would shake a large city and cause hundreds of thousands deaths. Mao Zedong's own death in the fall was followed by the ouster of his closest allies in a palace coup that would eventually pave the way for the resurrection of Deng Xiaoping.

The harbinger of things to come for that year occurred days after the new year's day. On January 8, the beloved premier Zhou Enlai succumbed to cancer. Fearing for growing dissent, the government downplayed the memorial activities that winter. People, who had come to see Zhou Enlai as a kinder and gentler alternative to Chairman Mao Zedong himself, were left unsatisfied.

April 4, 1976 was the Qingming festival, the Chinese equivalent of memorial day. Spontaneously, Beijing residents came to Tiananmen Square in thousands to lay wreathes and flowers at the base of the Monument to People's Heroes. Banners, posters, and poems were dedicated to the late premier who had died three months ago. Many of them expressed anger and dissatisfaction to the governing regime.

The next day, April 5, people returned to the Square and found all their dedications cleaned away. Angry crowd grew into a massive protest. Tens of thousands of them milled around the Square in bursts of demonstrations. In a couple of occasions, they threatened to storm the Great Hall of People but did not actually carry it out. While a few of their representatives were engaged in a fruitless negotiation with the authorities, mobs overturned a few government vehicles in the Square and set a small building on fire.

That night, tens of thousands police and workers militia armed with clubs and belts rushed into the Square and forcefully cleared the scene. Numerous injuries, but no deaths, were reported. In the ensuring aftermath, the authorities stripped Deng Xiaoping, who had briefly returned to power under Zhou Enlai's protection, all his titles and blamed him as the conspirator behind the movement. Activists identified from the crowd were jailed for "counter-revolutionary" crimes. It was not until more than two years later, after Deng Xiaoping regained power again, that the verdict of the event was overturned. The jailed activists were then hailed as heroes.

Chen Ziming was one of those young activists on the scene but he escaped capture by chance. He was in Beijing at the time during a furlough from his forced stay in a labor camp, where he was sent after expressing dissenting opinions in personal correspondences. He returned to the labor camp after the movement was suppressed. Even though his pictures were showcased in newspapers in the ensuring manhunt, nobody bothered to check those who had already been detained.

Wang Juntao was not as lucky. He was only seventeen years old and in high school at the time. But he led his class into the Square to join the movement and posted two of his own poems. He was put in jail for more than a year. Later, as a national hero, Wang Juntao was anointed as a potential future leader and received much of public fame. But he quickly abandoned them by plunging into even more dissident activities.

The still younger Shen Tong also experienced this movement first hand when his father took him to the Square to read the poems. He was too young, however, to actually comprehend what was going on.

The April Fifth Movement, although brief, laid a solid ground for the expression the public sentiment supporting the reform ideas of Deng Xiaoping. It would only take the death of Mao Zedong half a year later to open the door.