This Day in 1989: January 27, 1991: Wang Dan, Guo Haifeng, et al Sentenced; Liu Xiaobo, Xiong Yan, et al Released

On January 27, 1991, Beijing Intermediate People's Court handed down a series of sentences to 1989 movement leaders:

1. Ren Wanding: 7 years
2. Bao Zunxin: 5 years
3. Wang Dan: 4 years
4. Guo Haifeng: 4 years
5. Yao Junling: 2 years

While another group of leaders were released without prison terms:

1. Liu Xiaobo
2. Chen Lai
3. Li Chenghuan
4. Liu Suli
5. Lv Jiamin
6. Xiong Yan
7. Chen Bo
8. Wen Jie
9. Ding Xiaoping

Days of 1989

Days of 1989: June 14, More Arrests and Crackdowns

On June 14, 1989, under the intense pressure of the Most Wanted, Zhou Fengsuo was arrested at his home, reportedly turned in by his own sister. (Zhou Fengsuo later claims that his sister had been deceived.) Xiong Yan was caught in a train. Ma Shaofang and Xiong Wei chose to turn themselves in separately.

Also arrested on this day were Dai Qing and Gao Xin.

More Most Wanted were published, this time include leaders of the Workers Autonomous Federation Han Dongfang, He Lili, and Liu Qiang.


Days of 1989

Pictures of 1989: Students Protest on Campus on June 4, 1989

Students display spent machine gun bullet belt.

Posters at Peking University calling for revenge. On the right is Xiong Yan's statement of resigning from CCP.

Pictures of 1989

Chai Ling Lost Court Case Against "Gate of Heavenly Peace" Producer

A couple of years ago, former 1989 student leader Chai Ling, her husband and their company Jenzabar, filed lawsuits in a Massachusetts court against the Long Bow Group, the producer of famed documentary Gate of Heavenly Peace. In 1998, the court threw out claims for defamation, but the case involving a trademark claim dragged on.

This week, a trial judge summarily rejected the trademark claim.

This lawsuit had generated quite some interests. Chai Ling's supporters, led by his former husband Feng Congde, issued an open letter claiming to "defend the name of June 4th". That letter was co-signed by a few more 1989 leaders including Fang Zheng, Zhang Jian, Xiong Yan, Zhou Fengsuo, Cheng Zhen, Zheng Yi, etc.

On the other side, a group of intellectuals published an open letter supporting the Long Bow Group in the name of freedom of speech.

It is quite clear, however, that Chai Ling's lawsuit on the ground of trademark is nothing but a thinly wailed attempt to silence the Long Bow Group, whose use of her "Last Words" video record cast her in a controversial light. With this court ruling, it appears that she had lost this battle.

This Day in 1989: May 20, Residents and Students Block Martial Law Troops

The martial law was supposed to take effect at 10am, May 20, 1989. The only sign of military in the city at that time was however a column of helicopters hovering over Tiananmen Square and dropping paper pamphlets from the air. Underneath, students and residents waved and shouted in defiance. They were more excited than angry.

Throughout the night, as martial law troops advanced, or tried to, toward the city from many directions, they encountered unexpected resistances from Beijing residents. Old ladies laid down their bodies. Truck drivers parked their vehicles in front of the military convoys. Residents came out at that night of full moon and surrounded every military column they could spot in the suburbs. Bands of motorcycle gangs, calling themselves the "Flying Tigers," circulated the city outskirts as scouts and information carriers.

By morning, every unit of the martial law troops was hopelessly blockaded on the streets. They were surrounded by students and residents, who emotionally and painstakingly lectured the soldiers.

At Tiananmen Square, students were emboldened by this latest development. The tone of the movement changed immediately. Beijing Students Autonomous Federation, the Hunger Strike Headquarters, along with a newly formed Workers Autonomous Federation, issued a joint statement calling for the impeachment of Premier Li Peng and President Yang Shankun. They also called for a general strike.

Students, who had previously forbidden residents mixing into their ranks for the "purity" of their movement, now openly appealed for support for workers and residents. Small groups of student delegations went to factories to talk to workers directly. One of these delegations was led by Xiong Yan, who had limited success at the biggest industrial complex in town -- the Capital Steels.

Similar statements came in droves from other organizations, established or new. Li Peng, the public face of the martial law, became the public enemy number one.


Days of 1989

Book Excerpt: Meeting with Li Peng

The following excerpt is from my book Standoff at Tiananmen, chapter 9, describing the impromptu meeting between student leaders and the Premier Li Peng.

Wuer Kaixi was still dressed in a hospital gown and attached to an oxygen bag as his group was ushered into a large conference room inside the Great Hall of People. The room had high ceilings and vast space like a royal palace. A ring of comfortable sofas was placed in the middle of the room surrounded by circles of chairs. End tables with elegant flowers and tea cups stood between the sofas. There were also microphones on each table to facilitate conversation. Strangely, Wuer Kaixi felt somewhat at home. This was the Xinjiang Hall, named after the northwest Uyghur region where he had spent three years of his adolescence. The room was decorated with giant murals depicting the natural beauty of the region and artifacts of the Uyghur heritage. Typically, this room was used by government officials having audiences with selected visitors from the provinces. Today, it was a group of scratchy and starved students with wide eyes. They were entering a scene they had never dreamed of. Awkwardly, they sat down in the sofas on one side of the circle and waited. They did not know what they were waiting for.

After five minutes or so, Premier Li Peng appeared at the entry, along with an entourage of high level officials including Yan Mingfu and Li Tieying. Li Peng was wearing a gray "Mao Suit" and a solemn expression. He walked over to shake hands with each student and tried to make small talk. He was curious about Wang Dan's thick jacket, to which Wang Dan responded that it was cold in the Square at night. Wuer Kaixi's hospital gown also caught his attention. But the premier looked gloomy and uneasy. The only time he managed a half smile was when a student claimed to share the same hometown with him. Finally, he settled into his seat on the other side facing Wuer Kaixi and Wang Dan. He started the meeting by apologizing for being late, explaining that they had been held up by a traffic jam outside. Then he stated that there should be only one item on the agenda for this meeting. That was to stop the hunger strike immediately based on humanitarian principles.

It did not take long for Wuer Kaixi to get impatient. He was upset about Li Peng's apology which implied that the student movement was creating chaos in the streets. As Li Peng went on with a patronizing lecture, Wuer Kaixi cut him off: "Premier Li Peng, I am sorry that I have to interrupt you. Perhaps you thought you were only five minutes late. But I have to say, you are a month late!"

Wuer Kaixi was referring to the time when he led students chanting "Li Peng, Come Out!" outside of Xinhuamen on the evening of April 19. He stated that it was pressure from students that had led Li Peng to this meeting. Therefore, it should be the students who dictated the agenda. He did have a legitimate point. But his emotion was also starting to creep into his delivery.

Wang Dan, who maintained a calmer posture, interjected that the only way to persuade students to stop the hunger strike was to address the two conditions put forward by the student movement, "Not Turmoil, Equal Dialogue."

The rude interruption not withstanding, Wuer Kaixi and Wang Dan apparently started this meeting on a good footing by emphasizing their strengths and issues upfront. Patiently and intently, the premier was listening.

Just then, however, Wuer Kaixi was getting carried away. Without giving the other side a chance to respond, he burst out even more:

"You are much older than we are so I think it is appropriate for me to refer you as Teacher Li. So, Teacher Li, the problem at hand right now is not to convince us who sit here. We also want the students to leave the Square. But the situation at the Square is not one of a minority following the majority, but of 99.9% of the people following 0.01%. That is, if there is one hunger striker who chose not to leave, thousands of others will not leave either."

This was an absurd statement. Not only that he showed disrespect to the premier personally, but he was also misrepresenting his own side. The students at the Square had worked very hard to establish rudimentary democratic procedures. The student parliament led by Li Lu had almost nightly votes on ending the hunger strike, in which ninety percent or so consistently voted for continuing the strike. Wuer Kaixi had not spent enough time at the Square himself to appreciate or perhaps even be aware of these facts. He was painting himself into a corner by representing students as desperate and out of control.

Wang Dan tried to soften the blow. He calmly explained: "After Yan Mingfu's visit to the Square, we had conducted a poll of whether to leave the Square. More than ninety percent of hunger strikers voted not to leave." Sensing that the agenda was going astray, he quickly reaffirmed the two main student demands, "Not Turmoil, Equal Dialogue." If these two conditions were met, he said, they would be able to go to the Square and persuade all of the students to leave.

As other students were invited to express their opinions, Wuer Kaixi urged them to make their points quickly and concretely. But most of them repeated the same sentiments. One student did manage to raise the stakes. With an unusual clarity, Xiong Yan, a student from Peking University who was a member of the Dialogue Delegation, told the officials that it was not entirely up to the government anyway: "No matter whether the government recognizes our movement as patriotic and democratic or not, we believe history will. So, why do we insist on the government recognizing it? That is because it represents the will of the people. The people want to see if the government is still the people's government." Sitting on the other side, the party leader of Peking University could not help but speak up on his students' behalf as well.

Since being interrupted at the start, Premier Li Peng had been sitting quietly with a stone face. It was as if he were waiting for the students to self-destruct, which they did come agonizingly close to doing. After he made sure that all students had had a chance to speak, Li Peng pointedly started with a request that he would not be interrupted.

Perhaps inadvertently, he was immediately interrupted by a student. Li Peng swallowed hard but did not express his displeasure. Instead, he asked his ministers to give the government's response. Li Tieying, Yan Mingfu, and others took their turns with lengthy speeches that toed the party line. Finally, Li Peng spoke again. He emphasized that the only issue he was interested in was getting the hunger strikers off the Square to save their health and lives. Explaining the April 26 People's Daily editorial, he repeated the familiar platitude that they had never blamed the "vast majority" of students as instigating turmoil, which implicitly left the door open for "a small clique."

Then, in a confused attempt to directly address students' two demands, he raised his voice and offered a memorable passage: "We understand your two issues. As the premier and as a Communist Party member, I never hide my own opinions. But I can't express them today. I will find a more appropriate opportunity to express them later. But anyhow I think I have pretty much expressed my opinions anyway."

With that, he appeared to be closing the doors to further discussion. For the last time, he asked the students to stop the hunger strike. Wuer Kaixi, who had been clinging to his oxygen bag and becoming visibly weaker, confronted the premier again. Putting a brave face forward, Wang Dan stressed that, if Premier Li Peng's prospect of turmoil did materialize, it would be the government, not the students, who should be held responsible.

It was Yan Mingfu's job to put the meeting to bed. He told the audience that there was a note from the Square asking for the immediate return of Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi. As soon as he said "This dialogue is now concluded," one of the students rose to protest: "This is not a dialogue. This is just a meeting." Students wanted to set the record straight that their demand for a dialogue had not yet been satisfied. Disinterested in semantics, Yan Mingfu concurred, "Yes, this was only a meeting."

The meeting, not a dialogue, lasted about an hour.

Avoiding eye contact, Li Peng shook hands with each student once again. He appeared impatient and annoyed. Wuer Kaixi had already slumped into his chair and was being attended to by several student nurses. He was suffering from an asthma attack. As everyone was filing out of the room, Wang Chaohua was still holding onto a slim hope. She shouted across the room to Yan Mingfu: "Please give me another hour, we might still be able to persuade the students to withdraw." Yan Mingfu walked away without acknowledging her. It was too little, too late.

The students walked out of the Great Hall of People on their own and informed other leaders that their talk had broken up because of Li Peng's stubbornness. Nobody was surprised. But now everyone was extremely depressed. There appeared to be no more possibility of a peaceful resolution.

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

NYT Archive 1989: Two Student Leaders Arrested

Zhou Fengsuo and Xiong Yan, two students who had been involved in the movement from the very early stage, were arrested, as reported by New York Times on June 15, 1989:

The television news announced tonight that 2 of the 21 student leaders who had been placed on a wanted list on Tuesday had been captured. It said that Zhou Fengsuo, a 22-year-old physics student in Beijing, had been turned in by his sister and her husband. The television program showed the couple being interviewed by the police.
The other student leader who was reported arrested was Xiong Yan, a 24-year-old graduate law student in Beijing. The circumstances of Mr. Xiong's arrest were not reported.

Partly because he was turned in by his own sister, Zhou Fengsuo was never formally tried or sentenced. He was released after a year in prison. He is currently living in California.

Xiong Yan spent nineteen months in detention and then fled to US in 1992. He then chose a unique path for his life: joining the US Army. He has served as a chaplain in Irag.

NYT Archive 1989: China's Date With Destiny

After exhausting protests and scuffles with police at Xinhuamen for two nights in a row, April 21, 1989 appeared to be a relatively quiet day. On that day, New York Times only caught a glimpse of a small group of students marched into Tiananmen, whose spirit damped by the pouring rain. But the real actions were inside the campuses, unseen by NYT.

That morning, Wuer Kaixi had stood alone, in the rain, at the campus of Beijing Normal University, giving speeches to anyone passing by. He was talking about the police brutality at Xinhuamen the night before. By mid-afternoon, he only managed to gather a few hundreds students and led them to another march to Tiananmen. A thunderstorm quickly dispersed his team. But the dozens or so marched on. By the time they made to Tiananmen, there were only a handful with him.

Even earlier, just past midnight, thousands of students had gathered at the Triangle in Beida. After a series of speech, they "voted" to abolish the official student union and establish their own, in the form of a "Preparatory Committee". The committee included Wang Dan, Yang Tao, Xiong Yan, Feng Congde, Shen Tong, and so on. These names would become more and more familiar as time went on. The Preparatory Committee's first action was to organize a march to Tiananmen, protesting the "Xinhuamen Incident". Because of the rain, they only got a thousand or so for the march. Most likely, that was the group seen in the NYT report above.

There were similar actions all over other campuses as well. Big Posters were everywhere, with crying headlines such as "The April 20 Tragedy!" and "The Blood at Xinhuamen!". Contingents of students also marched on Tiananmen, but not all coordinated.

Liu Gang managed to meet up with Wuer Kaixi at the Tiananmen Square. They talked the need to create an inter-campus leadership. In a hurry, they decided on a name "Provisional Action Committee" and started to plan an action which would lead to thousands of students attending Hu Yaobang's funeral in the Square.

But in that quiet and rainy day, Nicholas Kristof of the NYT also sensed bigger things might be coming. He had quite appropriately titled his report as "China's Date With Destiny":

The students have learned to march on Zhongnanhai, the compound where Chinese leaders live, and their success in doing so is not something they are likely to forget. Even if the current demonstrations soon peter out, perhaps their legacy will be the boldness of the students to besiege the seat of power and call for the dismissal of those who rule the country. If the demonstrations continue after Saturday, that boldness will be difficult to contain.