This Day in 1989: June 2, 1990, Hou Dejian, Zhou Dou, and Gao Xin Detained Again

On June 2, 1990, Hou Dejian, Zhou Dou, and Gao Xin were detained by police ahead of a press conference they had planned for the one-year anniversary of their hunger strike.

They spent three weeks in custody before being released after the June "sensitive period."

Days of 1989

This Day in 1989: May 10, 1990, Dai Qing, Zhou Dou, and other Intellectuals Released

On May 10, 1990, Chinese government announced that 211 people arrested for participating in the 1989 movement were released without prison sentences. These include intellectuals such as Dai Qing, Cao Siyuan, Li Honglin, Zhou Dou, Yang Baikui, Li Nanyou.

Dai Qing was interviewed by phone with a Hong Kong TV station. She stated that she had not been mistreated while in jail, but had to endure interrogations and write statements.


Days of 1989

Days of 1989: June 30, Zhou Duo Arrested; Chen Xitong Reports

On June 30, 1989, Zhou Duo, who was instrumental in negotiating the withdraw of students during massacre, was arrested.

Also on this day, Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong delivered a comprehensive summary report on the 1989 movement to the People's Congress.


Days of 1989

Pictures of 1989: The Terror in Darkness around 4AM on June 4, 1989

Students at the Monument of People's Heroes around 4am.

Around 3:45, Hou Dejian (center) and Zhou Duo (right) negotiate with troops.

At 4am, darkness fall at Monument as most of lighting in Tiananmen Square are turned off.

Soldiers on the move in Tiananmen Square.

Soldiers on the move in Tiananmen Square.

Soldiers on the move in Tiananmen Square.

Tanks approach the Monument of People's Heroes.

APC's approach Monument of People's Heroes.

At the Monument of People's Heroes, students sing and shout slogans with V-gestures.

The ruin of the Goddess of Democracy.

Pictures of 1989

Pictures of 1989: "Four Gentlemen" Hunger Strike on June 2, 1989

"Four Gentlemen" Gao Xin, Hou Dejian, Zhou Duo, and Liu Xiaobo (from left to right) launch hunger strike on June 2, 1989.

The one on the lower-left is Chen Xiaoping.

Liu Xiaobo is giving a speech. Next to him are Zhou Dou, Hou Dejian, Gao Xin, Wang Dan, and Wuer Kaixi.

The star power of Hou Dejian attract thousands back to Tiananmen Square.

Pictures of 1989

Document of 1989: Four Gentleman's Hunger Strike Manifesto

At the end of May, 1989, the student movement has reached a low point. Students' hunger strike has long ended. Martial law was declared many days ago, but the troops were blocked outside of the city by residents. Students continued to occupy the Tiananmen Square and several attempts of organized withdraw had failed. It was at this time Liu Xiaobo, then a lecturer at Beijing Normal University, suggested to launch a hunger strike relay by famous intellectuals, a symbolic action of plunging into the movement themselves. He was only able to recruit Hou Dejian, Zhou Dou, and Gao Xin. Together, they started a hunger strike on June 2 and were collectively referred as the "Four Gentlemen."

The manifesto of this hunger strike was drafted by Liu Xiaobo himself. In this document, he declared for the first time his famous slogan, "We have no enemies," which he insisted to this day.

The following is a translation. The original in Chinese can be viewed here.

Four Gentlemen Hunger Strike Manifesto

6/2/1989

We start our hunger strike! We protest! We call upon people! We repent!

We are not looking for death. We are searching for true life.

Under the tremendous pressure of irrational militant violence by the Li Peng regime, Chinese intellectuals must end their all-words-but-no-action tradition of osteomalacia. We must protest the military rule with our actions. We must call for the birth of a brand new political culture with our actions. We must repent the mistakes we made from our long-time weakness. Each of us bears a part of the responsibility for the backwardness of our Chinese nation.

1. The Purpose of Hunger Strike

The current democratic movement, unprecedented in China's history, has always used legal, non-violent, and rational means to appeal for liberty, democracy, and human rights. However, the Li Peng regime went so far as to mobilize a military force of hundreds of thousands to suppress the unarmed students and people of all walks. Therefore, we start our hunger strike, not for petition, but for protesting the martial law and military rule! We advocate the pushing for progress in China's democratization with peaceful means and we are against any form of violence. However, we are not afraid of violence. We want to use peaceful means to demonstrate the toughness of our civil and demoractic force, to demolish the undemocratic order supported by bayonets and lies! This ultra-foolish act of using martial law and military rule against students and masses in peaceful petition establishes a precedence of the very worst kind, put the Communist Party, the government, and the military in shame, and destroys the fruit of a decade of reform and openness in a single day!

The thousdands of years history of China is filled with hatred and violent clashes. Even in the modern era, the sense of enermy is a heritage for Chinese people. After 1949, the slogan of "Class Struggle as the Guideline" pushed the tranditional senses of hatred, enemy, and violence even more to the extreme. This military rule is also a result of the "class struggle"-style political culture. Because of this, we start our hunger strike, to call on Chinese people to gradually abandon and eliminate the senses of enemy and hatred, absolutely abolish the "class struggle"-style political culture -- because hatred could only produce violence and tyrancy. We must begin China's democratic reconstruction with a democractic sense of tolerance and cooperation. The democratic politics is a politics without enemy and hatred, but only consultation, discussion, and voting based on mutual respect, mutual tolerance, and multure compromises. As the Premier, Li Peng has made serious mistakes and should resign according to democratic procedures. But Li Peng is not our enemy. Even after he steps down, he should continue to enjoy his rights as a citizen, including the rights to uphold his incorrect opinions. We call upon the government and every ordinary citizen to abandon the old political culture and start a new political culture. We demand the government to end the military rule immediately. And we call upon students and the government to once again negotiate peacefully and to resolve their conflicts with consulation and dialogue.

This student movement has received unprecedented sympathy, understanding, and support from all walks of the society. The implementation of the military rule has turned the student movement into a democratic movement participated by all people. But there is no denying that many people support students only out of humanitarian compassion and resentment to the government and lack a true sense of citizenship out of political responsibilities. Therefore, we call upon the whole society to gradually abandon the spectator and mere sympathy attitudes and build up a true sense of citizenship. First and foremost, citizenship is a sense of political equality. Every citizen must have the self-confidence that his own political rights is equal to that of the Premier. Secondly, citizenship is not only justice and sympathy, but also a rational urge of participation. This is also the sense of political responsibility. Every person does not just sympathize and support but participate directly in the democratic reconstruction. Finally, citizenship is the consciousness of taking responsibilities and obligations. The existence of rational and legal social politics is to everyone's credit. The existence of irrational and illegal social politics is to everyone's fault. Consciously participating in social politics and consciously taking on responsibilities is every citizen's loyal obligation. Chinese people must understand: in democraticized politics, everybody must be a citizen first, and then be a student, professor, worker, cadre, soldier, etc..

For thousands years, the Chinese society went through vicious cycles of overthrowing an old emperor and establishing a new one. History has shown that the stepping down by one leader who had lost people's heart and the rise of another leader beloved by the poeple cannot solve the true problems in Chinese politics. What we need is not a perfect savior but a complete democratic system. Therefore, I call for the following: First, the society should form legal, independent organizations by various means, gradually establish a grass-root political force to balance the government power. Because the essence of democracy is balance, we would rather have ten devils balancing each other than a single angle with absolute power. Second, gradually establish a thorough procedure for impeachment by impeaching leaders who made serious mistakes. It is not important as of who to step up or down, it is important in how they step up or down. An undemocractic appointing and firing procedure can only lead to dictatorship.

In this movement, the government and students have all made mistakes. The mistakes by the government are mainly for standing on the opposite side of the vast student and resident mass and escalating the conflicts, guided by the old "class struggle" political mindset. Students' mistakes are mainly in the shortcomings of their own organizations. They showed many non-democratic elements during their efforts in petitioning for democracy. Therefore, we call upon both government and students sides to reflect calmly. It is our opinion that, as a whole, the main mistakes in this movement are on the government's side. The actions of demonstrations and hunger strike are ways for people to express their opinions. They are absolutely rational and legal, and not turmoil. But the government ignored the fundamental rights guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution and adopted a tyranical political mindset to characterize this movement as turmiol. This led to a series of incorrect policies and again and again pushed the movement to new heights, made the conflict more and more dramatic. Therefore, the real culprit of creating turmoil is government's errenous policies, whose seriousness is not any less than that during the Culture Revolution. It is only due to the restraints of students and residents, including the many strong voices by enlightened individuals in the Party, government, and military, that we are spared of any large-scale bloodshed. Because of this, the government must admit and reflect on these mistakes. We believe that it is still not too late for corrections. The government should learn a hearty lesson from this large-scale democratic movement, acquire a new habit of listening to people's voices, get used to people expressing their opinions with the rights guanranteed by the Constitution, and learn to govern the nation democratically. This wide-range democratic movement is teaching the government how to manage society with democracy and rule of law. The mistakes on the students' side are mainly in the chaos in their internal organizations, the lack of effenciency and democratic procedure. For instance, their goals are democracy but their means and procedures are undemocratic; their theory is democratic but their handling of real issues are undemocratic; they lack the spirit of cooperation, their powers cancel each other and led to confusion in decision-making; their finance is a mess and waste is rampant; they have abundance of emotion but not enough of reasoning; they possess too much sense of priviledge but lacks equality, etc. etc.. In the most recent hundred years, the struggle to achieve democracy by the Chinese people has mostly limited at the level of ideology and slogans. It only concerns with the idea of enlightening but not the actual implementations, only the goal but not the means, processes and procedures. We believe that the true realization of a democratic politics is the democratization of the actual process, means, and procedures. Therefore, we call upon Chinese people to abandon the traditional empty democray of ideology and slogans and to begin the actual implementation, to transfer the democratic movement centered in enlightenment to a democractic movement of actual implementations, acting from every detailed piece of issues. We call upon the students to start their own reflections by focusing on establishing the order within Tiananmen Square.

The big mistakes the government made are also represented in their use of the term "a small clique". With our hunger strike, we want to tell all the media home and abroad that the socalled "a small clique" means such a group of people: they are not students but they are willingly participating in this students-led democratic movement as citizens with strong senses of political responsibility. Everything we do is legal and rational. They want to use their intelligence and action to help the government repent in the areas of political culture, personal character, and ethical power, openly acknowledge and correct its mistakes; to help the students refine their independent organizations with democratic and legal procedures. We must admit that it is an unfamiliar concept to every Chinese citizen to govern the nation democratically. All Chinese citizens must learn from the scratch, that includes the top leaders in the Party and the government. In this process, mistakes by the government and the people are unavoidable. The key is to acknowledge the mistakes, correct the mistakes, and turn these mistakes into positive treature so we can learn how to govern our nation democratically through the process of correcting mistakes.

2. Our Slogans

We have no enemies! Don't let hatred and violence poison our intellegence and China's democratization process!

We need to reflect! It's everyone's responsility for China's falling behind!

We are citizens first!

We are not looking for death! We are seeking the true life!

3. Hunger Strike Location, Time, and Rules

Location: Under the Monument of People's Heros at Tiananmen Square

Time: 72 hours, 6/2 4pm to 6/5 4pm

Special Note: Since Hou Dejian has to travel to Hong Kong for recording in 6 days, his hunger strike will be 48 hours, 6/2 4pm to 6/4 4pm

Rules: Only consume plain water, any beverage containing nutritious ingredients (super, starch, fat, protein) is not allowed

4. Hunger Strikers

Liu Xiaobo: Doctor in Literature, Lecturer at Beijing Normal University

Zhou Dou: formerly lecturer at Peking University, Stone Corp.

Hou Dejian: Known song writer

Gao Xin: editor-in-chief of Beijing Normal University Weekly, member of Chinese Communist Party

Documents of 1989

Chai Ling Baptized

The Underground reported today that former student leader Chai Ling has embraced Christian faith and was baptized over the Easter holiday.

In a lengthy testimony, which is available here, Chai Ling recalled her first encounter with the Bible while still an undergraduate student in Peking University. She also briefly told the story of the movement without going into much details. Curiously, she described her survival as "for some miraculous reason, I survived," without even a hint of the efforts Zhou Dou and Hou Dejian had made to negotiate a peaceful withdraw, or the dramatic voice vote by the student collective led by her former husband Feng Congde. It appears that she only needs to credit her new found Lord now.

Almost a year ago, after being absent from public scene for about a decade, Chai Ling made a high-profile "return to the movement," pledging large donations and active participation. She hasn't been heard much since, other than an ongoing lawsuit against the producers of documentary Gate of Heavenly Peace. In her testimony, she described how Chinese government agents had harassed her family in China for her limited involvement. It was also during that time that she suffered a panic attack and then eventually found God, according to her testimony.

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

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

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

This Day in 1989, June 2, the Calm before the Storm

There were clear signs that tension between the students occupying the Tiananmen Square and the government was gradually building on June 2, 1989. More soldiers were seen around the area, either marching or jogging in formation, or just wandering about. Some of them were blocked by students.

In the early afternoon, close to a thousand students rode bicycles to the office of Beijing Daily and burned copies of that days edition in a protest of the newspaper's "degenerative" report on the movement.

Later, Liu Xiaobo led Gao Xin, Zhou Dou, and Hou Dejian into the Square and announced their own hunger strike. They would become known as the "Four Gentlemen." Liu Xiaobo read a manifesto of their own criticizing both the government and the students' erratic behavior during the movement and vowed to steer the movement into a more sensible direction. But the day belonged to Hou Dejian, a folk song writer and star originally from Taiwan. Huge crowd started to build up during that evening for the newest attraction in town: the Goddess of Democracy and Hou Dejian in a public square.

The day ended with an unexpected excitement. A speeding military jeep lost control at the Muxidi intersection on Chang'an Avenue and smashed into pedestrians, killing three at the scene. Thousands of students and residents rushed to the scene in a frenzy, thinking it as an early sign of military movement. Along the Chang'an Avenue, they did discover vehicles carrying sacks of military supplies, including helmets, rifles, and bayonets. Some of weapons were displayed on top of buses for television cameras. Alarms went off on campuses calling for students to enforce Tianamen Square. After fourteen days of martial law, the wolf was finally coming.

It was the night before the tragedy.


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

Talking about 1989 in Beijing

It is a sensitive and dangerous time, but a group of courageous people held an open symposium in Beijing recently to discuss the 1989 student movement.

The symposium was held five days ago on May 10. It was Mother's Day. The group saluted Tiananmen Mothers and held a moment of silence for the victims of the massacre.

Among the speakers is Zhou Dou, who as one of the hunger strike "Four Gentlemen," played a critical role in negotiating the final withdraw from Tiananmen Square, and Liang Xiaoyan, then a teacher from Beijing Normal University. Most of the speakers and attendees were participants in the movement twenty years ago.

Chen Ziming Talks About Possibility of Reconciliation in 1989

The "Chinese Reconciliation" think tank had published the proceedings of their first symposium. Since the meeting format allowed only 10 minutes for each speaker, most of the speeches tended to be on the superficial side. Among the participants, Chen Ziming was the only one who brought up the topic of 1989. Indeed, his entire speech was about the possibility and efforts in reconciliation before the massacre.

He started with the fact that, in the early months of 1989, the government had started to reach out to liberal minded intellectuals, even including ones like himself, who had been in and out of jail a few times. That effort was of course interrupted by the student movement.

During the movement itself, there had also been attempts at reconciliation. For that, Chen Ziming brought copies of three documents: the hunger strike declaration of four intellectuals (two of them, Liu Xiaobo and Zhou Dou were also at this symposium) on June 2nd of 1989, and two editorials of Chen's Economic Weekly at the same time.

Citing passages in each of the documents, Chen stressed that, even at the heated moments of that movement, at least he himself and his comrades had been advocating reconciliation and compromise.

Beijing Intellectuals Meet and Talk "Conflicts and Reconciliation"

A group of intellectuals in Sydney, Beijing and other places have formed a new private think-tank for "Chinese Reconciliation". Their stated mission is to help the growth of the weak democratic forces and the civil society and help the Chinese government on the road of correcting past mistakes, apologizing, reestablishing truth, clarifying responsibilities, compromising, and towards a constitutional democracy. All in the name of reconciliation.

The group had just held its first "Conflicts and Reconciliation" symposium in Beijing, attended by more than 20 intellectuals. Twice they got kicked out of their reserved meeting spaces due to suddenly discovered "booking errors" of the respective hosts. But nonetheless the meeting was carried out with no further harassments.

Prominent names from the 1989 movements, including Chen Ziming, Zhou Duo, and Liang Xiaoyan, attended the symposium.