NYT Archive 1989: The Beginning Of The End

The crackdown started several days before the massacre. Just as in the case of the massacre itself, it was not the students in the Tiananmen Square who bore the brunt of the hit. On May 31, 1989, New York Times reported the first aggressive move by the government:

The Government said today that it had arrested 11 workers involved in China's democracy movement, and official news programs bitterly condemned a copy of the Statue of Liberty that students put up in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.

The arrests were apparently the first since the democracy movement began in mid-April and were the clearest sign so far of a crackdown against participants in the movement. Since the unrest began, the Government has been sternly announcing crackdowns, only to balk before the actions can be carried out.

The 11 people arrested were leaders of a motorcycle club that played an important role in the recent demonstrations. The official New China News Agency reported that they had been arrested for disturbing the public order. The Beijing Daily News said the club had been disbanded.

The "motorcycle club" was a band of several hundreds motorcycles who had roamed the streets of Beijing since the martial law. Paying homage to a group of dare-devil Americans who had helped China during the World War II, they called themselves the Flying Tigers.

They were not your average workers either, who would not be able to afford a motorcycle in China of the late 1980s. Most of them were young entrepreneurs who had answered Deng Xiaoping's call of reform and got rich first. They were not a well respected bunch, mostly because their semi-illiterate status and arrogance with money. But in 1989, they came out en force with their motorcycles, serving as the scouts and information carriers. They were instrumental in the success of blocking the martial law troops in the outskirt of city.

In the government's view, they were all just a bunch of "hooligans and rioters". They were also the easiest target to hit. For all they had done for the movement, they were still viewed as outsiders.

Other arrests were also being made, again targeting workers instead of students:

About 1,000 people today attended a rally in front of police offices called by an independent workers union to protest what it said was the arrest of three union leaders. The police would not confirm the arrests, which were in addition to the 11 acknowledged by the authorities.

''You snatch our people stealthily; you have been unmasked,'' read a banner held by the demonstrators in front of the State Security Bureau. The five-day-old union says it has thousands of supporters in the capital, and the Government seems to have been even more worried about the risks of worker protests than of student demonstrations.

NYT Archive 1989: Goddess of Democracy

May 30, 1989, was supposed to be the date that students withdrew from Tiananmen Square and back to their campuses. But that plan did not survive the day when it was made. On this day, New York Times reported the change of plan and a new symbol in the Square:

Reversing their earlier position, thousands of university students resolved on Monday to maintain pressure on the Government by continuing their round-the-clock occupation of Tiananmen Square for at least three more weeks.
In an emotional scene at the square in the heart of Beijing late Monday night, a crowd of nearly 100,000 workers and students cheered the arrival of a 27-foot sculpture modeled after the Statue of Liberty. The statue, made by local art students and dragged to the square in several pieces on tricycle carts, was called the Goddess of Democracy and Freedom, to distinguish it from the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
The exuberance was a reminder of some of the students' past triumphs in rallying large numbers of people around the nation to support their demands for a more democratic system and less corruption. In recent days, the movement seems to have slumped from a combination of weariness and uncertainty about how to respond to the rise of a hard-line faction in power struggles within the Communist Party leadership.

The statue was described to have distinct Caucasian features and a large Western nose.

Since the early days of the movement, students were very quick in setting up their own broadcasting stations, first in their campuses and then in the Tiananmen Square itself. Now, they got competition. The government started to use its own loudspeakers to broadcast, overpowering students' make-shift ones.

Despite the new statue, population and morale at the Square continued to dwindle, especially among non-students such as workers.

NYT Archive 1989: Global Demonstration

Sunday, May 28, 1989, was designated for a global demonstration for democracy in China. Chinese students and other ethnic Chinese demonstrated all over the world to show their solidarity with compatriots in Tiananmen Square. The demonstration in Beijing itself on that day was, however, a low key event, as New York Times reported on May 29, 1989:

About 100,000 people on foot and on bicycles streamed through the capital today to demand more democracy and the resignation of Prime Minister Li Peng. The police and soldiers made no move to interfere despite martial law restrictions and the Government's strict warnings against demonstrations.

The students, who are increasingly aware of support from Chinese around the world, hailed the protest as part of an ''international Chinese people's demonstration day'' to put pressure on the Government. Other demonstrations were held in several Chinese cities, including the economic capital, Shanghai, as well as in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and the United States.

One of the largest protests was in Hong Kong, which held a political rally with a crowd estimated at more than 300,000. Such protests are likely to put new pressure on the Chinese authorities, who are sensitive to turbulence in Hong Kong in the years before they inherit the British territory in 1997.

The main demonstration in the United States was at Washington DC. NYT reported that 1,200 people also protested in New York City.

Sheryl WuDunn continued to describe how life was like in the occupied Tiananmen Square, where the students were both in control and at a loss.

NYT Archive 1989: Students Talk About Withdrawing

On May 28, 1989, ninth day of the martial law, New York Times reported that students seemed to be ready to withdraw from Tiananmen Square:

China's student leaders today called for an end to their two-week occupation of Tiananmen Square, in the center of the capital, but said that they would continue to hold large-scale demonstrations to press for greater democracy and the resignation of Prime Minister Li Peng.

The announcement represented a major success for Mr. Li. In effect, the Government will have evicted the students not by politically embarrassing means such as brute force, but by waiting until the square was so fetid as a result of lack of garbage collection and the students so malodorous that they chose to leave on their own.

''It is very difficult to continue our sit-in,'' a student leader, Wuer Kaixi, told a press conference. ''As leaders, we have responsibility for students' health, and the difficulties are obvious. Hygiene is extremely bad and the food is insufficient.'' The call to leave the square is only a proposal, and it must be voted on by the students who are occupying it. But most seemed ready to go, and some students are leaving even before the official pull-out date of Tuesday.

That "Tuesday" would be May 30, a date that had been seemingly agreed upon for withdrawing from the Square. The "lack of garbage collection" in the Square was getting so bad that an urgent call had been made to the United States for trash bags.

NYT also reported that most of the 15,000 students remaining in the Square were from outside Beijing. But even they, as two of them interviewed by the paper indicated, were ready to head back home.

In the government, the much anticipated return of Wan Li turned out to be a dud. He released a written statement today to support the martial law. Former President Li Xiannian went even further in his attack of Zhao Ziyang's faction.

Nichlas Kristof now found his connections in China were no longer willing to talk to him, or any foreigner for that matter. But one person did talk to his wife Sheryl WuDunn, which resulted a nice profile of a former Wall Street lawyer who was now spending nights in Tiananmen Square.

Meanwhile, large scale solidarity rally at Hong Kong continued. They had been consistently the strongest force backing the movement in Beijing. Even today, their annual memorials were by far the best attended.

Tiananmen Mothers Have Their Own Web Site

Just in time for the coming 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, the Tiananmen Mothers finally have their own web presence at:

http://www.tiananmenmother.org/

The web site is constructed and maintained by a group of anonymous volunteers. It has an ambitious plan as an archival and forum site. Most of the contents has yet to be added. Right now, the site contains the history of Tiananmen Mothers as a group, as well as a list of 188 names they had verified to be the victims of the massacre.

All the contents are in Chinese, for now. There is a link for English language, but no content is available yet.

NYT Archive 1989: Threat of a Crackdown

As the standoff at Tiananmen continued, New York Times reported on May 27, 1989, that signs of a coming crackdown was intensifying. There were rumors of arrests of prominent dissidents including professors Fang Lizhi and Li Shuxian, a rumor that was dispelled by their son Fang Ke. The official media, meanwhile, turned against Zhao Ziyang en force:

With Prime Minister Li Peng apparently winning China's power struggle, documents criticizing his rival, Zhao Ziyang, have been circulated among senior officials, evidently in preparation for a formal decision to dismiss Mr. Zhao as Communist Party leader.

The criticisms were unusually harsh, and many Chinese said they feared that they heralded a campaign of repression against those like Mr. Zhao who favor more rapid political and economic liberalization and more conciliation with pro-democracy demonstrators.

A speech to the Politburo by former President Li Xiannian particularly worried some party officials because it borrowed from the long unused vocabulary of the Cultural Revolution by calling this a ''struggle between two headquarters.''

On the other side, the occupation of Tiananmen Square continued to wane:

By day, about 20,000 student demonstrators continue to occupy Tiananmen Square, in the heart of Beijing, but the numbers are diminishing and many of the students are from other parts of the country. Somewhat fewer spend the night at the square.

The declining numbers seem to reflect mostly weariness after almost six weeks of nearly continuous protest, and disgust at the increasing filth on the square, rather than intimidation by the Government polemics.

The chaotic situation had many people think back of the turmoil of Cultural Revolution, not the least in how the government was behaving. An escalation of protests in Shanghai was also reported.

Wang Dan Graudates From Harvard

It took much longer than he thought, but Wang Dan finally graduates from Harvard University with a Ph. D. degree in History and East Asian Languages. The title of his thesis is A Comparative Study of the State Sponsored Violences Across the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s. He will receive his degree in a graduation ceremony to be held on June 5.

Wang Dan says that he plans to spend a year as a visiting scholar at the Oxford University while looking for job opportunities. He will continue to work on the efforts in reevaluating the 1989 movement, the democracy in China, as well as his research area of Taiwan history. He is still hopeful that he could return to China one day.

Congratulations Wang Dan!