Former Beijing Party Chief Died

Li Ximing (李锡铭), who was the Communist Party Secretary of the city of Beijing in 1989, died at the age of 82.

It was widely believed that Li Ximing, together with then mayor Chen Xitong (陈希同), had helped setting the official tune during the early stages of the 1989 movement by reporting their version of the situation the Party Central and Deng Xiaoping himself. Their city government also played a prominent role in making a closing statement on the movement after the bloody crackdown, claiming the movement as a premediated and planed conspiracy.

Both Li Ximing and Chen Xitong lost Deng Xiaoping's confidence soon after and did not play any major roles in the political scene. While Chen Xitong was later sentenced to 16 years in jail for curruption, Li Ximing maintained a low-profile and faded out of the public life.

The China Beat: The Last General of the Red Army

Ed Jocelyn at China Beat published a fascinating account on the life of General Xiao Ke (肖克), who died last month at the age of 101 as the last General of the original Red Army. Throughout his military career, General Xiao Ke had a penchant of choosing the wrong side in political conflicts, falling into disgrace of both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Yet he managed to survive with remarkable longitivity.

In 1989, General Xiao Ke once again chose the "wrong side", as Ed Jocelyn describes:

The events of 1989 shook Xiao and many of his old comrades in the Central Consultative Committee. As the crisis over the Tiananmen Square demonstrations intensified, Deng Xiaoping decided to call the army into Beijing. Xiao Ke adamantly opposed this move. Together with former Minister of Defense Zhang Aiping, another veteran of the Long March, he composed a letter to Deng, which was signed by five other generals. They told Deng that if the army entered the city and opened fire, “the common people will curse us for 10,000 years.” Inspired by this example, more than one hundred other retired generals and Party leaders, mostly also members of the Central Consultative Committee, signed and sent a similar letter.

Gravely concerned at such opposition, Deng dispatched two of his most senior supporters, Yang Shangkun and Wang Zhen (political commissar to Xiao Ke’s Sixth Army Group during the Long March) to see Xiao Ke and the other six original signatories. They demanded retraction of the letter, arguing that such influential men could not be seen to oppose the Party leadership. None of them retracted, but their call went unheeded.

After the Tiananmen massacre, Deng dealt with his high-ranking opponents by trying to eliminate their political influence. As most of them were already retired, Deng contented himself with denying them official resources and forums to express their opinions. The Central Consultative Committee was abolished in 1992.

A New Group Prepares for the Anniversary of Tiananmen

A new, unnamed group has recently unveiled a web site calling for a commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre on Saturday, May 30, 2009, at the Washington Monument in Washington, DC.

The group identifies itself only as "a small group of oversea Chinese who have met and become friends through an internet forum" and not associated with any established organizations.

The web site hosts a forum with few articles available and is calling for donations and volunteers.

Experiencing the Great Firewall of China

Firefox is known for many of its add-ons, which provides all kind of enhancements in user experiences. Yet rarely an Add-on shows up to actually degrade it. The China Channel add-on does exactly that:

The Firefox add-on China Channel offers internet users outside of China the ability to surf the web as if they were inside mainland China. Take an unforgetable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (supported by western companies).

Read a more detailed description of this add-on at Webware.

How the Other Tiananmen Incident was Overturned

Before June 4, 1989, there was the "Tiananmen Incident" of April 5, 1976, also known as the April Fifth Movement. During that time, thousands of Beijing residents gathered at Tiananmen Square to commemorate the late Premier Zhou Enlai, who had passed away a few months ago. The spontaneous display of emotion was met by brutality of the government, who used clubs and heavy boots to disperse the crowd and later persecuted the active participants they had identified.

Wang Juntao was only 15 years old at the time. He was sent to jail for having organized his high school class to the Square and posted three poems he had written. Chen Ziming escaped arrest by returning to his forced-labor farm, where he was already serving a sentence for expressing dissident opinions in private letters.

The verdict of that "Tiananmen Incident" was overturned in 1978 after Deng Xiaoping regained his power. A recent article in China Newsweek recalled the moments when the "Incident" became the April Fifth Movement. Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, along with other young leaders, were then hailed as national heroes.

Xujun Eberlein at Inside-Out China added her own experiences and observations of these events.

Hu Jia Awarded Sakharov Prize by EU

The human rights activist Hu Jia, who had previously been rumored for the Nobel Peace Prize, was chosen for the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament. Hu Jia is currently serving a three and half year prison term for sedition charges.

Before the selection, the Chinese government had unsuccessfully asserted pressure on EU, threatening damanges to the Sino-EU relationship.

An Open Letter Appealing for a Convicted Murderer

Three months ago, a 28-year old was arrested in Shanghai for suspicion of possessing a stolen bicycle. The suspect, Yang Jia (杨佳), received no official sympathy when he sued for police brutality during his detention. So, the young man took the matter into his own hand and attacked a police office with a knife, killing six unarmed policeman.

On his trial, Yang Jia did neither deny nor repent on his murdering act. He made it clear that his action was a revenge of the injustice he had received. The case has received much public coverage in Chinese media and internet, where Yang Jia was often hailed as a hero for standing up to the inhuman police force in China. Yang Jia, on the other hand, was sentenced to death as expected.

During the last couple of days, an open letter has been circulating on Chinese internet appealing for a special amnesty for Yang Jia. The letter was initially cosigned by fourty six scholars, artists, lawyers, and other citizens. The letter argued on Yang Jia's behalf alternately from criticizing police brutality to denouncing death penalty as an act of cruelty itself.

This open letter appealing for amnesty is a faint echo of the letters in the early spring of 1989, when scholars cosigned open letters appealing for amensty for Wei Jingsheng and other political prisoners. Indeed, it has been rare, if ever, to see a citizen action such as this since the days of 1989.

Among the original sigatures of the current open letter are at least two names who had deep involvements in the 1989 movement: journalist Dai Qing and scholar Zhang Lun (张伦). Other signataries include the famous legal scholar Yu Haocheng (于浩成) and outspoken artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未).

More signatures are still being collected for the letter.