Hong Kong Police Harasses Man Wearing Tiananman Shirt

Since returning to the fold of China, the city of Hong Kong has kept most of its freedom. Every year in June, thousands of Hong Kong residents gather to remember the deaths of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the only remaining commemoration of significance worldwide.

But there are signs that more limits are being imposed on the freedom of expression. Yesterday, a man wearing a T-shirt with the slogans of "Overturn the Verdict of June Fourth" and "Build up Democracy" was forcefully taken away from the street and detained by the police. Apparently, the Vice Premier of China, Li Keqiang, was due to visit that neighborhood and could be embarrassed by the presence of the T-shirt. The man was later released.

The incident was caught on camera and played on the evening news:

Ai Weiwei Talks, Ran Yunfei Walks

Almost half a year ago, during a wave of crackdown in China, many prominent dissidents were detained and/or arrested, some were charged with subversion. Among them were free lancer Ran Yunfei and famous artist Ai Weiwei.

Ai Weiwei's arrest in April caught world-wide attention and outrage. He was then released in June with parole conditions including no media interviews or participating in social media. He had kept his public silence, until now. This week, he showed up unexpected on Twitter, expressing concerns of his colleagues who were detained because of connections to him.

Even more strangely, he is now interviewed by the official newspaper Global Times. The paper describes him as "feisty" and quoted him saying "Of course you might live an easier life if you abandon some rights. But there are so many injustices, and limited educational resources. They all diminish happiness. I will never stop fighting injustice."

The interview was published in the English language edition of the paper. There was no mention in the Chinese language edition.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that Ran Yunfei, who was detained in February, had just been released from prison. So far he had made no public statements.

Liu Gang Launches Protest Against US Government and Companies

1989 Chinese student leader Liu Gang was spotted outside of the White House with a home-made protesting poster yesterday. He was calling on the US government to act on what he termed as the "unrestricted warfare" conducted by the Chinese government on American soil.

Liu Gang has been embroiled in a nasty divorce after his second marriage fell apart. He publicly accused his estranged wife as a former Chinese military officer and that the Chinese government has launched a para-military campaign against him, his now-former employer, and other Chinese dissidents and American dignitaries. Almost a year ago, he sued Chinese president Hu Jintao in a New York court with similar accusations.

Liu Gang also claims that he was the initiator of the so-called "Jasmine Revolution" in China and that it made him a target of the Chinese government.

His public accusations of his wife and his former employer have led to him losing his job and being temporarily arrested a few times. But he has vowed to defy a court-ordered gag order and continue to protest his case in public. This morning, he declared he will travel around the country with his personal protests. He did not disclose details of his plan.

This Day in 1989: July 14, Chinese Students March in French Bicentennial

On July 14, 1989, hundreds of Chinese students in Paris participated in the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution. The anniversary was a major inspiration of the 1989 Chinese student movement itself.

Also on this day, Xiao Bin, a famous "rumor-monger," was sentenced to 10 years.

Days of 1989

Party Emblem at Tiananmen

For the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, a new but temporary symbol -- the hammer and sickle emblem of Communism -- is now installed inside Tiananmen Square, right between the National Flag Pole and the Monument of People's Heroes.

The giant emblem, about 40 feet in diameter, is part of a red, heart-shaped floral display that will remain in the square during the celebration period surrounding July 1st, the official anniversary date.

It is the very first time in history that the party emblem is so prominently placed in the symbolic center of the country.

Book Review: My Two Chinas

Tang Baiqiao's book, My Two Chinas: The Memoir of a Chinese Counterrevolutionary, came with high accolades. Its cover proudly boasts that the book was "foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama". Yet the first thing a careful reader notices is that it is not true. The book's Foreword, all of three brief paragraphs, was actually written by Dalai Lama's secretary.

This, combined with other sales pitches, such as that the author "Tang Baiqiao is one of China's most influential modern dissidents", "Tang's name became legendary during the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre", etc., -- overly exaggerations at best -- does not lend well to the credibility of the book itself.

Although signed in the form of "Tang Baiqiao with Damon Dimarco," the book takes a first-person singular tone to narrate the personal story of its main author Tang Baiqiao, who in 1989 was a college student in the remote Hunan Province and became a student leader there. The book covers Tang Baiqiao's experience growing up as a child in rural China, getting involved in the 1989 student movement, becoming a fugitive and then prisoner in the ensuing crackdown, and his eventual escape from China and his exiled life in America.

Tang Baiqiao's personal involvement in the 1989 student movement as retold in this book is surprisingly sketchy. In early April that year, he helped organizing a few student rallies and marches in his city and was elected to be the main leader there. In May, he took a trip to Beijing, hoping to connect with the movement leader there. The trip, as he frankly admitted in the book, was a failure. Other than participating in several marches, he did not accomplish anything there. So much so that he did not even become aware of the name of one of major student leaders -- he later thought Wang Dan was a name for a female student. By the time he returned to his home city in later May, the student movement had already petered out there.

But the book does provide a rare glimpse of the movement, and student life in general, far away from the capital city. In one amazing tidbit, Tang Baiqiao recalled being on the stage facing thousands of students chanting "Long Live Tang Baiqiao! Long Live Tang Baiqiao!" (P. 87) A scene never seen in Beijing.

Since the story is told in first-person, sometimes it is difficult to judge whether it is stating facts or mere perceptions of its main author at the time. For example, the book makes many careless statements such as "Fang Lizhi was also a close friend and adviser to Hu Yaobang" (P. 56) or "During his meeting with Gorbachev, Zhao Ziyang made it known that he was a puppet, nothing more." (P. 99).

My Two Chinas serves as an addition to the existing autobiographies of the movement participants such as Li Lu, Shen Tong, and Zhang Boli. It could be interesting to anyone who would like to learn about lives in that period in China from an individual perspective. But unfortunately there is not much information about the 1989 student movement here, nothing to justify the author's "legendary" status in it, at least.

Books About Tiananmen

Fang Lizhi Recalls his Year as Refuge in American Embassy

The day after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, Professor Fang Lizhi and his wife Li Shuxian took refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing. The case soon became a focal point in the struggling Sino-US relationship.

Recently, Fang Lizhi wrote a three-part memoir in Chinese titled "The Sino-US Interplay in 1989-1990 as I Experienced" (see Parts A, B, and C). While there are no real surprises or major reveals from what we have already learned throughout the years, there are some interesting tidbits in the story:

1. The Chinese government delivered a 14-point accusation of Fang Lizhi's "crimes" to the Embassy as the initial step of negotiation. The accusations revealed that Fang Lizhi's residence had been monitored and his phone bugged during the entire movement. Fang Lizhi made detailed response to each accusation.
2. After President George H. W. Bush signed an order to allow Chinese students stay in the US regardless their visa status as a protection, a Chinese official sermoned the US Ambassador for an official protest. An hour later, the secretary of the official called the Ambassador's secretary to plead a US visa guarantee for his wife.
3. After four months of vigorous protest, the Chinese government signals a willingness of negotiation in October, 1989. The initial conditions were passed to former President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who were visiting China at the time. Negotiations continued in November and December and cumulated in a state visit by Bush's aid Brent Scowcroft, who came to Beijing with the intention of taking the family to US. But the negotiation broke down at the last minute when China demanded an end of international sanctions.
4. Fang Lizhi continued his scientific research work in the embassy. In fact, he published a preprint in the Fermi Lab with a temporary mailing address of the US foreign service. After the publication, he received many books and journals from his international colleagues. The work for the paper was performed on an old Apple computer left at the embassy.





5. Negotiations to resolve the matter restarted in the spring of 1990 when Japan is seeking a way to end the sanction to China. (Loans to China from Japan and the World Bank were unfrozen two weeks after Fang Lizhi was allowed to leave China.)
6. Because the Chinese government was eager to have sanction lifted, Fang Lizhi had the upper hand in the negotiation of his release. He refused to make "confessions," admit guilt, or appeal for "leniency" but only applied to travel abroad on humanitarian grounds.
7. There were strong indications that Deng Xiaoping took a personal interest in these negotiations through the entire process.
8. Li Shuxian disagreed with a part of the statement Fang Lizhi had written. She only signed on two of the three points her husband had signed.
9. As a mother, Li Shuxian secured a guarantee of their second son's safe passage abroad as a condition of their release.
10. At the farewell party at the embassy, Ambassador James Lilly told Fang Lizhi a secret: the US was aware of how Feng Congde and Chai Ling escaped China, "from the beginning to end." Feng Congde had maintained that their escape did not receive any help from abroad.