/'_/\ /'_/| | \ `\ | | | ______ | `\ `\ | | | ______ /'______/\ | |\ `\ `| | | /______/\ | ___ \/| | | |\ `\| | | | ___ \ \ | /'/ \_|/ | | | `\ | | | | | \ \/| | | | __ |_|/' `\__|/' | | | | | | | | \__/_/| | | |__| | | | \/___| |/ China News Digest | |/__/ |/ \_______/(InfoBase June 4 Collection)|_______/ May 12, 1993 **The CND InfoBase Project collects, among other China-related information, materials and/or bibliographical reference to matericals about the Beijing Massacre on June 4, 1989. Please refer to the trailer for more information. No. Subject june3-89.06t # of Lines --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. HEADLINE: Mocked by a plaster goddess .............................. 114 2. HEADLINE: How Deng does it .......................................... 62 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. HEADLINE: Mocked by a plaster goddess .............................. 114 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOOURCE: The Economist, June 3, 1989 BYLINE: FROM OUR CHINA CORRESPONDENT DATELINE: BEIJING IT IS distasteful that a handful of octogenarians should direct the destiny of 1.1 billion people, half of whom are less than 20 years old. It is tragic that the result of their deliberations will probably be not just the removal of the Communist party's general secretary, Mr Zhao Ziyang, but the rejection, even if only for a while, of the relatively liberal ideas associated with him. Not everyone equates the probable with the inevitable. On May 30th the students who have been in almost constant occupation of Beijing's Tiananmen Square for the past six weeks erected a 30ft statue of the "Goddess of Democracy". She holds aloft the torch of freedom and is provocatively positioned to face the giant portrait of Chairman Mao over the Forbidden City. Whatever the artistic merits of the plaster and plastic creation, its publicity value was undeniable. Would the authorities dare to enter the symbolic heart of Communist China to tear down something so obviously modelled on America's Statue of Liberty? Meanwhile, there was enough public applause to breathe new enthusiasm into student ranks (which has been reduced to a hard core of perhaps 5,000 in the square) and to persuade some to contemplate a revived hunger strike. But the students have become a side issue -- even if they carry out their threat to occupy the square until June 20th, when the standing committee of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, is due to meet. The main events now take place far from the malodorous square, behind the closed doors of the party faithful. Faithful to whom and to what can be guessed at only by the methods of the Mao era. Two weeks ago opinions were volunteered freely and reported accurately: now, even to speculate about the struggle involves reading between the lines of a re-muzzled press. When a newspaper publishes a report on Hungary's reassessment of its 1956 uprising, it can only be because some Chinese journalist is waging guerrilla action in praise of Mr Zhao and his liberal-minded predecesor Hu Yaobang (whose death on April 15th set off the student unrest). What is certain is that 84-year-old Mr Deng Xiaoping spent most of May rallying his contemporaries to denounce Mr Zhao, a stripling of 70, and the "anti-party clique" that dared to thwart Mr Deng's plan to still the student turmoil by force. Last week Mr Chen Yun, the 84-year-old chairman of the party's Central Advisory Commission, was wheeled out (literally) to declare: "We old comrades must resolutely expose and struggle against a very, very small number of people who have fabricated schemes and intrigues, and never yield to them." Mr Chen's voice is echoed by other oldsters like Mr Bo Yibo, an advisory commission vice-chairman, and China's president, Mr Yang Shangkun. On Saturday Mr Li Xiannian, the 80-year-old former president, joined in: "Recently, a very small minority of people plotted behind the scenes, fabricated rumours, instigated agitation and deliberately aggravated the situation so as to realise their political purpose of negating the leadership of the Communist party and the socialist system through turmoil." And so it goes. The message has been passed down through the ranks of both the army and the party. Mr Zhao and his allies -- the defence minister, Mr Qin Jiwei, is said to be under house arrest -- are to be purged, as so many before them have been. But that would require a meeting of the party's Central Committee, almost 300 people if alternate members are included. By the middle of this week there was still no sign of such a meeting. Has the guillotine been checked in mid-fall? No, but its edge is being blunted. One sign comes from Mr Wan Li, the 72-year-old president of congress. Last week Mr Wan cut short a trip to Washington and returned not to Beijing but to Shanghai, for "medical treatment". He is now back in Beijing. Mr Wan backs the martial law imposed on May 20th on parts of Beijing by President Yang and the prime minister, Mr Li Peng, who were acting for Mr Deng. But Mr Wan adds: "I think the patriotic enthusiasm of the students and broad masses of the people must be protected, and no punishment should be meted out to students who made extremist opinions and deeds in the student strikes." It is clear that Mr Wan, a confidant of Mr Zhao as well as of Mr Deng, is not entirely happy with his elders' dictates. Nor is one of the oldest of the elders, 86-year-old Mr Peng Zhen. Mr Peng, who once held the parliamentary job Mr Wan now holds, is not about to praise Mr Zhao and his new-fangled ideas of political tolerance -- but he does praise the students' "good, pure, kindhearted and constructive motives". In an obvious poke at the power wielded by Mr Deng, he stresses the need for China to seek "the rule of law, not the rule of personality". Not all, therefore, is going as smoothly as Mr Deng might wish. Already, it seems that a majority of the party's Central Committee will refuse to denounce Mr Zhao and his "clique" as "counter-revolutionaries". Instead, Mr Zhao may merely be guilty of "indiscipline"; that would make it possible for him to re-enter politics at an opportune time. Matters may worsen for Mr Deng. Mr Li Peng is said to have denounced the "black hands within the party" that have spread "western ideas about democracy and freedom", and to have hinted at "an American background behind the student movement". Perhaps it is true. Mr Zhao's friends have no doubt been fighting back on behalf of his open-door policy by reminding China's greedy rulers just how much money has greased their palms as a result of it. But if Mr Deng cannot claim a complete victory, he has still come out on top. This week the repression began. Three leaders of an autonomous -- and so illegal -- trade union were arrested. Some dissidents, including the best-known, the physicist Mr Fang Lizhi, dropped out of sight; and fears began spreading that many young careers will quietly be consigned to limbo. How wide and heavily the net will be cast is a matter of guesswork. Mr Deng, in refusing to allow political liberalism to follow his economic reforms, is making friends with his old enemies. Men like Mr Chen Yun, Mr Bo Yibo and Mr Peng Zhen are the very people Mr Deng and Mr Zhao managed to remove from the political arena two years ago. The price for their return may be the turning back of Mr Deng's economic openness. The fact that Mr Deng should entertain such a prospect is a sign that he is weakening in the fight to choose his successor. He has only himself to blame: in two years he has conspired to destroy two chosen successors, Mr Hu and Mr Zhao. There is no obvious third. GRAPHIC: Picture, Opposing icons --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. HEADLINE: How Deng does it .......................................... 62 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCE: The Economist, June 3, 1989 ON MAY 20th, the day China's prime minister, Mr Li Peng, announced martial law in parts of Beijing, Mr Deng Xiaoping, the man usually described as China's paramount leader, was nowhere to be seen. Rumour had it that he had left for Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China. The television pictures in central China. The television pictures earlier in the week of Mr Mikhail Gorbachev's visit had shown the 84-year-old Mr Deng, his chopsticks shaking, barely able to lift his food to his mouth. As China's Communist party plunged into its worst row since the cultural revolution, the doddery Mr Deng could have been forgiven for doing a bunk. But why to Wuhan? The answer was soon clear enough. Mr Deng had left behind in Beijing an embattled Mr Li, a mutinous party leader, Mr Zhao Ziyang, who was still refusing to go along with martial law, and an army happy to let human barricades of Beijing people block its path into the centre of the city, where it was supposed to clear the students out of Tiananmen Square. When Mr Deng returned a few days later it was with pledges of support for marital law from six of China's seven regional military commanders, who had presumably sent their representatives to Wuhan. That was enough to swing the vote at the top of the party Mr Deng's way. This is not the first time he has turned the tables on his party opponents. His authority is not tied to the offices he holds. Mr Deng retired from the Politburo at the 13th party congress in 1987. Unlike the clutch of over-80-year-olds who had retired with him, he did not even bother to join the Central Advisory Commission, the organisation for old buffers who still wanted to poke a finger or two into party affairs. The only job he kept was that of chairman of the Central Military Commission, which watches over the armed forces. It is an important post, but it was due to be handed on to Mr Zhao, officially the commission's first deputy, possibly later this year. Neither Mr Deng nor China, however, has much time for constitutional niceties. In a country that venerates old men and has operated for centuries on networks of personal connections, or guanxi, it is not what you know or where you work but who you know that counts. Mr Deng's connections go right back to the origins of Chinese communism. A buddy of Mao in the early days, he took part in that great wonder of the communist world, the Long March. (That has not stopped him from dumping other Long Marchers, like the former party boss, Hu Yaobang, when they got out of line.) Mr Deng's other claim to be top dog is that he is the grandfather of the past ten years of reform. He may have his differences with some old comrades, but all of them owe their return to power after the cultural revolution to Mr Deng. That, and a shared fear of disorder on the streets, is why many of the semi-retired over-80's have turned out to lend their support to martial law. There is nothing miraculous about Mr Deng's ability to fight his way back from so many apparent defeats. He is just a canny operator in the politics of Chinese communist power. Faced with the prospect of revolt in the capital, Mr Deng went back to the first rule of Maoist strategy: he headed for the provinces, called together the rest of the army and, like the Long Marchers of old, used the countryside to surround the capital. The trouble with Mr Deng's personalised authority is that it cannot be handed on. The more he rides roughshod over the institutions of party and government, the likelier it is that other roughshod-riders will show as little respect for his reputation when he has gone. 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