/'_/\ /'_/| | \ `\ | | | ______ | `\ `\ | | | ______ /'______/\ | |\ `\ `| | | /______/\ | ___ \/| | | |\ `\| | | | ___ \ \ | /'/ \_|/ | | | `\ | | | | | \ \/| | | | __ |_|/' `\__|/' | | | | | | | | \__/_/| | | |__| | | | \/___| |/ China News Digest | |/__/ |/ \_______/(InfoBase June 4 Collection)|_______/ May 13, 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 june3-89.10t # of Lines --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. HEADLINE: TURMOIL IN CHINA: PROTESTS FOR DEMOCRACY; CHINA JOURNALISTS GIVE AUDIENCE SUBTLE HINTS OF THEIR DISAPPROVAL OF MARTIAL LAW ......................................................... 99 2. HEADLINE: TURMOIL IN CHINA: PROTESTS FOR DEMOCRACY; 'IT IS THE NEW GENERATION'S TURN,' DEMOCRACY WALL VETERAN SAYS; CHINA ACTIVIST OF '79 WISHES CURRENT CROP WELL .................... 116 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. HEADLINE: TURMOIL IN CHINA: PROTESTS FOR DEMOCRACY; CHINA JOURNALISTS GIVE AUDIENCE SUBTLE HINTS OF THEIR DISAPPROVAL OF MARTIAL LAW ......................................................... 99 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1989, Saturday, Home Edition BYLINE: By JIM MANN and DAVID HOLLEY, Times Staff Writers DATELINE: BEIJING To casual readers, it may have seemed like simply a news story about politics in Hungary, but to Chinese readers of the People's Daily, the story had another meaning. On Friday, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party gave front-page display to a news story saying that Hungary's leadership had decided to rehabilitate the memory of Imre Nagy, who led his country's unsuccessful revolt against Soviet troops in 1956. In Beijing, a city now surrounded by 150,000 to 300,000 troops brought in to restore order, the message was unmistakable: Those who press for political change in the face of overwhelming military power will, in the long run, be vindicated. "Obviously, someone at People's Daily is still finding the Hungarian angle useful to make points," observed one Western diplomat here. The front-page coverage of Nagy's rehabilitation was merely one of numerous examples over the past two weeks in which official, party-controlled Chinese newspapers have expressed subtle resistance to the imposition of martial law here. Earlier Freedom Only two weeks ago, as an outgrowth of the student demonstrations for democracy in which more than 1 million people participated, Chinese journalists were basking in unprecedented freedom from government controls. Now, with martial law in effect, contingents of troops from the People's Liberation Army are stationed inside Beijing television stations and newspapers to ensure that the orders from China's newly reorganized propaganda apparatus are carried out. But the troops and the censors can't catch everything. Every day, those who read Chinese newspapers or watch television carefully find some new way in which writers and editors artfully slip political messages into their news reports. On television, film editors sometimes manage to get footage onto the air that catches the reality of a news event. When the regime began organizing pro-government demonstrations in support of Premier Li Peng on the outskirts of Beijing this week, China's main news show carried film that showed bored, unenthusiastic participants. At Chinese newspapers, writers seeking to convey political messages are helped by the complexities of the Chinese language, which lends itself to metaphors, double meanings and puns. Perhaps the cleverest instance of China's new journalism of subversion was an article published in the People's Daily on May 28. "Anecdotes of well-known people who quit smoking," it was headlined. It then named a series of famous political figures, such as Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin and Ronald Reagan who were said to have stopped smoking. The article made repeated use of a Chinese pun: the phrase for "quit smoking" -- jie yan -- is virtually identical to the phrase for "martial law." The article explains that the great Qing Dynasty Emperor Qian Long had sought the advice of his doctor to cure a persistent cough. "If you want to cure your cough, you must first quit smoking," the People's Daily said. Since the only difference between the pronunciation of quit smoking and martial law is a minor tonal change, alert Chinese readers would have caught this sarcastic allusion to "Emperor" Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader, calling in the troops. Included in the list of illustrious people who gave up smoking was Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, believed to be under house arrest for opposing the imposition of martial law. "In the past, he smoked a lot, but when he said he would quit, he quit," the article explained. It was a way of getting Zhao's name into print in the People's Daily in a positive way, something that could not have been done in an article more obviously about politics. Even the government's English-language newspaper, the China Daily, has gotten into the act. On Wednesday, the newspaper ran on its front page a story about a Chinese writer of children's songs. The headline said: "Chinese Peter Pan Never Grows Old." That seemed to be a reminder that other people in China do grow old, a dig at the group of Communist Party elders, all over the age of 80, who have been leading an ideological crackdown since the imposition of martial law. Inside the next day's edition of the China Daily, an article about a new work of Beijing Opera said, at one point: "The tragedy of massacring intellectuals of different ideas . . . shocks the audience." DEMONSTRATIONS -- CHINA; DEMOCRACY; LI PENG; COMMUNIST PARTY ( CHINA) ; CENSORSHIP -- CHINA; CHINA -- MARTIAL LAW; REPORTERS; GOVERNMENT REFORM; DISSIDENTS -- CHINA; ZHAO ZIYANG --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. HEADLINE: TURMOIL IN CHINA: PROTESTS FOR DEMOCRACY; 'IT IS THE NEW GENERATION'S TURN,' DEMOCRACY WALL VETERAN SAYS; CHINA ACTIVIST OF '79 WISHES CURRENT CROP WELL .................... 116 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1989, Saturday, Home Edition BYLINE: By DANIEL WILLIAMS, Times Staff Writer DATELINE: CANTON, China The large wallposters, the marches and chants, the fists in the air are all familiar to Guo, a frustrated engineer turned second-hand clothes salesman and a veteran of a failed attempt to alter China's political system. Guo, 42, views the current democracy effort in Beijing as unfinished business -- and perhaps a kind of vindication for activists like himself who once tried to push political reform early in post-Mao China. Guo participated in the 1979 Democracy Wall campaign, which, like the current Beijing spring, seemed poised to upset China's seemingly unshakable Communist Party Establishment. But he is not taking part in the youthful and so-far short-lived Cantonese version of Beijing's pro-democracy agitation. His last experience, 10 years ago, was painful, and he views this one as being too risky for him to go out on the streets again. "It is the new generation's turn," Guo told a reporter visiting his shabby apartment in a monotonous block of low buildings on Canton's south side. "I hope they have better luck. But sometimes, we seem to be like a flea riding an elephant." Pasted-Up Demands Democracy Wall got its name from a block-long stretch of wall on Changan Avenue, Beijing's main east-west boulevard, where activists pasted up their demands and denunciations of human rights abuses to be read and debated by eager passers-by. The movement was initially urged on by Deng Xiaoping, China's aging top leader, who at the time was locked in a power struggle with Maoist conservatives who opposed his plans for a more market-oriented economy. The enthusiasm and spread of the Democracy Wall movement to other parts of China helped Deng oust his rivals in China's ruling circle. But once he was securely in charge, Deng labeled the democracy activists reactionary and anarchistic. Important leaders of the movement were put on trial and jailed. In Beijing, the best-known victim of the crackdown was a young electrician named Wei Jingsheng; in Canton, it was Wang Xizhi, a worker in a cod liver oil factory. Both are still imprisoned. Guo, who claimed no greater role for himself in the Democracy Wall activity than as a street organizer, was arrested and jailed for six months. He is not surprised that Deng is leading a campaign against the new wave of pro-democracy demonstrations. Strengths, Weaknesses "Deng Xiaoping took the movement he created and turned it upside down. Why should he not oppose a movement that he has nothing to do with?" Guo asked. Guo views the new democracy agitation as having certain strengths that the Democracy Wall movement lacked -- and certain weaknesses that have so far kept it relatively confined. In Canton, for instance, the pro-democracy movement has produced only two major demonstrations, and students have now returned to classes, awaiting the outcome in Beijing. "The students in Beijing are very brave. I am amazed at what they do openly," Guo said. "The students are smart. Maybe this is why they have been able to go so far. They are intellectuals, the best of the country. They are not like us. We were crippled by lack of education, and no one felt we had to be preserved for the country's future." During the Democracy Wall era, Guo worked in a foundry. His formal education, like that of millions of others, had been mangled by the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, when young Red Guards, urged on by competing political factions, took to the streets for almost a decade. By contrast, many of today's Beijing protesters are the product of the newly competitive and upgraded Chinese educational system, which for the past 15 years has known relative stability. Guo makes a living buying clothes from a cousin in Hong Kong and selling them in the crowded street markets in Canton, which, under China's open economic policies, is a city of impressive hustle. In his tiny apartment, a few remnants of the heyday of Democracy Wall decorate the dingy walls: a photograph of a march, another of Wang Xizhi together with French reporters, a scrap of a poster with the characters for "freedom." Stirring Moments He recalled stirring moments even in defeat, especially the famous tract on Marxism and democracy that was posted in Canton by Wang and his comrades as well as the self-defense of Wei Jingsheng in court. Wei gave a stirring lecture to the court on the rights of the Chinese under the law. "The Goddess of Democracy is attracting attention," Guo said, in reference to the Styrofoam-and-plaster statue erected by art students in Beijing's Tian An Men Square. "But I don't know exactly what the students want. Is it enough to say down with the leadership?" Guo noted that the demonstrations in Canton, which ended last week, were mere reactions to the Beijing turmoil. "They could not stand on their own for lack of ideas," Guo said of the local students. "We, on the other hand, were believers in communism. I was a Red Guard. We believed in the ideals of equality and in the socialist system," he continued, his voice rising with what seemed like an echo of an earlier fervor. He sat back in his chair and reconsidered. "We tried to work within the system. We were always asking the Communist Party to reform itself. These new students seem not to care at all about the party. Perhaps they are right. Caring about the Communist Party did not save us at Democracy Wall." DEMONSTRATIONS -- CHINA; DEMOCRACY; COMMUNIST PARTY ( CHINA); CHINA -- MARTIAL LAW; GOVERNMENT REFORM; DISSIDENTS -- CHINA; DENG XIAOPING +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Executive Editor: Bing Wen in Ottawa, Canada | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | China News Digest (CND) InfoBase covers the following areas: | | History : WWII, Cultural Revolution, June 4, Olympics | | Service : visa/PR, PRC-doc, tax, insurance, travel/living | | Academics : job, conference/workshop, societies, projects | | Other : org intro, book review, community activities | | ------ * ------ * ------ | | To contribute, please send to CND-IB@CND.ORG | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+