Appealing the Tiananmen Verdict: New Documents from China's Highest Leaders

It is far too early to tell whether The Tiananmen Papers will have a significant influence on current elite politics in China and the succession game. They do, however, provide a vivid human dimension to what were history-defining events. As Zhang boasts in the preface, "June Fourth was the culmination of the biggest, broadest, longest-lasting, and most influential pro-democracy demonstration anywhere in the world in the twentieth century." He may be right; indeed, the documents show that some 100 million people participated in the 1989 protests in 341 cities. In the years since, we have seen the video footage and heard numerous accounts of the Tiananmen events from the perspectives of participants and journalists. But The Tiananmen Papers gives the first direct evidence of exactly how the demonstrations were perceived and understood by their targets -- the CCP authorities. The documents put the reader inside Zhongnanhai, the Beijing complex that houses the Party Central Office, the State Council Office, and some top leaders' residences. The reader becomes a witness as China's leaders express their frustrations, debate what should be done, descend into increasing internal division, arrive at critical decisions, and finally try to justify their bloody choices -- to themselves as well as to the outside world.

FOR THE RECORD

In plotting their moves, the leadership in Zhongnanhai worked from an abundance of accurate, detailed, and often up-to-the-minute intelligence reports from both domestic and foreign sources. Hourly updates on what the students were planning and doing came in from the various undercover Public Security agents on every university campus and in all major cities. Meanwhile, intelligence flowed in from around the world, giving the Chinese leaders insight into how foreign governments and publics were characterizing their decisions. And the topmost Chinese officials received daily briefings on how the world's leading newspapers were reporting the events in Tiananmen Square.

The logs of the leaders' meetings show evidence of having been edited for smoothness and clarity. The statements and conversations contained within are strikingly articulate, coherent, and well-reasoned -- with none of the shorthand, half-sentences, or cryptic jargon so common in everyday talk among busy people. This type of editing process is typical treatment for official Chinese government and CCP documents. So the coherence and polish given to The Tiananmen Papers actually bolster the evidence in favor of their veracity.

Li Peng, premier and member of the Politburo Standing Committee, stands out as the acknowledged leader in most of the meetings, in which he used rigorous, logical reasoning to advance his policy of treating the protesters with uncompromising firmness. In contrast, CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's appeals for dialogue with the students seem at times to have been guided by wishful thinking, more from his heart than his head.

POLARIZATION

As the crisis mounted, China's leadership became increasingly divided between Zhao's group, who respected the students' patriotism and thus favored dialogue with them, and the hard-liners, who stood firm and eventually called for the use of military force. The reader sees two sides of the hard-line leader Li Peng, whose machinations are essential to understanding the gradual drift toward violent repression. Li is quite forthright in declaring his disagreements with Zhao and advocating a hard line. But he is also sly in his private meetings with Deng. He incites anger in the elder leader -- who a decade earlier had boldly spearheaded China's economic modernization -- by telling him that the students were personally denouncing him and all that he stood for. Deng, thus manipulated by Li, gradually adopted a harder stance, and most of his colleagues quickly fell in line.

Each side in the internal debate had its blind spots. Zhao passionately called for dialogue with the students, apparently unaware that his appeals often only raised the protesters' expectations and made them more adamant. Li's camp, for its part, was slow to realize that its demands for toughness only strengthened the students' resistance and put the romanticized idea of martyrdom in their heads. Each faction tried to point out the weaknesses of the other, which only made both sides more determined to stick to their initial positions.

Moreover, the leadership's internal divisions soon widened. The leaders vied among themselves in forcefully advocating the position of their chosen camp: first one leader would make a statement; then the next one would note his complete agreement but, in elaborating, would exaggerate the case. Soon a third would chime in and carry the argument even further toward an extreme. This practice might work well in a time of consensus, but the competitive behavior only widened the gap between hard-liners and moderates.

The split within the leadership was crystallized early on by an April 26 editorial in the People's Daily. The article bluntly expressed the hard-line position that the "turmoil" was the work of a "small clique of counterrevolutionaries" set on overthrowing the CCP and the socialist system. At a meeting the previous night in Deng's home, Li had prodded Deng into making some tough statements and then quickly called for the drafting of an editorial along these lines. When it ran, the whole country was alerted to study the piece. Zhao Ziyang was away on a state visit to North Korea but received the text by telegraph and wired back his total agreement.