Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

by Adi Ignatius

  However, the crux of the issue was Deng Xiaoping himself. I hoped at the time that he could just relax things a little bit, for example, by saying something like “It seems that when Li Peng gave his report on April 25, we overreacted to the situation. It now appears that the student demonstrations are not such an overwhelming problem.” With something like this to work with, I could turn the situation around without even putting any of the liability on Deng. The Politburo Standing Committee and I could take responsibility.

  However, if Deng refused to relax his position, then there was no way for me to change the attitudes of the two hard-liners, Li Peng and Yao Yilin. If they did not change their view, it would be difficult for the Standing Committee to carry out the principles of reducing tensions and opening dialogue. I was very well aware that Deng had always taken a tough stance on these kinds of issues. In addition, he had been prejudiced by Li Peng’s reports, so it would be extremely hard for me to make him change his position.

  I was eager to have a talk with Deng and to gain his support. I phoned [Deng’s secretary] Wang Ruilin asking for a meeting with Deng, but Wang said Deng had not been feeling well lately and he worried that his health problems might make him unable to receive Gorbachev, which would be a serious matter indeed. So he asked that I not report anything to him at that time. To this day, I still believe that what Wang said was the truth; Deng was indeed in bad health then.

  On May 2, I explained my idea to Yan Mingfu and asked him to contact Deng via Yang Shangkun and others who were closer to Deng.

  On May 3, I went to visit Yang Shangkun at his home. Yang said that he had already spoken with Wang Ruilin and Deng’s children, and they believed it would be difficult to reverse the position taken in the April 26 editorial, but thought it could be downplayed by not mentioning it again while gradually turning away from it. They said that if I were to talk to Deng then, only to have him reaffirm his stand, it would make it even more difficult to turn things around in the future.

  Yang said, “Those of you who are in the front lines can turn things around gradually.” Yang Shangkun also indicated that he could appeal to the other members of the Standing Committee. That same day, Yan Mingfu came by my home and told me that Wang Ruilin and Deng’s children said that those in charge of the Central Committee should deal with the student movement as they saw fit, according to the situation. If we talked to Deng then, only to have him disagree, then we would only have made matters worse.

  In the days that followed, things progressed according to this idea of downplaying and gradually changing. My May Fourth speech was also based on this idea: the tone was distinctly different from the April 26 editorial, yet I used no phrasing that directly contradicted it.

  After the May Fourth speech, Yang Shangkun told me the result of his discussions with other members of the Politburo Standing Committee: Hu Qili and Qiao Shi agreed with the new approach; Li Peng and Yao Yilin opposed it. Comrade Wan Li, whom I spoke to directly, was in complete agreement with the new approach. This would mean that among the Standing Committee members and those who had attended the Standing Committee meeting, a majority supported me.

  Yang also told me that he had spoken with [influential Party elder] Peng Zhen, who was entirely supportive of my position. Peng told him that if Deng were later to look for someone to place the blame on, “Ziyang should not be left alone to bear the responsibility,” that he and Yang should also share responsibility. This was his way of expressing his determination to support me.

  Before my return, when the Beijing Party Committee had proposed imposing martial law, Yang Shangkun had responded with sharp criticism: “How could we justify to the rest of the world imposing martial law on our capital?” I believe that Yang Shangkun held a moderate view toward the student demonstrations before Deng decided to impose martial law.

  On May 4, I delivered a speech to delegates of the Asian Development Bank regarding the student demonstrations. The speech was drafted by Bao Tong in accordance with my views.

  In this speech, I conveyed the need to resolve the matter in a cool, reasonable, restrained, and orderly manner based on the principles of democracy and law. I also pointed out that the student demonstrators had expressed both approval of and dissatisfaction with the Party and the government, and that they were absolutely not against the basic foundations of our system. Instead they were merely asking us to correct some of our flaws. I also said that in demonstrations of this magnitude, one could not rule out the fact that some people might want to manipulate things according to their own interests, but that this would not result in a major upheaval in China.

  After that speech, positive responses were received from a wide range of sources, both domestic and overseas.

  After May 5 and in the days to follow, many universities in Beijing resumed classes. The director of the Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong, Xu Jiatun, who was then in Beijing, sent me a handwritten note, in which he mentioned that when he had met with Yang Shangkun on May 4, Yang had expressed total agreement with my speech.

  At this time of widespread support, Li Peng came to my house on the evening of May 4 and was forced to commend me for my speech. He said he would follow up with some of the issues I’d mentioned when he himself met with delegates of the Asian Development Bank. But when I pointed out that the April 26 editorial was problematic, he disagreed.

  Because I could not meet with Deng himself, I discussed the matter with other comrades as mentioned above and attempted to turn the situation around gradually. Indeed, the situation was gradually turning around. When this approach was being taken, the situation became calmer and most of the students returned to their classes. However, they were waiting to see what happened next; that is, how the promises made in the May Fourth speech would be realized.

  I thought it best to use the time of relative calm to take active measures to set up dialogue with students and all other social groups, to respond to the issues of deepest concern to the students, and to adopt some of the students’ reasonable ideas. These would have been concrete steps in the direction of opening dialogue and reducing tensions.

  While I and other members of the Politburo Standing Committee and those who had attended Standing Committee meetings were actively attempting to effect this turnaround, Li Peng and others in his group actively attempted to block, delay, and even sabotage the process, so that the proposed dialogue and methods to reduce tensions laid out in the May Fourth speech could not be carried out.

  Meanwhile, on the topics of most concern to people and raised by the students—such as corruption, government transparency, democracy, rule of law, and public scrutiny of government—we needed to take active measures. I suggested establishing a Commission Against Corruption with real authority, under the National People’s Congress [NPC], that would independently accept reports and conduct investigations into the unlawful activities of families of senior Party leaders; strengthening the public’s ability to scrutinize the government; increasing government transparency and speeding up the process of establishing laws on the press and demonstrations; and adopting the practice common around the world of protecting the people’s democratic rights by establishing specific laws.

  I further proposed calling a meeting of the NPC Standing Committee to conduct public hearings on the auditing of several major corporations that were commonly believed to be plagued by corruption. All the arrangements and further investigations should be managed by the NPC, because in the minds of many people, the NPC was more transparent than the Party or the government.

  My general approach was thus to carry out reform in the areas of concern to the people, so that we could reduce the level of dissatisfaction among the people and the students, so as to reduce and end the student demonstrations, and at the same time we could seize the opportunity to boost political reform. Tackling these specific issues would enable the NPC to play its rightful role as the highest authority in the nation while directing the students’ attention toward furthering political ref
orm.

  On May 13, when Yang Shangkun and I went to Deng Xiaoping’s residence to discuss issues pertaining to Gorbachev’s forthcoming visit, I also talked to him about the recent situation with the student demonstrations. I expressed my views about open dialogue, tackling corruption, and transparency. In principle he agreed, and said that there was “a need to take the opportunity to tackle corruption, to make a concerted effort.” He also mentioned that there was a need for increased transparency.

  There had been many rumors circulating about the sons and daughters of senior leaders doing business by taking advantage of official government resources. Many of these rumors accused my own sons and daughters. Because of this, on the afternoon of May 1, I proposed at a Politburo Standing Committee meeting that the Politburo order the Central Discipline Correction Commission and the Ministry of Supervision to open an investigation of my family members. Later I sent a formal letter to the Politburo to request that it support my proposal.

  Another issue that the students cared about was press freedom. On May 6, in a discussion about reforming press policy with comrades [PSC member] Hu Qili and [Central Committee Secretariat member] Rui Xingwen, I proposed that attention be paid when drafting new press laws to relaxing the restrictions on news reporting, editorials, and commentary.

  On May 3, I went to [NPC Standing Committee chairman] Wan Li’s home and talked with him about the student demonstrations. I commented that some of the leadership had overreacted to the student demonstrations, a result mainly of an outdated mentality formed by the prolonged focus on class struggle. Times had changed, and we needed to change this mentality to coincide with the trend of democracy and rule of law. He completely agreed with me, and said that many leaders from Tianjin and Beijing had complained to him that the Central Committee had been too soft on the student demonstrations, another example of this kind of old mentality at work. He also suggested that these problems needed to be resolved.

  Either during the Politburo Standing Committee meeting of May 8 or the Politburo meeting of May 10 (I don’t remember which), he [Wan Li] made some very good suggestions about following the worldwide trend toward democracy and properly addressing the issues that the students had taken up in their demonstrations. He expressed his full support of my Politburo proposal when he held the NPC Standing Committee meeting. He also set a date for another meeting of the NPC Standing Committee, to be held soon, and listed these issues on the meeting’s agenda.

  On May 9, Wan Li came to my house to tell me he was about to leave for an official visit to Canada and the United States. He had thought about speaking to Deng Xiaoping about the issue before leaving, but had not found the time to do so. On several occasions while in Canada and the United States, he called the student movement both patriotic and democratic, praising it highly.

  The attitude that Wan Li adopted toward the student demonstrations was no accident. He had always believed in opening up to democracy and had always supported political reform. He had been opposed to the Anti-Liberalization Campaign of 1987 and had given speeches specifically about the democratization of decision making. Among senior leaders of the Central Committee, he was the one who most ardently supported reform.

  Li Peng, Yao Yilin, and Beijing Municipality [Party Secretary] Li Ximing made fierce attempts to block, resist, and delay the carrying out of my proposals. They did not openly express opposition to my May Fourth speech in the few days following, and even voiced a few words of praise. But in fact they were working furiously to distort it.

  They claimed that my speech was actually in line with their April 26 editorial but had just taken a slightly different angle. They then asked [State Education Commission Vice Minister] He Dongchang to spread a notion at a meeting held by the State Council with several university Party chiefs that Zhao’s speech represented only his personal opinion and did not represent the Central Committee’s. This message was quickly spread among the students.

  They attempted even more furiously to resist and to delay any dialogue with the students. Originally the idea of the dialogue was to meet directly with the student demonstrators, but they not only denied the participation of any student organizations that had emerged during the demonstrations, they also prohibited the students from selecting their own representatives. They insisted on letting only students from official student organizations participate, which could not in any way have been representative of the student demonstrators. Wasn’t conducting dialogue in this manner the same as completely rejecting dialogue altogether? Also, when they did hold dialogues, they did not discuss things openly or seek diverse opinions with an attitude of sincerity. Instead they were merely paying lip service, in the same way that they had always handled foreign reporters at press conferences, presenting an image that would benefit themselves politically. This left the students with the impression that the government’s offer to hold dialogues with them was totally insincere.

  I repeatedly criticized this behavior, but was ignored. On efforts to fight corruption and increase transparency, they were even more remiss. Li Peng even opposed listing these issues on the agenda of the NPC Standing Committee meeting. He called me specifically to object to putting these items on the agenda.

  Because of that, after students had returned to their classes and several days had passed, they could not see how the government was taking any real actions. The dialogues that took place seemed aimed only at brushing them off, and of course no concrete steps were taken on reform; so in fact, doubts grew about my May Fourth speech. A more intense confrontation was therefore made inevitable.

  Now we must answer the question “Why did the student movement continue for such a long time?”

  They claim that my May Fourth speech had revealed a rift within the Central Committee, into the so-called “two voices.” That is not true! The real reason was that the guidelines laid out after my return from North Korea—namely to defuse tensions, to open dialogue, to resolve the issue through democracy and law, and to start tackling hot issues by proceeding with political reform—had been blocked, resisted, and sabotaged by Li Peng and his associates.

  Just before Gorbachev’s arrival, Li Peng said to me, “You’re not going to continue to use soft measures to deal with the student demonstrations, are you? After so much time has elapsed, haven’t they already been proven useless?”

  This comment fully revealed his hidden ill intentions. He used resistance and sabotage to ensure that efforts to resolve the student demonstrations on the basis of democracy and law would fail, with the intention of looking for an excuse to crush the student demonstrations using violent means.

  An incident at the World Economic Herald in Shanghai also happened during my visit to North Korea. It started when the newspaper printed a report on the activities commemorating Hu Yaobang. The Shanghai Party Committee found the content inappropriate and ordered the paper to cut the report, but it refused to do so. The Shanghai Party Committee therefore decided to close down the paper for reorganization and suspended the chief editor, Qin Benli.

  According to what I heard, [Shanghai Party chief] Jiang Zemin had phoned the office of Deng Xiaoping for a directive on handling this. The students and the masses were in a highly charged emotional state then. By doing what it did, it [the Shanghai Party Committee] not only angered the Herald’s staff, but also provoked general opposition from the staff at other news agencies in Beijing, Shanghai, and other places around the country. Many [members of these staffs] took to the streets to voice their support of the Herald and demanded that the Shanghai Party Committee reverse its decision against the Herald. Their actions coincided with the student demonstrations and the two groups mutually reinforced one another.

  When I’d returned to the country, I felt the Shanghai Party Committee had been too rigid and simplistic in dealing with the issue and had also chosen a bad time to do it. But since the matter had already passed, I didn’t comment on it; it seemed inappropriate for me to admonish the Shanghai Party Committee and side w
ith the staff of the news organization. The Central Committee therefore took the position of not intervening, allowing the Shanghai Party Committee to resolve the issue itself.

  On May 2, when I was holding a talk with members of other political parties, Yan Mingfu reported that someone representing the local Shanghai United Front Work Department had told him that the Shanghai Party Committee wanted to back down from its previous position. They hoped the Central United Front Work Department would assist them. I replied, “Since the Shanghai Party Committee has made such a request, you should help them find a solution.”

  On May 10, Jiang Zemin came to Beijing and talked to me about plans to reduce tensions. I told him the matter should be resolved in Shanghai without the interference of the Central Committee, thereby avoiding creating suspicion that the Shanghai government was merely bowing to pressure from the Central Committee. Jiang Zemin was unhappy about this, and after June Fourth, listed this incident as one of the accusations against me.

  4

  The Crackdown

  Zhao’s final attempts to soften the government’s response to the protests fall short, as Deng lines up in support of Premier Li Peng’s tough stance. At a tense meeting at Deng’s home, which Zhao describes in some detail, the paramount leader authorizes the imposition of martial law. Zhao is opposed and refuses to carry out the policy; he is soon excluded from decision making. Zhao visits Tiananmen Square to urge the students to return to campus, but it’s too late. He learns of the June Fourth crackdown when he hears gunshots from his home.

  Having grown entirely disillusioned with the government dialogues, the students decided to use the occasion of Gorbachev’s visit to stage large-scale street demonstrations and a hunger strike. They believed it was the best opportunity to exert pressure on the government, which would be compelled to show tolerance during the state visit. But the students were mistaken, for the more they pushed ahead, the more pretext Li Peng and his associates had to crack down on them using violent means.