Prisoner of the State

The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

Zhao Ziyang, Adi Ignatius, Bao Pu, Renee Chiang, Adi Ignatius, Bao Pu, Renee Chiang

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781439154076
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Premier Zhao Ziyang reveals the secret workings of China's government behind the Tiananmen massacre—and why he was deposed for trying to stop it. Prisoner of the State is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to China and who was dethroned at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 for trying to stop the massacre. Zhao spent the last years of his life under house arrest. An occasional detail about his life would slip out, but scholars and citizens lamented that Zhao never had his final say. But Zhao did produce a memoir, secretly recording on audio tapes the real story of what happened during modern China's most critical moments. He provides intimate details about the Tiananmen crackdown, describes the ploys and double crosses used by China's leaders, and exhorts China to adopt democracy in order to achieve long-term stability. His riveting, behind-the-scenes recollections form the basis of Prisoner of the State. The China that Zhao portrays is not some long-lost dynasty. It is today's China, where its leaders accept economic freedom but resist political change. Zhao might have steered China's political system toward openness and tolerance had he survived. Although Zhao now speaks from the grave, his voice still has the moral power to make China sit up and listen.

PART 1

THE TIANANMEN MASSACRE

1

The Student Protests Begin

The student movement of 1989 is one of the defining moments of Zhao Ziyang’s career. On April 15, news of the death of Hu Yaobang, the liberal reformer who had been ousted from his position as Communist Party General Secretary two years earlier, sets off an outpouring of public mourning by college students in Beijing. It is a clear act of defiance against the decision made by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and other Party elders to expel Hu.

The protests come at a time when China’s citizens are already worried about rising prices and growing corruption in the country’s half-reformed economy. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Chinese join in the demonstrations.

The Communist Party leadership is split. The conservatives who had supported the toppling of Hu argue for a crackdown. But Zhao, who had succeeded Hu as Party chief, worries about the political consequences of a severe response, and that a hard-line backlash could derail economic reforms. As the protests drag on, the power struggle intensifies.

Soon after the protests erupt, however, Zhao is due to travel to North Korea on an official visit, which limits his ability to influence the Party’s response to the demonstrations. While he is away, on April 26, the government authorizes publication of an official verdict on the protests, in the form of an editorial in the People’s Daily. Its strident tone only makes things worse and diminishes Zhao’s ability to manage the situation.

Here Zhao speaks in depth for the first time about the source of the protests. He explains why he felt they didn’t pose a direct threat to the government and how they could have been resolved long before the violent suppression of June 4.

Seven years ago [in 1992], I jotted down some notes about the events surrounding the June Fourth incident because I was worried that I might start forgetting some of the specifics. I hoped that it might serve as a kind of historical record.

Now I will talk about the incident according to these notes. Some of these issues were covered in the speech I delivered at the Fourth Plenum of the 13th Central Committee [held June 23–24, 1989, when Zhao, ousted from power, defended his role during the protests], but there are also other issues that I did not mention then. I will now talk about all of them.

First, I would like to talk about what initially triggered the student protests. All of the early incidences of student protests were related to the commemoration of [Hu] Yaobang.

Yaobang died on April 15, 1989. Immediately after the announcement was broadcast, some college students initiated commemoration activities. Soon thereafter, they took their activities onto the streets, and the number of participants grew and grew. Though at this point some students made some extreme statements because of piqued emotions, overall their activities were fairly orderly and nothing excessive took place.

On the nights of April 18 and 19, several hundred people gathered outside Xinhua Gate [outside the Party’s headquarters]. I later called for and watched the video recordings made by the Ministry of Public Security. In the so-called “incident of students besieging Xinhua Gate,” some of the students in the front were in fact shouting repeatedly, “We must maintain order! Don’t do anything out of line!” There was a large crowd of spectators behind them. The students made verbal demands, including demands to meet certain members of the leadership. Then people pushed from behind and it got a little bit chaotic. The students then organized a team to act as guards to keep back the crowd of spectators.

On April 22, while the official memorial service for Hu Yaobang was taking place, tens of thousands of students were assembled in Tiananmen Square. This had been officially approved. The loudspeakers in the square broadcast the audio from the official memorial service inside the Great Hall of the People, so they could all listen in.

This was the situation before the publishing of the April 26 editorial in the People’s Daily.

Why did the students react so strongly in commemorating the passing of Hu Yaobang? The reasons were complicated.

First, Hu Yaobang had always had a very good public image. He was responsible for reversing numerous cases of unjustified persecutions following the Mao years; he had always been a proponent of reform; most important, he was incorruptible while in power. There was a lot of dissatisfaction with corruption back then, so commemorating Hu Yaobang provided a chance to express this discontent.

Second, many people were displeased or even outraged by Hu Yaobang’s demotion in 1987. Many people were averse to the Anti–Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign [launched in 1987] and continued to be opposed to it. In addition, people found unacceptable the way in which the leadership was changed. In general, people were expressing a feeling of indignation over how Hu Yaobang had been treated.

Third, when the government’s reorganization was proposed in the fall of 1988, programs for reform had been cut back on all fronts. No action had been taken on political reform while economic reform had been brought to a standstill or even retracted. Students were dissatisfied with the general situation and were expressing their desire for advancing reforms through their commemoration of Hu Yaobang.

There were three kinds of people who took to the streets to protest: the vast majority of people belonged to the category I described above. There were also those who held grievances against our past policies and were taking the opportunity to make some noise. Of course, there was also a small number of people who opposed the Party and opposed socialism that were hoping to aggravate the situation.

At a Politburo Standing Committee [PSC] meeting [the date is unclear], I said that we should not forbid the activities of the students who were merely holding their own commemorations while the Central Committee was holding memorial services. There was no reason why we should reserve for ourselves exclusive rights to commemorate Hu, while forbidding the students to do so.

I suggested we punish according to law only those who engaged in the five type of behaviors: beating, smashing, looting, burning, or trespassing. In all other normal circumstances, there should be an attempt to reduce tensions.

After the official memorial service for Hu Yaobang, I proposed a course of action with three points:

1. With the memorial service now over, social activities should return to normal. Students need to be persuaded to discontinue their street demonstrations and return to their classes.

(At the time, I felt that whatever their motives, the students had in fact engaged in nothing more than commemorating Hu Yaobang. So with the memorial service over, and their having had a chance to participate by holding their own activities, there should have been no reason to continue the demonstrations. It was time to return to classes.)

• 2. According to the principal goal of reducing tensions, dialogue should be conducted at multiple levels, and through various channels and formats to establish mutual understanding and to seek a variety of opinions. Whatever opinions they held, all students, teachers, and intellectuals should be allowed to express themselves freely.
• 3. Bloodshed must be avoided, no matter what. However, those who engaged in the five kinds of behavior—beating, smashing, looting, burning, and trespassing—should be punished according to law.

My suggestions were all accepted by [Premier] Li Peng and every member of the Politburo Standing Committee and were officially documented.

The above assessment of the situation and the principles for action agreed upon were disseminated via various channels to local government branches. These were the three points that I proposed before my visit to North Korea. I spoke to key leaders of the Central Committee about them while taking the elevator down after the memorial service, and later expressed them again formally.

On the afternoon of April 23, as I was preparing to leave Beijing train station to head for North Korea, Li Peng came to send me off. He asked me if I had anything further to add. I said that my position had been summarized in those three points. I later heard that Li Peng reported the three points to Deng Xiaoping, who also expressed his agreement.

There were no disagreements from members of the Politburo Standing Committee, at least not openly. I can remember only one: on the evening of April 19, Li Peng called me unexpectedly and demanded accusingly, “The students are trying to break into Xinhua Gate! Why aren’t any counteractions being taken?” I told him that [PSC member in charge of security] Qiao Shi was immediately responsible, and that he should be able to take care of any urgent situation that might arise using existing emergency plans.

I later informed Qiao Shi of Li Peng’s call. In fact, by the morning of the 20th, most of the students had already left Xinhua Gate. The few who remained were cleared away by the police. They were ordered onto buses that drove them back to their schools.

This was the situation of the student demonstrations before I visited North Korea, and the policy of the Standing Committee at that time.

2

An Editorial Makes Things Worse

The Communist Party leadership doesn’t know how to respond to the growing student protests. When Zhao leaves on his trip to North Korea, hard-liners opposed to his reforms take advantage of his absence and maneuver supreme leader Deng Xiaoping to their side, leading him to angrily denounce the demonstrations.

Any hope of calming things down is lost on April 26, when the Party issues its official verdict on the protests in an editorial in the People’s Daily that reports Deng’s harsh words. Deng is shocked to learn that his comments have been published, but withdrawing the piece would imply that China’s supreme leader had made a mistake, a path the Party doesn’t wish to risk. The Party and the protesters are now locked on a collision course. Zhao has failed to sense the danger before leaving for Pyongyang.

So why did the student demonstrations later turn into such a mess?

The crux of the situation was the April 26 editorial. The students had feelings of dissatisfaction that, one way or the other, they were going to express. If they had not held demonstrations then, they would have held them later. They were truly discontented!

However, the scale of the demonstrations, the mess it turned into, and why it happened when it did were all the results of the April 26 editorial. The situation before the publication of the editorial and the situation afterward were different. If the right measures had been taken to direct the situation, then there would not have been such dire results.

I visited Deng Xiaoping on April 19 to discuss my North Korea trip, to talk to him about the student demonstrations, and to give him my views on how the situation should be handled. At the time, Deng had expressed support for me. Yet things took a strange turn after that.

The very evening of the day that I left Beijing, Li Ximing and Chen Xitong of the Beijing Party Committee asked [chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee] Wan Li to call a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee to listen to their report. Wan Li fell for their trick. (Wan Li and I had been in total agreement in our view of the student protests.) Wan Li directed their request to Li Peng, as Li Peng was temporarily in charge of Standing Committee* activities while I was abroad. The very next evening, Li Peng called for a Standing Committee meeting.

With Li Peng presiding, Li Ximing and Chen Xitong vigorously presented the student demonstrations as a grave situation. They disregarded the fact that the student demonstrations had already calmed down. In fact, student opinions had begun diverging.

Some of the students believed that they should resume classes and had already done so, while a minority opposed the return to classes. Internal friction had become apparent in some schools. Some of the students had attempted to resume classes, while other, more extreme students had blocked the entrances to the classrooms to prevent them from entering. This shows that for some students, the activities had not fully satisfied their need to vent their anger. If measures were to be taken to reduce tensions, to have dialogue, and to allow students the chance to propose certain reasonable requests, this was a good time to do so.

However, in their report, they [Li Ximing and Chen Xitong] went so far as to state, “Nationwide, large-scale demonstrations including the participation of high school students and workers are being organized and are fomenting.” They also reported that “university students in Beijing have sent contacts to places around the country and have conducted fund-raising in the streets to prepare for activities on a larger scale.” They denounced the extreme opinions of a few students, especially remarks directed specifically at Deng Xiaoping. They presented the demonstrations as opposing the Communist Party and targeting Deng Xiaoping personally.

With the onset of reform, students, especially college students, had been exposed to many Western ways. Remarks critical of political leaders were made casually and considered inconsequential; the intense climate [of fear] that existed during the Cultural Revolution* and before no longer existed. Many of these student remarks targeted me, such as those that accused my children of making business deals utilizing official resources or those that claimed that trainloads of fertilizer had been sent to my hometown.

With hundreds of thousands of people involved, it’s impossible for there to have been no extreme or one-sided comments. Things appear extremely grave if you select only the ten most extreme statements being expressed by all of the people involved. I am not sure what was behind Li Ximing and Chen Xitong’s behavior: either their old mentality of class struggle was at work or they had other ulterior motives.

The student demonstration was deemed an “organized and carefully plotted political struggle,” and was documented as such in the minutes of the meeting. Li Peng, Li Ximing, and Chen Xitong were the ones initially responsible for this.

On April 25, Li Peng and [President] Yang Shangkun reported to Deng Xiaoping about the Politburo Standing Committee meeting. Deng Xiaoping had always tended to prefer tough measures when dealing with student demonstrations because he believed that demonstrations undermined stability. After listening to their report, Deng immediately agreed to label the student demonstrations “anti-Party, anti-socialist turmoil” and proposed to resolve the situation quickly, in the manner of “using a sharp knife to cut through knotted hemp.”

When I had visited him on April 19, he had agreed with my position. On the 25th, after being briefed by Li Peng and Yang Shangkun, he had changed his mind to agree with their assessment. After all, it coincided more closely with what he had really believed all along.

Deng’s discussion with Li Peng and others on April 25 was supposed to be an internal affair. However, Li Peng decided to disseminate the contents of Deng’s remarks that very evening to Party cadres of all levels, and paraphrased their talk in the editorial that he had the People’s Daily publish on April 26, publicly designating the student demonstrations as “premeditated and organized turmoil with anti-Party and anti-socialist motives.”

Before my visit to North Korea, neither Li Peng nor the cadres in Beijing mentioned these viewpoints to me. Immediately upon my leaving Beijing, they quickly held a Politburo Standing Committee meeting and gained support from Deng Xiaoping. This constituted a departure from the previous position and the principles adopted by the Standing Committee.

Deng was not happy about how Li Peng had made his remarks public. Deng’s children were also displeased that Deng had been put in the position of being in direct confrontation with the public. As I was preparing a speech for the commemoration of the May Fourth Movement,* [Deng’s daughter] Maomao called [Zhao adviser] Bao Tong, who was drafting the text, to suggest that the speech include remarks about how much Deng loved and protected young people.

Later, on May 17, at the meeting at Deng’s home in which the decision was made to impose martial law, Deng demanded of Li Peng, “Don’t repeat what you did before; don’t reveal that it was I who made the decision to impose martial law!” Li Peng said repeatedly, “I won’t! I won’t!”

It was obvious that some people were attempting to use the extreme words of a few students to aggravate the situation and push the government to the point of direct confrontation. With the implementation of reform, it should not have been such a big deal that students criticized leaders. They were just expressions of frustration and were not a challenge to our entire political system.

However, selectively gathering all the personal criticisms and reading them aloud to Deng made for a tremendous insult to the old man. These people selected sporadic extreme opinions of a tiny minority of students and represented them as the major trend of the movement...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• PART 1: THE TIANANMEN MASSACRE
• PART 2: HOUSE ARREST
• PART 3: THE ROOTS OF CHINAS ECONOMIC BOOM
• PART 4: WAR IN THE POLITBURO
• PART 5: A TUMULTUOUS YEAR
• PART 6: HOW CHINA MUST CHANGE
• Epilogue
• A Brief Biography of Zhao Ziyang
• Who Was Who
• Acknowledgments
• Photographic Insert