The Shattered Dream: CHINA /1989 : CHAPTER 6 : As Spirits Soar, as Troops Delay, the Storm Builds

“A situation of anarchy is getting more and more serious.” --Premier Li Peng

On Friday, May 19, Nicola Chapuis, a young French diplomat, found himself at the intersection of three historic revolutions.

That morning, Chapuis helped open a new exhibit in Beijing commemorating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. The ceremonies were held in the Revolutionary History Museum, the huge gray stone building on the east side of Tian An Men Square that honors the Chinese Communist Party’s 1949 “liberation” of China.

The day was clear and sunny. As Chapuis’ glance wandered outside, he saw what seemed to be the makings of a third, contemporary revolution. Hundreds of thousands of people were gathered in the streets below, far more than had stormed the Bastille. With workers and students parading on trucks as if posing for film makers, the scene looked to Chapuis like political theater, like the French student uprisings of 1968 or the American Woodstock of 1969.

That day, May 19, was probably the high-water mark of the would-be Chinese revolution.

On that afternoon, workers organized a new citywide independent union of workers in Beijing. “Soon the whole country will go on strike to support the students’ patriotic movement,” said one of the workers holding up a banner for the new union.

Word spread among Chinese officials and Communist Party members that the 38th Army, the People’s Liberation Army contingent ordinarily assigned to protect Beijing, had balked at moving into the city and against the students. If the army refused to act, the revolution would be complete. Deng Xiaoping and his entire regime would collapse.

But already, largely unknown to the protesters, forces were beginning to coalesce at the highest levels of the party and the military that would snuff out the protest movement and its political message of democracy.

Within the party leadership, which had been locked in its most bitter power struggle since the death of Mao Tse-tung, the balance was shifting decisively in favor of the old guard, the forces in favor of repression.

General Secretary Zhao, the protesters’ highest-ranking sympathizer, had already lost out. The party’s five-member Standing Committee of the Politburo had voted the day before to call in the troops. Hard-liners Li Peng and Yao Yilin favored imposing martial law. While the others wavered, only Zhao was willing to vote no.

Few knew any of that in the hours before dawn that Friday morning when Zhao, looking tired and drawn, went into Tian An Men Square to speak with some of the students and other demonstrators. In uncharacteristically emotional terms, he voiced support for the students and their cause.

“We were too late coming. I’m sorry,” he said in a tearful seven-minute speech subsequently broadcast on Chinese television. “Your criticism of us is justified. I’m not here to ask your forgiveness. I’m just saying that your bodies have become very weak. Your hunger strike is already in its seventh day. Things can’t go on like this.”

Some students asked him for his autograph. It was the first time Zhao had become a hero to the students’ movement, the first time their cause had become loosely linked to his fate.

The students did not realize it at the time, but it was the last time they would see Zhao, in person or on television, for the remainder of the political crisis.

Friday night, student leaders in Tian An Men Square announced conciliatory plans to call off the hunger strike. The sense of victory--indeed, of immunity--persisted. “The government will not dare suppress the students,” a student named Chi said shortly after 10 p.m.

But by that time, word was already spreading through Tian An Men Square that troops were beginning to move on the outskirts of Beijing. Over the students’ bullhorns, speakers began urging the students to remain peaceful, to put up no resistance, to remain nonviolent--but to remain in the square.

“Whatever happens, we will stay calm and restrained,” said the flamboyant student leader Wuer Kaixi over the loudspeakers. “We should not forget our goals: That is, we are fighting for the prosperity of our motherland and the glory of China. We will fight to the end.”

Shortly after midnight, Premier Li appeared on nationwide television. “The capital is in a critical situation,” he declared, his high-pitched voice full of tension. “A situation of anarchy is getting more and more serious.” He announced that troops would be brought into the city “to stop the turmoil and stabilize the situation.”

Li said he was speaking “on behalf of the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council”--that is, both the party and the government. Those watching on television searched in vain for Zhao. Among the five members of the Politburo Standing Committee, only Zhao was missing.

The government-controlled loudspeakers on Tian An Men Square blared out Li’s speech again and again through the night. But the 100,000 protesters in the square greeted the words with jeers and cries of “Down With Li Peng!”

Through the early morning hours of May 20, while more than 20,000 Chinese troops tried to move into Beijing along at least five main thoroughfares, the crowds at Tian An Men Square and elsewhere in the city grew larger.

Gradually, a drama of people’s power unfolded. Huge throngs blocked the troop trucks. Residents put up crude roadblocks of buses, dump trucks, garbage cans and market stalls. Students and other protesters surrounded the military convoys, seeking to win over the tired, beleaguered soldiers to their cause.

“The people love the People’s Army! The People’s Army protects the people!” chanted students and peasants at one barricade. On the side of one troop truck, at Shuangjing in southeastern Beijing, someone scrawled the words, “Support (Zhao) Ziyang.” The driver in one stymied truck plaintively told the surrounding crowd: “We’re soldiers. We’re not from Beijing. We have to obey orders.”

Late in the night, at Tian An Men Square, a jubilant voice announced over the student-run loudspeaker, “All major highways are blocked by the people.” An hour later, a voice over the loudspeaker informed the protesters that a “Dare-to-Die Corps” had been formed to stop the troops and protect the students.

By 5:05 a.m. on May 20, as the sky began to lighten, the square was still full of protesters. A voice came over the loudspeaker. “The darkness is over,” it said. “Dawn is coming. Victory belongs to the people. All directions from which army trucks are coming are blocked by the people.”

Mayor Chen Xitong announced the imposition of martial law in urban areas of Beijing early on Saturday, May 20; the order theoretically barred all public demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, petitions and news interviews.

At the same time, the regime moved to cut off live satellite broadcasts from Beijing to the world. During prime time Friday night in the United States, television viewers watched raptly as Chinese officials pulled the plug on CBS News and later on the Cable News Network.

“You are here to report on Gorbachev,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry told CNN. “Gorbachev is gone. Your task is over.”

During the weekend the tensions rose each night with new rumors that the People’s Liberation Army was planning to make a nighttime assault on Tian An Men Square. Protesters passed out towels and surgical masks to protect themselves against tear gas. But the army held back, seemingly unwilling to provoke any confrontation.

Each dawn brought hope and relief to the protesters. “The longer we sit here, the closer we get to victory,” said one student shortly after the sun rose May 22.

On the surface it seemed as if political forces might be turning sharply in favor of the demonstrators and that Li Peng might be forced to resign.

The Chinese troops remained stalemated on the outskirts of the city. Seven retired generals warned that the troops should not open fire on civilians or even try to enter Beijing.

“We, in the name of old military men, raise the following demands: The People’s Army belongs to the people, and it must not move against them,” the generals said.

Some members of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, began pressing for a special meeting to review the legality of the martial-law decree and, perhaps, overturn it. The congress also had the power to replace Li as premier.

On May 23, many Beijing residents celebrated the seeming failure of martial law and Li’s political demise.

“Truth triumphs over power!” said a banner hanging at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the think tank that provides ideas, personnel and support for the reform wing of the Communist Party.

More than 100,000 people marched through Beijing, joining tens of thousands more already in Tian An Men Square. The demonstrators, bold and confident, represented many segments of Chinese society: doctors, journalists, even several low-level officials of the Foreign Ministry.

“We haven’t seen Li Peng on the TV screen for many days. I think perhaps he has lost his power,” said one earnest, bespectacled young Foreign Ministry official with a growth of several days’ beard. “Maybe some other leaders are against his power.”

The organs of propaganda--the state television network, the People’s Daily, the New China News Agency--were registering opposition to martial law. Inside the city there was, seemingly, no government at all.

By May 24, the optimism began to fade.

Word spread that the 16-member Politburo, in a series of meetings May 22 and 23, had formally agreed to dismiss Zhao as party secretary. A Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post, reported that during the meetings, Deng had labeled Zhao a “traitor” and a “counterrevolutionary”--the most serious charges that can be leveled against a Chinese Communist Party official.

The tone of the Chinese news media began to change as soldiers, some carrying guns, moved into China’s central broadcasting studios and the compound of the People’s Daily. A “working group” appointed by Li took charge of all propaganda and asked to see all newspaper pages before they were published.

Worst of all, army units were converging on Beijing from all over China. By May 25, between 150,000 and 300,000 troops had massed on the outskirts of the capital, according to foreign diplomats.

The buildup far exceeded anything that would be needed for operations against the protesters. The purpose was clear: Deng, Yang and Li had marshaled military power so strong that it could overwhelm any errant units, such as the 38th Army, that might oppose martial law or declare their support for Zhao.

In Tian An Men Square, the protesters began to realize that the power struggle within the party and army was not going their way. Student leader Chai Ling said May 24 that she remained nervous about the possibility that troops would move on the square. “The danger has not been removed,” she said.

And on an underground passageway leading out from the north end of Tian An Men Square, an anonymous but prescient poet had scrawled on a wallposter: “I gaze, in the square, I gaze at the bright five-star (Chinese) flag. . . . A drop of blood has appeared on the flag.”