An instructive political history of Tiananmen: to the quarter-century anniversary of the "Peking Maidan"
Exactly 25 years ago, in early June 1989, the Chinese authorities, with the help of army units entering the city, severely suppressed student demonstrations, including demolishing a tent camp for students in the central square of the city - Tiananmen Square of Heavenly Peace. In response, Western countries imposed sanctions against China, including a ban on the sale of military equipment and dual-use technologies to China, which is in effect today.About it in due time was written a lot of very different and from the most different positions. Therefore, today, in connection with the anniversary of these tragic events, I would like to draw attention to a number of nuances that are interesting for us from the point of view of studying the experience of China, especially in light of what has happened and is happening in Ukraine recently.
However, in order to understand where the students in Tiananmen Square came from, it will probably have to start from the middle of the 80s.
Act I. "Chinese Gorbachev" and "Chinese Sakharov"
The 80 Democratic Movement in the People's Republic of China is inextricably linked with the name of Hu Yaobang, who was chosen by the party leader in 1981 on behalf of Deng Xiaoping after the resignation of Mao Zedong’s hardheaded follower and supporter of “two absolutes” (“everything that Chairman Mao said and did was absolutely correct ”) Hua Guofeng.
By 1985, it turned out that the relatively young (by Chinese standards) Hu Yaobang, who was a Komsomol leader before the Cultural Revolution, represents the country's further development somewhat differently than the veterans of the party headed by Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian and others. And above all, he is not inclined to struggle with what Dan has been called “bourgeois liberalization.” That is, with the demands for the expansion of democracy, the introduction of a multi-party system and glasnost, even the statements that China needs to develop democracy along Western lines. That is, in fact, all that we received about a few years later thanks to Gorbachev.
The head of the “bourgeois liberalization” movement, actively supported by the liberal intelligentsia, was the publicist Liu Binyan, elected in January 1985 as deputy chairman of the Writers' Union of China (in fact, world-famous Ba Jin, who was in charge of 80) was elected chairman, Wang Zhouvan, deputy the editor-in-chief of the Shanghai Literature magazine; and the famous astrophysicist Fan Lizhi, who was repeatedly persecuted for his political activities. Deng Xiaoping insisted that all three be expelled from the party and deprived of posts, but Hu Yaobang did not take any action against them.
The end happened at the end of 1986. In mid-December in the city of Hefei (Prov. Anhui), unrest began among students of the Scientific and Technical University, in which Fan Lizhi was the vice-rector. They were immediately supported by students from nearby Shanghai and Nanjing, where Fan Lizhi also often gave lectures (as did Van Zhouhan). Students took to the streets demanding free speech. Demonstrations swept through 17 cities, and students from 150 universities in the country took part in them.
It is worth saying that the demonstrations were caused not only by the speeches of liberal intellectuals, but also by the example of neighboring countries - South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan. In the Philippines, student demonstrations in February of 1986 led to the fall of the Marcos regime, and in Taiwan, the formation of the first opposition party and the subsequent abolition of martial law (emergency) and the emergence of a multiparty system. In addition, the students, along with those citizens who could not fit into the new market relations, were seriously affected by rising prices and inflation and were extremely dissatisfied with the very high level of corruption on the part of the bureaucracy, who took Dan’s call to “get well-off” as addressed directly to them. Moreover, corruption and crime directly affected the relatives of senior leaders - it came to the point that in 1983, the grandson of legendary marshal Zhu De was executed for banditry. And the children of Deng Xiaoping himself, who were among the first to go abroad to study, did not occupy the last places in business and in government.
Student unrest continued throughout December, with workers joining the students in Shanghai and taking part in a rally of thousands of people at which Fan Lizhi spoke in a fiery speech. Shanghai Mayor Jiang Zemin, despite Hu Yaobang’s recommendations to act solely on conviction, was eventually forced to use force, driving students away with the help of the police. In late December, demonstrations were broken up in Beijing, where students tried to support the Shanghai people.
December 30 Deng invited representatives of the “second generation of leaders” (Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang) along with their young deputies (who, in theory, were to become “the third generation” in the future) Hu Qili and Li Peng, as well as Wan Li, to to his home (he did not appear at the meetings of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee for health reasons, but had the privilege of inviting various representatives of the leadership and giving them advice). At the meeting, Deng demanded that all three dissidents be immediately expelled from the party, and Hu Yaobana accused that he was the one who contributed to “bourgeois liberalization”, placing on him the responsibility for demonstrating students. As a result, Hu Yaobang a few days later sent Deng Xiaoping a letter requesting his resignation.
The resignation was taken on January 16 at an expanded Politburo meeting chaired by Dan himself (in violation of party norms, since such decisions are made either by the Congress or the Plenum of the Central Committee), which was preceded by consultations with representatives of the “old guard” at Dan’s apartment and a five-day “criticism meeting” on which leading comrades branded Hu with shame. Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang became the party’s leader (Hu Yaobang remained a member of the Politburo, but practically did not take part in the decisions). Li Peng, Zhao’s deputy and, in fact, the adopted son of Zhou Enlai (after the death of his parents, also famous revolutionaries, Li Peng was brought up in the Zhou family), was appointed to serve as the premier of the State Council. And Fang Lizhi, by that time, who had finally received the nickname “Chinese Sakharov” in the world, was removed from all posts and expelled from the party. After the events on Tiananmen Square in June 1989, he disappeared into the American embassy, from where a year later he was secretly taken out with his family to the United States.
Act II. Gorbachev, Zhao Ziyang and students
In the autumn of 1987, at the XIII CPC Congress, Zhao Ziyang, having paid tribute to Den's wisdom, was officially appointed General Secretary, veterans left the Politburo (Deng remained head of the Military Council, Chen Yun replaced him as chairman of the Central Commission of Counselors, and Li Xiannian took the post of CPMPC which was more of a nominal value). On the other hand, the obvious protege of the “old guard” Li Peng and the Shanghai “hero” who successfully pacified the students, Jiang Zemin, entered the Politburo.
The struggle between reformers and conservatives continued, but in a different sphere, the economy. At the same time, Deng Xiaoping, who reasonably feared that a political aggravation would lead to a slowdown in economic reforms, fully supported Zhao in his fight with Chen Yen and Li Peng (I note that he will also behave after 1989, when the events on Tiananmen will lead to the fact that almost all reforms in China will cease for several years).
So two years have passed. Perestroika was taking place in the USSR at that time, with double consequences for China. On the one hand, the Chinese side, taking advantage of the "new thinking" and the desire of Gorbachev and his entourage (Shevardnadze and Yakovlev) to normalize relations with the PRC at any cost, managed to get the new Soviet leadership to eliminate the famous "three obstacles" Deng Xiaoping (the conclusion Vietnamese troops from Kampuchea, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the border with China). On the other hand, the “wind of freedom and glasnost” led to a sharp increase in the popularity of the USSR and Gorbachev personally among creative intellectuals, students and ordinary people in China (Gorbachev’s portraits were hung by bus drivers on windscreens), including the growth of Russian students.
Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing to formalize the normalization of relations with China was to be held in May 1989. However, in early April, just a month before the start of the visit, an event occurred that threatened the parties ’plans. Right at the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Hu Yaoban, who was seriously going through his retirement (according to the memoirs of contemporaries, Hu was a very sentimental person, often crying, including at the meeting where he was accused of all sins), it became bad. A week later, on April 15 of 1989, he died of a heart attack.
Hu Yaobana’s death literally stirred up the students. The unrest quickly turned into mass demonstrations: 22 on April, on the day of Hu's funeral, tens of thousands had already gathered in front of the NPC building in Tiananmen Square.
25 of April, Li Peng (who replaced Zhao Ziyang, who, despite the current situation, went on a visit to North Korea), along with one of the veterans, Yang Shankun, visited Dan, giving him a message from the city government of Beijing, who considered events to take a very serious turn . The “Patriarch of Reforms” was extremely indignant, especially since they reported to him that the students criticized him personally, Dan. He described the students' performances as "rebellion" and "conspiracy."
That is how they were filed in an editorial in the People's Daily, prepared at the request of Li Peng. The article directly cited the statements of Deng Xiaoping, but without indicating their authorship.
The article added fuel to the fire: April 27 alone in Beijing, more than 50 thousand people took part in a protest demonstration. To assist the police, 500 soldiers from the capital's military district were deployed.
Veterans of the party (Li Xiannian, Yang Shankun, Wang Zhen, and others) demanded that Den take harsh measures to suppress demonstrations, but the latter did not dare to issue a decisive order two weeks before Gorbachev’s arrival, which in fact had to register his personal triumph in relations with northern neighbor. As a result, the students considered that the government “outdid”, and the number of demonstrators increased by an order of magnitude.
April 30 returned to Beijing Zhao Ziyang, who in his speeches (May 3 in honor of the 70 anniversary of student demonstrations in Beijing, known as the “May 4 Movement”, and the next day at the Asian Development Bank) gave a completely different assessment to the youth performances saying that they "do not oppose the foundations of our system."
The closer the date of Gorbachev’s visit was, the more exacerbated were Deng and Zhao’s relations (during a personal meeting in Deng’s apartment, Zhao Ziyang continued to insist on his assessment - that students oppose corruption and for democracy and do not violate the Constitution) and the situation in the country. The demonstrations were already in 51 city, and a tent camp was set up on Tiananmen Square and a hunger strike of students began, trying to draw Gorbachev’s attention to themselves in this way.
The Soviet leader who arrived on 15 in May the next day in the morning at the NPC met with Dan, where the normalization of relations on Chinese terms was actually secured (while Deng Xiaoping did not fail to remind the guest of the injustices that China had to endure from the Russian Empire and USSR). In the evening of the same day, I talked to Zhao Ziyang, with whom I found complete understanding. Moreover, Zhao himself started talking about student unrest, saying that China may also need a multiparty system. And in the end, apparently, to hedge against the case of drastic measures, announced that Deng Xiaoping was responsible for everything in the country.
Immediately after this, Zhao Ziyang, inspired by a conversation with Gorbachev, convened a leadership meeting at which he demanded to publish a statement in support of students and disavow an article published in Renmin Jibao. That is, in fact, went to an open conflict with Dan.
Of course, they reported this to the latter, and he demanded everyone to be “on the carpet”. On the morning of May 17, at a meeting with Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang was supported only by Hu Qili (his second associate, Wan Li, was on a visit to the USA). It was decided immediately after the end of Gorbachev’s visit to impose martial law and suppress student unrest. Zhao refused to participate in it, and from that day on he was effectively removed from power. However, he nevertheless attempted to solve the matter peacefully, arriving early on the morning of 19 in May on Tiananmen Square, where the number of demonstrators had already exceeded one million, and tried to persuade them to stop the hunger strike and leave the square.
The meeting was broadcast on TV, and Dan watched her could not contain indignation. When Yang Shankunu came to him, he declared that he was “finished off” with Zhao, he was no longer a leader.
Epilogue. Deng Xiaoping, children and Jiang Zemin
On May 20, martial law was introduced in Beijing, announced by Li Peng. By May 26, nearly half a million soldiers were sent from all over the country to the city. In response, the townspeople began to erect barricades, and at least 300 thousands of people gathered on the square. The students were determined to defend themselves to the last of their strength, having prepared Molotov cocktails and armed themselves with what they could.
In the afternoon of June 3, troops entered the city and, despite resistance, began to advance to the square. Tanks paved the way for soldiers, crushing barricades, bicycles and people trying to block their path (these shots taken by foreign correspondents went around the entire world press). In response, they were thrown with bottles of combustible mixture and trapped the backward soldiers, clogging them with sticks. By the middle of the night, troops broke through to the square and surrounded it, and by morning they squeezed out the remaining defenders with tanks. At that time, other military units occupied the university campuses (primarily Peking University, which since the time of the “May 4 movement” at the beginning of the 5th century has been a stronghold of free thought) and hostels. On June XNUMX, a radio message was read out about the liquidation of the "counter-revolutionary rebellion" in the capital.
Those who communicated with the Pekingans these days recall that their main reaction to the events was: "Deng Xiaoping killed our children, we will never forgive him for that!" And on the first anniversary of these events on the campus of Peking University they publicly beat little bottles of cola (syapin, in consonance with the name of Dan). However, a year later, when I personally communicated with some participants of events (students and teachers), their assessment had already changed to the opposite, and many, condemning cruelty towards students, recognized that this was a necessary measure necessary for to save the state.
And in many ways, changes in this assessment contributed to the events in the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe. Those events that we are well aware of and which we don’t get tired of reminding our citizens in modern China (books devoted to the collapse of the USSR and the socialist camp, in the largest bookstore in Beijing on Sidan Street occupy several shelves).
Zhao Ziyang at the 4 Plenum of the Central Committee at the end of June was removed from all posts and was under house arrest until the end of his life (he died in 2005).
And the mayor of Shanghai, Jiang Zemin, was elected leader of the party and head of the country. He was able to keep Shanghai from unrest even in 1989 (the decision to appoint Jiang was made at the end of May at Dan’s meeting with veterans). Jiang Zemin remained at the head of the country until 2002, that is, the longest time in post-Maoist China. And now it still has a significant impact on the alignment of forces in the Chinese leadership, partially taking on the role of Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997 year.
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