"TELL THE WORLD"
What Happened in China and Why
Liu Binyan With Ruan Ming and Xu Gang
Pantheon Books, 1989
195 pp., $19.95
Even though we may know why that which happened suddenly, we may still be in the dark about why it happened at all.
--Karl Polanyi
The Chinese communist empire almost collapsed during the pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989. Then, suddenly, the killing began, demonstrators fell in pain, and political terror was restored. Why didn't the empire collapse?
Three former Chinese Communist Party members in exile, Liu Binyan, a revered journalist and writer, Ruan Ming, a party theorist, and Xu Gang, a poet, have put together the pieces of the puzzle as they see it. The authors pool their eyewitness knowledge of what happened, their experience within the Chinese Communist Party, and their knowledge of contemporary Chinese politics, to offer an absorbingly written version of why things developed as they did in the spring of 1989.
They tell touching and compassionate stories about the students from Beijing University who pledged to go on a hunger strike to speed up the democratization of China. Several student leaders even prepared gasoline to set themselves afire simultaneously after the government showed no sign of conceding. Three million Beijing residents, intellectuals, and even government officials cheered for the students, with tears in their eyes. They tell how the students were outrages by the rigid, condescending, and authoritative leaders who refused to talk to them on an equal basis.
The authors vividly depict the top-level factional struggles within the Chinese Communist Party: A liberal reform faction headed by Hu Yaobang, a faction for market reform without political change led by Zhao Ziyang, and an "all-out Stalinist" faction represented by Chen Yun, with Deng Xiaoping as the ultimate arbitrator among them. Zhao Ziyang successfully maneuvered to remove Hu Yaobang with the support of Deng Xiaoping but finally found himself purged by Deng and the Stalinist hard-liners.
They expose the corruption of the high-ranking officials who live in the palaces where the emperors used to dwell. These are the untouchables, swarmed about by garrison soldiers. Constantly supplied with personal luxuries, they have no need to stand in lines for scarce goods. They are cared for with the best medicine that China can provide, "the vegetables they eat are cultivated in designated gardens," and "the water they drink comes from a special channel that connects to Jade Spring Mountain and has no pollution."
In counties that could survive only on government subsidies, official used public funds to purchase imported cars. They embezzled funds for disaster relief to build office buildings and private apartments. When ordinary people could not find housing after years of waiting, officials could obtain housing they did not even occupy, which they could rent or sell at a profit. Even the children of officials enjoy many privileges. In many cities
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