sive role of the corrupt party, to the whole world.
Buoyed by public support, the students escalated
the confrontation, humiliating to the Politburo
holed up in the Great Hall, by going on hunger-
strike. For seven weeks the Chinese leadership tol-
erated the students’ occupation of the square.
China seemed truly to have changed.
Inside the Great Hall of the People a power
struggle was going on between the party leader
Zhao Ziyang and the more hardline premier Li
Peng. The proclamation of martial law on 20 May
and the recall to the Politburo of four octo-
genarian revolutionaries indicated that Deng was
ready to use as much force as necessary but
needed to wait until the crucial Gorbachev visit
had ended. He was also aware of the immense
damage a bloody crackdown would do to the
image of a reforming China, just when with its
economic troubles mounting he needed Western
help more than ever. Might the army prove unre-
liable, even though he was head of the Military
Commission? An early attempt to use troops sta-
tioned in Beijing failed. More ominously workers
went on strike and the students began to secure
mass support. In a final show of defiance they
erected in the square a plaster Goddess of Liberty,
which looked much like the American Statue of
Liberty. Deng ordered thousands of troops from
outlying parts of China to Beijing. These young
recruits had no idea what was really at issue; still
less had they any idea who they were being
ordered to suppress as dangerous revolutionaries.
The students massing in the square could not
believe that the People’s Liberation Army could
be prepared to harm their fellow Chinese, young
men and women the same age as they. In a dra-
matic last bid Zhao Ziyang tearfully tried to
placate the students.
During the early hours of Sunday, 4 June 1989
the army with tanks and guns fired on those
unarmed students who would not leave the
square. The massacre, in which hundreds were
killed, was witnessed by the world as courageous
television crews and reporters provided live cov-
erage of the bloodshed, of students rushing
corpses and the wounded on their improvised
bicycle ambulances to Beijing’s hospitals. The
hospitals, unable to cope, simply stacked the
corpses in the corridors. All Sunday the soldiers
fired indiscriminately, killing men, women and
children, often bystanders unconnected to the
demonstration. For days Beijing was at the mercy
of the military. The striking workers were threat-
ened and made to return to work. In the
Politburo the students were condemned as revo-
lutionaries, and a conspiracy manipulated by
outside forces hostile to China was ‘uncovered’.
The massacre was simply denied and the demon-
strators were accused of killing the soldiers – it
was true that in their fury the crowds had savagely
burnt some trucks and killed the few occupants
they could lay their hands on. The troubles had
spread to other cities as well. In Shanghai there
were massive demonstrations, but there blood-
shed was avoided.
In the immediate aftermath student leaders and
demonstrators were arrested. The universities
emptied as students and staff dispersed, their
future uncertain. A number of public trials were
televised and sentences of execution pronounced.
A hunt for student leaders and supporters of the
democracy movement, now branded revolution-
aries, began. Zhao Ziyang was ousted as party
chief and placed under house arrest. Li Peng
became the spokesman for the hardliners. But the
power struggle was not over even as China out-
wardly returned to normality. Deng, as an octo-
genarian, could not be expected to retain power
for much longer. With the population still
1
THE LAST YEARS OF MAO AND HIS HEIRS 623
Beijing demonstrators, 1989. © Patrick Zachmann/
Magnum Photos
