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of law,” the existing situation of “rule by men” needed to be changed.
Socialist nations should also be nations with rule of law.^7
Independent social groups—civil society—should be allowed to exist, ac-
cording to Zhao. The party should establish multiple channels for dialogue
with groups. It should change China’s electoral system so that “people would
have a real choice.” There should be “greater press freedom.” The party should
not be “so controlling or so severe,” Zhao believed.^8 Zhao’s prescription was
liberal communism, the same path that the PUWP in Poland and Gorbachev’s
CPSU in the USSR were attempting to tread.
The problem with Zhao’s reformist approach, CCP hard-liners argued,
was that concessions and attempted conciliation would not satisfy but only
embolden the demonstrators. “The trouble is,” Li Peng explained at a key
Politburo Standing Committee meeting of May 1, “there’s no sign the pro-
tests are subsiding” in response to the party’s heretofore relatively lenient
handling of demonstrators and attempts at dialogue. Li stressed the unprec-
edented size and power of the movement confronting the CCP, a movement
that openly advocated “bourgeois liberalism” and “absolute freedom.”^9 At a
crucial meeting of May 18 that decided to impose martial law, the majority
view was that further concessions to the demonstrators would mean the end
of CCP rule. As elder Po Bibo explained it, Western-style democracy, free-
dom, and human rights were the aim of the student movement:
We have no room for any retreat. If we go one step back, they’ll come
one step forward; if we go back two, they’ll come forward two. We’re at
a point of no retreat. To retreat further would be to hand China over
to them.^10
Zhao Ziyang’s retort to Bo’s call for repression was, “One more political
mistake by the CCP might well cost us our remaining legitimacy. The Chinese
people cannot take any more huge policy blunders” by the party.^11 Implicit in
Zhao’s warning were earlier CCP decisions for the Great Leap Forward and
the Cultural Revolution. Stated simply, Zhao’s position was that if the CCP
continued to stand athwart the popular demand for political freedom pro-
tected by rule of law, and ultimately democracy, it would be overthrown.
By late May, the CCP faced nothing less than a nationwide—if still mainly
urban—uprising for democracy. The MSS kept top leaders apprised of the
rapidly burgeoning movement. On May 17, two days before the public dec-
laration of martial law in Beijing, there were large-scale demonstrations in
twenty-seven of China’s then thirty-two provincial-level units.^12 Sixteen of
those demonstrations involved over ten thousand people. Two days later,
there were major student protests in 116 cities. Attempts by PLA forces to
enter Beijing to implement martial law were once again being blocked by
angry Beijing residents. Over 100,000 Beijingers were involved in such