488 { China’s Quest
for China’s democracy movement, and that sympathy changed into anger
when it was crushed by the PLA. In the weeks after 6-4, the Hong Kong stock
market lost billions of dollars in value. Real estate values fell precipitously.
A huge amount of money was withdrawn from Hong Kong banks.^6 People
were liquidating assets and preparing to flee. Long lines formed at foreign
consulates as people applied for visas. Moreover, Beijing’s key man in Hong
Kong, Xu Jiatun, the director of the Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong and
head of the CCP’s Hong Kong and Macao Work Committee, resigned in op-
position to the resort to military force in Beijing and fled to the United States
in December 1989. There was a sense in Hong Kong that China’s new lead-
ers, Jiang Zemin and Li Peng, were taking China away from opening and
reform, raising grave questions about Hong Kong’s return to China. Several
major Hong Kong projects (a new airport and a container harbor) had been
associated with Premier Zhao Ziyang, and after he was purged, there was a
sense that Beijing was no longer interested in projects associated with the
now-discredited Zhao. If Hong Kong’s economy collapsed, with a flight of
capital and talent, it would be a devastating blow to Guangdong and its van-
guard role in China’s opening.The Architect of China’s Post 6-4 Rehabilitation: Qian QichenDuring the turbulent decade between 1988 and 1998, Qian Qichen served as
China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. During that period, Qian implemented
the guidelines of China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, successfully
guiding the PRC out of the pariah status it found itself in after 6-4. Qian was
a skilled practitioner of low-profile, low-key but hard-bargaining diplomacy.
Qian would carry out relatively flexible policies designed to rebuild a coop-
erative relation with the United States as quickly as possible. In this capacity,
Qian repeatedly struck bargains, giving some ground before US pressure on
Iraq, Cambodia, and North Korea. This flexibility would make Qian a target
of criticism by hardliners, including many in the PLA. By 1995–1996, Qian’s
relatively conciliatory approach would be pushed aside in favor of confron-
tational policies much more in line with PLA views. After those hard-line
policies carried China into military confrontation with the United States in
1996, Qian would again be called upon to normalize PRC ties with the United
States.
Qian was born in Shanghai in 1928. He joined the CCP at the age of fourteen
in 1942, when Shanghai along with a large part of China was under Japanese
occupation. After the establishment of the PRC, when Qian was twenty-one
he was assigned to work with the Communist Youth League (CYL) organi-
zation in Shanghai. In 1954, at the age of twenty-six, apparently in recogni-
tion of his administrative talents, Qian was sent to Moscow to study at its