CONTINUING TRADITIONS IN CHINESE RED GUARD MOVEMENT AND THE 1989 STUDENT ACTIVISM: THE DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT. by Stephen L. Hays A THESIS Presented to the Robert D. Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirments for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, Honors College Presented to History Department, University of Oregon in partial fufillment of the requirements for Departmental Honors August 1991 An Abstract of the Thesis of Stephen Hays for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Honors College and Departmental Honors in History to be taken August 1991. Title: CONTINUING TRADITIONS IN CHINESE STUDENT ACTIVISM: THE RED GUARD MOVEMENT AND THE 1989 DEMOCRACY Approved : Dr. Richard Kraus Ever since the founding of the student-led Democracy Movement in April of 1989, supporters of the Democracy Movement have gone to great lengths to deny any link between the student-led Red Guard Movement and the Democracy Movement. However, the two movements can be seen as similar in that both student movements shared the same goal of reforming the party, both were led by students from China's most elite universities, and were both striken with internal factionalism that negatively affected their progress towards achieveing their goals. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Professor Richard Kraus Professor Michael Fishlen Professor John Nicols Professor David Milton Professor John B. Hays V TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction................................... 1 Part I: Background............................ 5 Part II: Reform as a Goal..................... 23 Part III: Elite Leadership.................... 4 0 Part IV: Factionalism......................... 68 Part V: Conclusion............................ 89 Bibliography................................... 98 Perhaps our youth will be flung onto the gradually dimming embers of truth. Perhaps our raw throats will become hoarse and for a time silent. Perhaps our sincerity will be cut down by honest misunderstanding like a dead branch. Perhaps from the desert's vast stretches the weary camels will never emerge. But please believe, Mama, in history's deep, knowing valleys will always be inscribed my ringing echoes: "Mama, we are not wrong." Ye Fu, May 1, 1989 big-character poster "Those who supress student movements will come to no good end" Mao Zedong, September 1966 1 INTRODUCTION To most readers with a passing knowledge of recent Chinese history, the two most recent Chinese student movements; the Red Guard movement during the Cultural Revolution and the 1989 Student Democracy Movement seem to be opposite ends of the Chinese political spectrum. The Red Guards, in the eyes of both Westerners and Chinese were fanatical, brutal zealots who seemed to turn on the Communist Party and plunged China into years of terror and turmoil at the whim of a power-mad Mao Zedong, during the three years the movement lasted. On the other hand the students behind the Democracy Movement were generally seen as earnest reformers, who used non­ violence and reason to try to bring about peaceful reform in the Communist Party, during the seven weeks the Democracy movement lasted. The view of the Red Guard movement as a bringer of terror and anarchy has made it an anathema in China. Consequently the leaders of the Student Democracy Movement took great pains to declare the differences between their movement and the Red Guards. One political poster hung up during the Democracy Movement stated that the two movement had nothing in common, in that: The ten years of turmoil [brought by the Red Guard Movement] brought great disasters to the nation, involving the persecution of intellectuals, damage to democracy and the legal system, taking the economy to the verge of collapse, and disrupting the educational system. The present Patriotic-Democratic Movement will eventually lead to the strengthening 2 of the democratic system and rule of law. The masses will have greater democracy and freedom. Government officials will be honest. The Chinese nation will prosper!x However, despite the belief of the students and prominent intellectuals, like Fang Lizhi, that the Red Guard movement and the Democracy Movement were not at all similar,2 I believe that the two movements cannot be looked upon as entirely separate phenomena. Instead, the two movements, despite some major differences in substance, that is the movements' origins and tactics and the risks involved to the participants in either movement, in my opinion, had many common structural characteristics which make the two movements seem very analogous. The structural similarities in two movements, despite the major differences in their substance, reveal a major structural pattern for student movements in China. The structural similarities between the two movements were, in my opinion: first, that both movements, despite their ideological differences, shared the same basic goal of reforming the Communist Party because it had strayed from its original ideals and goals; second, both movements were founded and dominated throughout their entire existence by students from China's most elite universities; last, both movements, 1Large Character Poster, in Voices From Tiananmen Square, ed Mok Chiu Yu, (New York: Black Rose Books, 1990), p. 93.2Fang Lizhi, Interview, ibid, p. 161. 3 despite efforts to unite them, were stricken from the beginning by internal strife and factionalism which negatively affected their outcome. These three common salient aspects of the Red Guard Movement and the Democracy movement, in my opinion show that the two had more in common than just the common inspiration of the May Fourth movement, the first great Chinese student movement. I will present my argument in five stages. First I will give a background history of the two movements. The two histories will not only show the raison d'etre for each movement, but will also show the dissimilarities in the substance, that is the origin, and tactics and risks involved in participating in either movements, of the two movements. The second section will focus on the convergent goals of the two movements. I will show that although the Red Guards were pushing for more a traditional Marxist government and the students in the Democracy were pushing for more democracy and a crackdown on corruption, both movements shared a very similar goal: the participants in both movements originally believed that the Communist Party had strayed from its original ideals, and their movements were simply to rectify these mistakes and reform the Party. The third section will explore how both movements had been spearheaded and led by students from the same 4 handful of elite universities. The Red Guard and the Democracy movements, had been founded by students from the same elite Beijing-area federally-run universities. Both movements were also carried on outside of Beijing by a combination of elite Beijing students and students from elite federally-run universities in the provinces. The fourth section will show how both movements were stricken from the beginning by factionalism that shattered internal unity and cooperation. The Democracy movement and the Red Guards, almost from their inceptions, were split by internal arguments and divisions concerning tactics and goals, which eventually led to the development of internal factionalism that made united action by either movement almost impossible. In conclusion I will show how the three salient similarities between the Red Guards and the Democratic Movement outweigh the differences in the two movements. I will show that the two movements did have major differences which distinguish the two movements, but in spite of these differences, the two movements could still could be both seen as similar and parallel. I will also explore the reason why the Chinese deny any similarity between the Red Guards and the Democracy Movement, despite the aforementioned similarities. 5 PART I: BACKGROUND Throughout the history of post-imperial China students have played an active role in the realm of government and politics. Several times this has manifested itself in nationwide student movements which sought to reform the contemporary Chinese government. These student movements have generally tended to have a major impact of Chinese government and society. For example, the first of the modern student movements, the May Fourth Movement, was a student-led protest against the corruption and weakness of the Chinese Government in 1919. It eventually became a nation-wide movement, and was considered by many historians to be the dividing point between modern and classical Chinese history.3 Parallel to this tradition were the next two most important large-scale Chinese student movements; the Red Guard Movement during the Cultural Revolution and the 1989 Student-led Democracy Movement. Both of these movements claimed to be carrying on the work of the May Fourth.4 3Chesneaux, Jean, China from the 1911 Revolution to Liberation (New York: Pantheon Books, p 67. 4Wuer Kaixi, Speech: "The New May Fourth Manifesto, in Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), p The Democracy and Red Guard movements, despite their mutual claim to be the successors of the May Fourth movement, had dissimilar origins. They also were 6 differentiated by their radically different tactics. The Red Guards tactics in their anti-capitalist reader struggles were marked by brutality and lawlessness while the Democracy Movement’s tactics were almost entirely legal and non-violent. In addition the two movements were also differentiated by the fact that the Red Guard Movement was sponsored by the most powerful leader in China, while the Democracy Movement had very little effective official support and in fact was opposed by almost all the highest leaders in the Communist Party. Thus the Red Guards operated in the knowledge that they were almost completely immune from retaliation from their targets, while the students involved in the Democracy movement The Red Guards were started by China’s paramount leader, Mao Zedong, while the Democracy Movement, although it was abetted in some ways by government officials, was started by students. The Red Guards were founded as a result of Mao ' s calling for proletarian groups to attack his opponents in the Chinese Communist Party. The political history of the Communist Party in China had been marked, almost from the beginning of the People's Republic of China, by the struggle for dominance between two opposing lines of Marxism within the Party leadership. The left wing of the Communist Party were believers in Mao Zedong's leftist interpretation of Marxism. The "leftists" were opposed in 7 the Party leadership by the moderate revisionists, who were also known as the "pragmatists." The leftists were led by Mao Zedong. They believed that the socialist revolution was a continuous process and the process of creating a truly communist, proletariat state should not be delayed for any reason. They believed that industrialization was important, but they wanted industrialization in conjuction with progress towards the creation of a truly socialist state.5 5Chesneaux, Jean, China: The People's Republic, 1949-1976 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp 114-16. °ibid. The pragmatic "revisionists" led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping believed in the revisionist Marxist model first used by Nikita Krushchev. This model stressed that only through industrialization and technical development could true socialism eventually be attained. The revisionists felt that short-term socialist goals, such as empowering the masses could be temporarily sacrificed for this end. After the early 1960's the pragmatists had become the dominant force in the communists Party. Mao and the leftists had become discredited by the failures of their modernization plan, The Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward attempted to create a modern industrial base through direct proletariat participation instead of government participation. For example, peasants were expected to form their own steel-producing cooperatives, 8 the famous "backyard steel mills.” However, even sympathetic historians agree that the Great Leap Forward was a economic disaster.7 Consequently Mao and his allies, as the Great Leap's architects, were discredited. As of 1965 Mao Zedong and his allies were widely believed to have lost most of their political power.8 Zibid, p 105. 8ibid, p 114. j 9Chesneaux, Jean, China: The People's Republic, 1949-1976 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp 119-124. In contrast to Mao the fortunes of Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi had been on the rise. Deng's and Liu's pragmatic policies after 1962 were widely credited with rescuing China from the economic mess created by the Great Leap Forward. At the beginning of 1966 Deng and Liu controlled the highest positions in the Communist Party and were steering China towards a course of moderate revisionism3 However, by 1965 Mao had begun to believe that the revisionists, by stressing industrial development over progress towards socialism, had betrayed the socialist revolution, he had helped to create. Mao also believed the pragmatists had allowed the Communist Party cadres and functionaries to become overly bureaucratic and removed from the common people and their desires. Consequently, Mao felt that the cadres were usurping the proletariat as the rightful rulers in Socialist China. However, since Mao was in political decline, it was 9 believed he could do little to oppose the entrenched pragmatists. But the people who discounted Mao as a political force underestimated the tremendous popular support Mao wielded because of his leading role in the 1949 Communist takeover in China. Most Chinese from 1949 on had been taught the sayings and writings of Mao.^^ Starting in the early 1960‘s they had also been indoctrinated with a cult of personality surrounding Mao.11 10Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro, Son of the Revolution (New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1983), p 7. ^Bennett, Gordon and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: the Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), p 96. Starting in 1965 Mao would begin a political comeback and initiate a campaign against the pragmatists. This campaign, which came to be known as the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, saw the reemergence of Mao as the dominant force in Chinese politics, the political downfall of Deng Xiaoping, and the downfall and death of Liu Shaoqi. One tactic Mao used in his struggle against Deng and Liu was the creation of a power base separate from the existing revisionist-led Chinese Communist Party. Mao, as the acknowledged founder of Communist China, could not openly attack the Communist Party. Creating an independent power base allowed him to attack certain elements within the Party, without attacking it as a whole. One way Mao created his independent power base was 10 by appealing directly to the "proletarian” elements in Chinese society among whom he was so popular. These proletarian elements, according to Mao, consisted of the students, workers and peasants. Mao called upon these proletarian elements to resist the policies of the revisionists and to support him in his anti-revisionist struggle to return China to a Marxist system of government that was more leftist.12 12Chesneaux, Jean, China: The People's Republic, 1949-1976 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), p 140.^Mao Tse-tung, Chairman Mao Talks to the People (London: Penguin Books, 1974), p. 253. One of the main proletarian groups that Mao used against the entrenched revisionists was the Red Guard: organized thousands of bands of Chinese junior high, high school and college students. As early as July of 1966, in a speech before thousands of Chinese students, Mao said, "youth is the great army of the Great Cultural Revolution! It must be mobilized to the full."13 Mao also spread his message through other speeches, massive rallies and newspaper editorials like "Sweep Away all Monsters" and "We are the Critics of the World." Mao called for the students to form committees to criticize, arrest and rehabilitate the revisionists and bureaucratic cadres in the Party. The Red Guard were fanatically loyal to Mao, and responded with zeal to his calls. This zeal often manifested itself in overzealous and brutal tactics. They roamed all over China and verbally 11 and physically attacked and arrested thousands of Party cadres whom Mao accused of being "capitalist readers," and "reactionary elements.These accused leaders were subjected to humiliating criticism sessions^ and were usually dismissed from office and imprisoned, and sometimes executed. Even many of China's highest leaders were exposed to type of attack. For example a small group of Red Guards were allowed to enter Deng Xiaoping's and Tao Zhu's houses and "struggle" against them. Part of one such struggle session went as such: [to Deng Xiaoping] Question: Are you not a real power faction which walks the capitalist road? Teng: I am a real power faction, walking the capitalist road. Question: Did you not oppose the Mao Tse-Tung thought? Teng: The reform of my world view was not good, and I stood on a bourgeois reactionary position. [to Tao Zhu] Question: What kind of person is Liu Shao-ch'i? T'ao: He is the biggest real power faction in the party, walking the road of capitalism.16 14Chen Jo-hsi, "The Execution of Mayor Yin" in The Execution of Mayor Yin and other Stories of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1979), pp 13-14. ^Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai (London: Grafton Books, 1986), p 280 16Hinton, Harold A. ed., The People's Republic of China 1949-1967: A Documentary Survey: Volume III: 1965­ 1967, The cultural Revolution Part I (WiImington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1980), p 1726. However, because Tao and Deng were very high officials, the Red Guards were not allowed to publicly struggle 12 against them or to sentence them to jail or other punishment. However, other Chinese who were not high officials, were not so protected. The Red Guards had the power of life and death over them. Their struggle sessions against non-high-ranking officials and were public, and the Red Guards were allowed to punish them as they saw fit. For example, Nien Cheng, who was accused of being a Rightist during the Cultural Revolution, was present as a prisoner during a criticism session. At the end of the session the Red Guard leader: called out one name after another of prisoners sentenced to death because they had not confessed to their crimes. He gave such particulars as their age, address, occupation, ’reactionary' family background and described the crimes they had committed, all of which came under the category of 'crimes against the proletarian class' ... many of these crimes consisted of statements of opposition to the Cultural Revolution or disparaging comments about Chiang Ch'ing, Lin Piao or Mao Tze-tung himself ... The list of names to be executed when on and on. It was followed by a list of those sentenced to life imprisonment or terms of twenty five years or more in prison, all examples of 'severe punishment dealt out to those who had not confessed fully or whose confessions which were not considered sincere. Finally he read out a list of names of cases given 'lenient sentence' [three to five years], because these men and women had not only confessed but also rendered meritorious service by providing evidence to incriminate others. Nien Cheng's account showed that although Mao had admonished the Red Guards to "struggle with arguments, 17Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai (London: Grafton Books, 1986), p 167. 13 not their fists,in their zeal to carry out Mao's directives, many Red Guards actions were characterized by excessive brutality and force and persecution of innocent officials. In addition, although the Red Guards were carrying on their campaign in an often brutal fashion, against thousands of targets, they were, for the most part aware that they were protected because their actions had been blessed by Mao himself. Although the Red Guards were attacking many powerful government figures, such as Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping, their actions were carried out with the knowledge that they were protected by Mao Zedong himself, and the Red Guards were therefore almost completely immune to retribution from their enemies during the early Cultural Revolution. At the Eleventh Party Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party, in August of 1966, Mao and his allies regained their dominant position in the Communist Party. Indicative of this victory was the issuing of the Sixteen Points declaration, which identified the targets and purposes of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Part of this document stated: The Party Central Committee requires Party committees at various levels to uphold correct leadership, be courageous, mobilize the masses with a free hand, change their state of weakness and 18Hinton, Harold A. ed., The People's Republic of China 1949-1967: A Documentary Survey: Volume III: 1965­ 1967, The Cultural Revolution Part I (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1980), p 1567 14 impotency, encourage the comrades who have made mistakes but are willing to make amends to lay down their packs and join the battle, and dismiss the power holders who take the capitalist roads, so as to let the leadership return to the hands of the proletarian revolutionaries.19 19Hinton, Harold A.ed, The People's Republic of China 1949-1967: A Documentary Survey: Volume III: 1965­ 1967, The Cultural Revolution Part I (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1980), p 1567. 2$Bennett, Gordon and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: the Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), p 79. This part of the directive essentially ordered all members of the Chinese government to comply with the actions of the proletarian groups taking part in the Cultural Revolution, including the Red Guards. Consequently, most officials did not oppose the Red Guards or retaliate against them during the Cultural Revolution. To do so would have been the same as directly defying Mao Zedong, the ultimate form of counterrevolutionary action. Most Red Guards knew that they were immune from revenge. One former Red Guard, Dai Xiaoai, recounted, ’’the moment we saw Chairman Mao wearing a Red Guard armband, we knew that he had given us his sanction, and that no one in the government or otherwise would dare oppose us.” Consequently, the students involved in the Red Guards were able to carry out their reforms almost completely insulated from opposition and retaliation from their targets by virtue of Mao's sponsorship of their movement. Although students did willingly lay down their lives for Chairman Mao's campaigns, their deaths were 15 usually a result of factional infighting, not retaliation by their targets within the Party. Thus it can be seen that the Red Guards were a student movement started by a figure outside of the student population. Mao Zedong not only encouraged the founding of the Red Guards, but he also placed them under his protection, insulating them from attack. It is also apparent that though their goal was not to replace the Communist Party, but to merely reform it, the Red Guard movement was marked throughout the entire campaign by violence, brutality and chaos. The origins and tactics of the Democracy Movement were a direct contrast to origins and tactics of the Red Guards. The Democracy Movement was also different from the Red Guard Movement in that the Student Movement was from the beginning labeled by almost all the higher Chinese officials as a counterrevolutionary movement and was not protected by any powerful figure in the party, and was thus open to attack from its very beginning. The Democracy Movement arose within the ranks of China's university students. During the years following the death of Mao and the fall of the Gang of Four in 1976 until the Democracy movement in 1989, there had been an upsurge of intellectual and student disillusionment with the rule of the Communist Party. The years of chaos and suffering that were the Cultural Revolution had shattered the image of infallibility that the Communist Party had 16 previously enjoyed. Deng Xiaoping and others had stated that the Cultural Revolution had been a tremendous mistake. As a consequence students and younger intellectuals grew cynical about communism and its promises of progress. They were tired of leftist slogans and campaigns and wanted real progress instead, for as Shen Tong, a later leader of the Democracy Movement stated, "we were brash and willful ... old slogans like •Learn from Chairman Mao, build a New China' didn't work on us."21 21Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 127, 22ibid, p 115. At the same time of the growth of disillusionment with Communist rule, there had been growth in interest in Western culture, and especially in the Western concepts of freedom and democracy. Western books and ideas had poured into China because of the opening of China to trade with the West. Although the government tried to stamp such ideas out with its "anti-spiritual pollution campaign," it found that because of the Cultural Revolution, "the hard-liners found it was no longer possible to launch an ideological movement . . . the people would no longer participate in a government propaganda effort."22 At the same time as the growing desires of the students for more freedom, was a growing dissatisfaction with the rampant corruption within the Communist Party. 17 Officials and their children were believed to make money influence peddling, and by using their position to get foreign and other hard to get items at a cheap rate, and then selling them for high rates to other Chinese.23 Officials were also accused of having special ration cards, which allowed them to buy luxury goods set aside for them and of engaging in bribery and nepotism. The anger over official corruption was exacerbated by the fact that there had been "reoccurring, government- sponsored campaigns against government-sponsored corruption.”24 23Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy; Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990) p 28. .24Yi Mu and Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 11. 25ibid, p 23. 26Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 151. The combination of these factors had led to wide- scale student resentment of the Communist Party. Students wanted an effective crackdown on corruption and wanted democracy, that is more say in governmental policies and freedom of speech and the press.25 Student activism became common in the universities. At Qinghua and University of Beijing, students gathered in rooms, dubbed salons in honor of the French Revolution, and discussed democracy and reform.26 The students resentment often broke forth into spontaneous demonstrations. For example in 1986, a famous dissident, Fang Lizhi, gave a pro­ 18 democracy speech in Anhui. His speech sparked pro-, democracy demonstrations throughout the country. On April 18th 1989, Hu Yaobang, the former Secretary-General of the Communist Party, died. Hu Yaobang had been popular among the students for his pro­ reform and anti-corruption stances. However he had been ousted by Party hard-liners after the aforementioned 1986 student protests and made a scapegoat for the protests by Deng Xiaoping. However, his position as scapegoat for the 1986 protests served to make him even more of a hero to the students. 8 Within hours students began gather to mourn Hu Yaobang, and their mourning quickly turned into j j j • • • 9 Qcriticism of the Party and its policies. The students quickly seized upon the death of Hu to as a means of expressing their political dissent, for as Shen Tong stated, "to honor Hu at the time of his death was a way to challenge the current party hierarchy ... Hu Yaobang's death [had] the potential to start a student movement."30 That night, Beijing University students began a march to Tiananmen where they were joined by students from other universities. In the protests they demanded both a rehabilitation of Hu Yaobang, democracy and an end of 2?ibid, p 114. 28ibid, p 166. 29Liu Binyan, Tell The World, Trans. Henry L. Epstien, (New Yorki Pantheon Books, 1989), p 9. 30Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 167. 19 corruption.31 This protest marked the beginning of almost two full months of peaceful protests that was the Democracy movement. 31Liu Binyan, Tell The World, Trans. Henry L. Epstien, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p 9. 32Kraus, Richard, Personal Interview, 25 July 1991. Thus it can be seen that the Democracy Movement was generated, within the student population, in contrast to the Red Guards. There were cases when government officials abetted the movement in its early stages, like when in Fujian, university officials provided busses to transport Fujian Teachers College students to a nearby pro-democracy demonstration.32 However, the bulk of the ranking Chinese officials came out against the Democracy Movement and did not abet it in any fashion. Thus it can be seen that the Democracy Movement1s origins still lay almost entirely within the ranks of the university population. The tactics of the Democracy Movement were polar to those of the Red Guards. The Democracy movement was almost completely non-violent. It was characterized by peaceful sit-in demonstrations, petitions and hunger strikes. These tactics did not change throughout the entire movement, for as Han Minzhu, a Chinese journalist stated: In spite of the students refusal to bow to party authority and in spite of the blunt critiques of the Party and of socialism, the student movement was not a radical one. From the very first demonstrations to the last hours in Tiananmen, students insisted on 20 pr°test* At no time did the students extremists) consider storming n^t buildings, taking over the television or radio stations, or arming themselves.33 33Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), p 298. The nonviolent nature of the Democracy Movement was in direct contrast to the many years of brutality and suffering which made the Cultural Revolution so notorious even today. In addition to the differences in tactics and origins between the Red Guards and the Democracy Movement, the students involved in the Democracy Movement were distinguished from the Red Guards in that they lacked any protection from retribution from forces within the government. However, they still choose to join the Democracy Movement. Early in the student movement, the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, published an editorial called "Take a Clear-Cut Against Turmoil." In it, the Party leaders stated that: in the wake of the mourning service [for Hu Yaobang] a number of people with ulterior motives have continued to use the grief of the students ... to hurl invective at and attack the Communist Party leadership and state leaders. They wantonly violated the country's constitution by advocating opposition to the Communist Party's leadership and the socialist system. ...The whole Party and the whole nation must clearly recognize that if the disturbances continue, the country will have no 21 peace. ...This struggle concerns the future of the nation. Through this editorial, the Government had effectively labeled the Democracy Movement as counterrevolutionary and treasonous. Consequently the students who took place in the Democracy Movement knew that they were involved in a movement that the government was hostile to, and that they were accepting tremendous risks by joining the movement. However, despite the risks, the Chinese students joined the movement in huge numbers. Most of these students felt that, as a student involved in the Democracy Movement stated "under autocratic rule, China ha[d] no future."35 Most of the students believed that the Chinese government had settled upon a course of totalitarianism and corruption which it would not correct on its own accord, and that it was up to the students to correct this problem. For example, one small-character poster [xiaozibao] posted early in the Democracy Movement stated: 34"Take a Clear-Cut Stand Against Turmoil," in The People's Daily, in Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), pp 156-57. 35Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), p 129. China's future rests on the shoulders of her one billion people. Only if we [the students] implement widespread democracy ... will China have a way out. Democracy will check the hereditary system that breeds corruption; freedom of speech and freedom of the press will provide effective supervision over the government; and equality will 22 unite the people into a greater force. But none of this come to us: we must reach out and struggle The Chinese students, for the most part, believed that it was up to them to change the nature of the Communist Party and if they did nothing to change the system, no change would come to the Communist Party. Consequently, when the Democracy Movement started, many students joined the Democracy Movement and knowingly risked both their futures and their lives. As university students, the participants in the Democracy Movement, like almost all other University students, expected to take up jobs in the Chinese government,37 and thus escape the drudgery of physical labor that was the lot of the majority of the Chinese population. Thus by joining a movement that had been declared counterrevolutionary by the government they risked not only arrest, but their entire future. However, as the aforementioned xiaozibao showed, students felt that they were the only ones who could change the nature of the government in China, and thus they chose to risk arrest and to risk loosing the comfortable future a government job promised. 3^Small-Character Poster, in Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement, ibid. , iqqi37Kraus, Richard, Personal Interview, 25 July 1991, Eugene, Oregon. 23 PART II: REFORM AS A GOAL Although the Red Guard Movement and the Democracy Movement had dissimilar origins, used radically different tactics in the pursuit of their goals, and had different positions vis-à-vis the governmental approval of their movements, the two movement had structural similarities. For example the goals of the two movements were relatively similar. The Red Guards and the students behind the Democracy Movement had parallel goals: both believed the Communist Party had strayed from the principles it had been founded with in 1949, and both originally wanted to reform the party, not overthrow it. Although the Red Guards were later accused of almost destroying the Party, their actions had been motivated mainly by a belief in Mao’s statements that the Party was full of capitalist readers and counterrevolutionaries, and that the students, as a revolutionary vanguard, had to reform it. In mid-August of 1966, Mao and his allies issued a directive, called the Sixteen Points in which he outlined the guidelines for the Red Guards. In the document Mao stated that hidden within the Communist Party there were cadres and officials taking the "capitalist road."38 He also stated that there "were certain academic and cultural authorities who continued 38Gao Yuan, Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1987), p 82 24 to propagate bourgeois ideology.’’39 it also said that most of the cadres and academics were good, but that the students should take action against those who were ’’anti­ party, anti-socialist rightists ... and that persons in charge should not take measures against students involved in the movement.’’40 The 16-points also called for a campaign against the ’’Four Olds — the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the exploiting classes.1,41 *zibid, p 246.43Gao Yuan, Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1987), p 48. Most students readily believed Mao's statements about the presences of counterrevolutionaries within the ranks of the Party and the academic authorities. They readily sprang up to "defend Mao's revolutionary line,"42 by taking action to reform those who they believed to have counterrevolutionary tendencies. At both the university and high school levels students began to attack all the professors they believed to be harboring rightist tendencies. Although some students attacked their teachers and university officials because of personal vendettas,43 most believed they were carrying out Mao's wishes. For example at Beijing University, students seized the professors who they felt were counterrevolutionary in their thinking, and forced 25 them to write self-criticism and attend public self­ criticism sessions in the hope that they would in this way see their mistakes and come over to the side of true Communism.44 At Qinghua University, students accused their University president, Jiang Nanxiang, and other professors and administrators of being rightist elements and dragged them to mass meetings where they could be '•repudiated” and then eventually be reformed.45 44)Yue Daiyun and Carol Wakeman, To the Storm: the Odyssey of a Revolutionary Chinese Woman (Berekley, California: University of California Press, 1985, pp 157­ 159. 45)Hinton, William: Hundred Days War; the Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972, p 38. , 46Karol, K.S., The Second Chinese Revolution (New York: Hill & Wang, 1974), pp 171-172. The students also targeted government officials. They at first began to investigate and attack lower-level governmental officials. Most genuinely believed that by attacking government officials and cadres, they were carrying out Mao's instructions for reform. For example, a former Red Guard in an interview recounted: [We] formed rank-and-file teams that went into all the communes to carry out investigations and spread the directives of Chairman Mao. We helped the cadres to understand their mistakes and accept the criticism of the masses, so that their ideology could be changed and they could make a fresh start in a revolutionary spirit.46 The students not only attacked lower level officials, but they also began to move against higher state officials. Many Red Guards believed that almost every official in the middle echelons of government were 26 counterrevolutionaries.47 They attacked officials in local, city, and provincial governments. For example Zhao Ziyang — who later became Secretary-General of the Communist Party — when he was Secretary of Guangdong Province, was attacked as a counter-revolutionary and was seized by the students, criticized, and stripped of his position. ° 47Lo Fulang, Morning Breeze: A True Story of the Cultural Revolution (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 50. 4°Bennett, Gordon A. and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972), p 149. The Red Guards eventually targeted even national leaders. Mao Zedong had let it be known to the millions of Red Guards that the main capitalist readers within the Party was the Secretary General Liu Shaoqi and his ally Deng Xiaoping. Consequently the Red Guards began to target these people who were at the highest level of the Chinese government. For example, on January 6, 1967, Liu Shaoqi’s daughter Liu Dao, a Qinghua University student, called her parents and fraudulently told them she had been hurt in a car accident. This call caused both Liu Shaoqi and his wife Wang Guangmei to come to Qinghua where they were both seized by Qinghua Red Guards. Although Liu was eventually released because of the personal intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai, Wang Guangmei was forced to go through hours of criticism at a repudiation or ’’struggle session,” where the students 27 demanded she confess her errors and "expose her wrong line and methods of work."49 49Hinton, William: Hundred Days War: the Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), p 104.=0Gao Yuan, Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. 1987), p. 194.5■'■Milton, David and Nancy Milton, The Wind Shall Not Subside: Years in Revolutionary China - 1964-1969 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), p 227. In their struggle to rectify the Party, the Red Guards even targeted leading not only national figures who were not sanctioned for attack by Mao, but even Mao’s allies. Red Guards had begun to attack Zhu De, one of Mao's early allies, because he had been a former warlord. He had formerly been in charge of the People's Republic's armed forces. Zhu De came under so much criticism that he went to Mao to directly ask him to stop the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution.50 In the spring of 1967 some Red Guards began to criticize Chen Yi, China's foreign minister. The students were attacking Chen Yi because they believed that by attacking Chen Yi they could get to Zhou Enlai, who they believed was the "'hou ta'i' (the backstage power) behind all the government ministries, and consequently was one of the biggest counterrevolutionaries in China.51 Although Zhou Enlai was too powerful, because of his position as Prime Minister, and too close of an ally to Mao to be subjected to the direct "struggle sessions," and other forms of mass struggle, he was constantly 28 criticized in wall posters, handbills and speeches broadcast over loudspeakers. The fact that the Red Guards would choose to struggle against one of the highest figures of government, an ally of Mao, seems indicative of the lengths to which the Red Guards were willing to go to carry out the directives of Mao Zedong. Overall it can be seen that the Red Guards were generally sincere reformers. Though they were responsible for brutalizing and killing thousands of the officials intellectuals they targeted, they believed they were responding to a call to rectify the Communist Party by reforming the errant officials that could be reformed and expelling the officials would could not be reformed. The Red Guards were very devoted to the cause of reforming the Communist Party. Students went on thousand­ mile marches to imitate the Great March and to prove their loyalty to Mao. Students constantly proclaimed their willingness to die defending Mao Zedong's anti- Revisionist line. The Red Guards carried their reforms to the highest- ranking members of the Party and the People's Liberation Army, despite the risks such a move entailed. There were Red Guard campaigns against units in the army, army leaders and even Mao's wife Jiang Qing, the leader of the 52Gao Yuan, Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1987), p 246. 29 Gang of Four and Mao’s proclaimed protégé Lin Biao.53 The students believed such risks were necessary in order to save the socialist movement in China. 53Pan, Stephen and Raymond J. de Jaegher, Peking’s Red Guards: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (New York: Twin Circle Publishing, 1968), p 235. 54Small-Character Poster, in Cries for Democracy.:.. Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp 59-60. The Red Guards* zeal, and their goal of reform, were echoed by the students who took part in the Democracy Movement of Spring 1989. Although the students behind the Democracy movement did not believe that the Communist Party was being taken over by counterrevolutionaries and capitalist roaders, they, like the Red Guards, believed that the Party had strayed from the ideals which it had been founded with in 1949. The two most important of these ideals were to serve the people and to create a truly socialist state. The students believed, as one xiaozibao stated, in China, "the people themselves were supposed to administer the country, and the government and its officials exist only to serve their wishes ... [but] because of the corruption in the party and its autocratic decision- making process," the Communist Party "had denied this purpose" and was not serving the people, , 54but its members selfish interests. In addition the students in 1989 believed, like their counterparts in the Red Guards, that only they, the students, had the ability to lead a movement to reform 30 the Communist Party55 and return it to the "high ideals" with which it had been founded.56 55Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 174. 56Yi Mu and Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 23. 57Erbaugh, Mary S. and Richard Kraus, "The Democracy Movement in Fujian," in The Australian Journal for Chinese Affairs, volume 33, January 1990, p 137. ibid, p~10. 59Mok Chiu Yu and J. Frank Harrison, Voices from Tiananmen Square: Beininq_Spring—and the—Democracy Movement (New York: Black Rose Books, 1990), p 66. The students, for the main part, when they pushed for democracy, were not pushing for overthrowing Communist Party rule and replacing it with western-style multi-party democracy.5? Instead, by demanding democracy, the students wanted, as Yi Mu, a Beijing journalist, stated, "a more broad-based decision-making process which [took] into account a range of opinions.1,58 By demanding democracy, the students were also pushing for the rights that were guaranteed to them by the Chinese Constitution. The Chinese Constitution guaranteed all Chinese freedom of speech, the press and the right to assemble and , 59 march. 5 Coupled with the demands for democracy was a demand to fight the corruption and official privileges which ran counter to the ideals of Communism. The students traced the corruption of the government to two basic tendencies within the Party: increasing separation between the common people and the Party officials; and the constant search for privilege and luxury among by the officials 31 and their families, who were protected from prosecution by their connections with other members of the party.6^ Both the constant greed for luxuries and the seeming immunity of the offenders from prosecution were viewed as a violation of what the Communist Party stood for. Consequently, the students felt that to in order to rectify the Chinese Communist Party, they also had to fight the corruption within its ranks. The great majority of students involved in the Democracy Movement, from the beginning of the movement to the massacre of 4 June, thought cooperation with the Party was the main way to help the Party reform itself. Although later in the movement the students began to call for the ouster of Deng Xiaoping Ping and Li Peng, most of the students did not favor overthrowing the party. Despite the overwhelming majority of students who sought only reform, there were some participants in the movement who wanted to overthrow the Communist Party. For example one large-character poster put up near the end of the movement labeled the Communist Party reactionary and "the most evil Party of its time." The poster also declared the need for the overthrow of the Party.61 However such radical opinions were m the minority, and 60Large Character Poster, in Voices from Tiananmen Square: Beijing Spring and the Democracy Movement, ibid, p 87. .61Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp 59-60. 32 the leaders of the student movement on several occasions moved to distance the Democracy Movements from overtly anti-Party acts. For example, when three men defaced a mural of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square to express their hatred for the Communist Party, they were arrested by the students and handed over to the police.62 Also, when the official Party newspaper claimed that people in the student movement were shouting "down with the Communist Party!" large-character posters were posted by the students which reaffirmed the students support of the Communist Party. For example, one of the posters simply stated "I will firmly support a Communist Party that represents the interest of the people."63 62Mok Chiu Yu and J. Frank Harrison, Voices from Tiananmen Square: Beijing Spring and the—Democracy Movement (New York: Black Rose Books, 1990), p 29. ^^Large Character Poster, ibid, p 90. The push for reform was maintained from the beginning of the movement to the end. Although the students specific demands changed, their main goal was always democratic reform. When the movement started on the 18th of April, over a hundred thousand people had gathered in Tiananmen square to demand reform in the Communist Party. According to Liu Binyan, one of China's foremost journalists, the students were demanding the following: a posthumous rehabilitation of Hu Yaobang; the revealing of the financial status of Party members and their children; freedom of the press, speech and 33 assembly, and the elimination of corruption.64 The students’ main goal in the early days of the movement was to take these demands to the ruling body of the Chinese Communist Party, and engage it in a dialogue in which the students demands and their plans for the implementation of their demands could be presented.65 According to the petition the students handed to the National People's Congress, the dialogue had to be two-sided, televised, and the student delegation had to consist of students elected by the participants in the Democracy Movement.66 64Liu Binyan, Tell The World, Trans. Henry L. Epstien, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), pp 9-10. &sShen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 169- , „. , °°The Students Petition for an Equal Dialogue, in Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), Appendix One pp 158-59. From April 18th to April 26th the students' demands and their goal of getting government leaders like Li Peng, to accept a petition stating their demands for reform did not change. The students stayed in the square and protested, using banners and loudspeakers, because Li Peng and other high-ranking Communist leaders refused to come out the central offices of the Party, accept their petition, and agree to a dialogue. A major turning point in the movement was the aforementioned April 26th editorial in the People's Daily called "Take a Clear-Cut Stand Against Turmoil." In the editorial, the leaders of the Party stated their belief that the movement was being manipulated by a small number 34 of people who wanted to seize power. The editorial also stated that the movement was counterrevolutionary and was aimed at stirring up trouble. The editorial declared further mourning for Hu Yaobang illegal, and called on all Party members to resist all further student activities.67 67People's Daily, April 26, 1991, in Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989). Appendix One p 155.68Yi Mu and Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and periodicals, 1989), p 47. This editorial enraged the students. Being accused of being counterrevolutionary was the most serious political crime in China. After this editorial, the students still decided to carry on their reform movement. They planned a rally in Tiananmen for April 27th, despite the fact that such rallies were now illegal. Over 160,000 students defied the government and marched to Tiananmen. During the April 27th rally and afterwards, the students in addition to retaining their demands for reform and a dialogue, insisted that the government retract the April 26th editorial and recognize their movement as patriotic.68. However, dialogue with the government remained their first priority. As time passed and the government refused to meet the students demands for a dialogue and the retraction of the April 26th editorial, the protests in the square continued. On May 6th the students began to demand an 35 "immediate discussion that would be broadcast live." The protests continued day after day, and the students decided to schedule a large protest to coincide with the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev to protest government delays vis-à-vis their demands. According to Shen Tong, protesting during Mikhail Gorbachev's visit was meant to use the large media presence that Gorbachev's historic visit had brought to Beijing to publicize their struggle in both China proper and in the world.70 69Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 205. 70ibid, p 189. , . 71Yi Mu and Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 23. '*ibid, p 23. On May 13th, to protest the governments refusal to deal with the students or to accept their demands, 3,000 started a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. Almost as soon as the hunger strike started, students began to collapse and had to be hospitalized. When high-ranking leaders like Li Peng and Zhao Ziyang visited some of these students in the hospital, the hospitalized students reiterated, as one Beijing journalist wrote, that: they [the students] were not trying to overthrow the government, [but instead] they only wanted to speed up political reforms and revive the people's confidence [in the government.]'1 The hunger strikers two demands were a dialogue and the • • 72retraction of the April 26th editorial. Around this time many students began to demand the ouster of Li Peng and Deng Xiaoping. Li Peng, as a hard— 36 liner, had always been unpopular with the students. The students began to demand to ouster of Deng Xiaoping after Zhao Ziyang revealed to Gorbachev, on national television, that all decisions made by the Party had to be approved by Deng Xiaoping.73 This enraged the students because Deng Xiaoping had supposedly already retired from the Party leadership. The fact that he was still the ultimate decision-maker in the Party seemed to the students to be reminiscent of the old imperial system, and therefore not something that should be happening in the Communist Party. Posters and banners began to appear labeling Deng as a modern-day feudal emperor and demanding his resignation. One such large-character poster [dazibao] stated: The Qing Dynasty has already been extinct for seventy-six years (sic). Yet China still has an emperor without a crown, an aged, fatuous dictator. Yesterday afternoon, Secretary General Zhao Ziyang publicly announced that all of China's major policy decisions must be reviewed by this decrepit dictator, who must resign. is behind the times ... the dictator Although the students were seeking the ouster of the two most powerful men in the Party, these demands were aimed at speeding the progress of reform by removing the greatest impediments to reform, not at overthrowing the Communist Party as a whole. /Jibid, p 22. , . 74Large-Character Poster, in Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp 221-222. 37 On May 18th Li Peng agreed to meet with student leaders for a dialogue. However Li Peng refused to discuss reforms and only lectured the students about ending the protests. The students, on their part, merely berated Li Peng about the corruption within the Party, and the its anti-democratic nature. The meeting broke down without any progress being made.75 After the failure of the May dialogue, the students still retained their demand for a real, effective dialogue with the government. 75yi Mu and Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen _ (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 57. 76shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 304. On May 2 0th, after the ouster of the moderate Party General-Secretary Zhao Ziyang, the Party hard-liners, led by Li Peng, citing the disruption of government activities caused by the students, declared martial law in Beijing and sent troops from the People's Liberation Army to Beijing. The declaration of martial law caused another change in the demands of the students. After the declaration many students left the square. However, a great number remained there. They were determined to press their demands, even if they had to martyr themselves for their cause. Many made out their wills and wrote goodbyes to their parents and friends. The demands of the students still included a dialogue with the government about reform. However, they also began to 38 demand the lifting of martial law and a promise that there would be no reprisals against the students.77 Accompanying the new demands was an intensification of the campaign for the ouster of Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng. In addition the students also began to demand the resignation of other hard-liners in the Party leadership, such as Yang Shangkun. However, like before, these demands stopped short of calling for an overthrow of the Communist Party.78 77Liu Binyan, Tell The World, Trans. Henry L. Epstien, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p 55. Mu and. Mark V« Thompson, Crisis_at—Tiananman (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 22. The protests continued even as the Army began to move into the streets around Tiananmen in early June and to the eve of the violence of June 4th. However the students demands stayed the same as they had been with the declaration of martial law on the 21st of May. Thus it can be seen that from the inception of the student movement until it was crushed by Army tanks, the movement retained the same core goal of reforming the Chinese Communist Party. Although later demands were added to their list of demands, such as retraction of the April 26th editorial and the lifting of martial law, the push for reform remained the main goal of the Democracy Movement. Overall, the Democracy Movement's goal of reforming the Communist Party, and persistence despite the risks, 39 were very similar to the goals and dedication of the Red Guards. The members of both movements believed that the Party had strayed from the ideals it had been founded with. The Red Guards believed the members of the Party had strayed from Mao's ideal of the continuous socialist revolution and were leading China towards revisionism and capitalism. The students in the Democracy Movement believed the Party had strayed from its purpose of serving the people, because of its autocratic nature and the rampant corruption within its ranks. Both groups started movements to rectify the errors each perceived the Party to be making and kept this as the goal of their movement throughout its progress. Each movement, in addition also carried their reform movement against the highest-ranking members in the Party. Thus it can be seen that at least in terms of their goals, the two movements, if not identical, were at least very similar. The converging goals of the two movements were the first part of the pattern of structural similarity between the Red Guard Movement and the Democracy Movement. 40 PART Hi: ELITE LEADERSHIP It has already been shown that the Red Guard Movement and the Democracy Movement were differentiated by the catalysts behind their inception, their tactics and their different positions in vis-A-vis to governmental approval of their actions. However, despite these differences, the two movements were also structurally similar in that both were led from their very beginnings by students from China's most elite universities. In addition the Red Guards and the Democracy Movement were also similar in that the pattern of elite domination in both movements was two-tiered. In the first tier, the students of the elite universities in Bei j ing were the spearheads of both movements and had the greatest amount of power, both in Beijing and in the rest of China. They were widely accepted throughout China as the overall leaders of the two movements. The second level of the elite domination of the two movements was by students outside of Beijing, in other provinces and cities, who were from the local, provincial elite universities. Although the Beijing Red Guards and the Beijing students behind the Democracy Movement, were originally looked to as the ultimate authorities, the movements in the provinces were further led by students from each region's most elite universities. The Chinese higher education system consists of three levels of colleges: those which are run by local 41 municipalities; those which are run by the provincial governments; and those which are directly run by the national Ministry of Education in Beijing. Of these the nationally-run schools are China’s most elite and prestigious. These nationally-run schools include University of Beijing [Beida], Beijing Normal University, People’s University [Renda], and Qinghua, all of which are in Beijing. Other nationally-run schools outside of Beijing include Nankai University in Tianjin, Fudan University in Shanghai, Zhongshan University in Guangdong, Sichuan University in Sichuan, and Wuhan University in the middle-Yangzi valley. Of these, the schools in Beijing, especially Beida and Qinghua, were considered by the Chinese to be China’s best universities.80 However all the aforementioned Universities were very exclusive and prestigious. In China, all students who wished to enter universities were given a long, difficult, standardized college entrance exam. Only the students who scored extremely high on these tests were admitted to the national-level universities. 79Lo, Ruth Earnshaw, In the Eye of the Typhoon: An American Woman in China During the Cultuarl Revolution (New York: Da Capo Ress, 1980), p 288.. 8°Kraus, Richard, Personal Interview, 25 July 1991. At the onset of the Cultural Revolution, two universities, Qinghua and Beida, became the birthplace of the Red Guard movement. In addition, Qinghua and Beida 42 Red Guards were the first tier of elite domination of the Red Guards both in Beijing and the provinces. Qinghua and Beida were China's premiere universities. Consequently they attracted China's best, most intellectually able students. The students also tended to be the children of intellectuals and officials. In addition the students at these universities usually expected jobs in the government after they graduated. For all of these reasons the students tended to follow the actions of the government very closely.81 At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the students were well appraised of Mao actions vis-A-vis his opposition in the Party. On May 26, 1966, Mao Zedong, in a speech, praised a dazibao put up by a Beida Professor, Nie Yuanzi, in which she had accused the authorities at Beida of opposing the socialist revolution and called for an overthrow of these revisionist authorities. * In his speech, Mao stated, that Nie Yuanzi's dazibao was the "first true revolutionary [dazibao]" and that the students should follow Nie's example and criticize "those • 8 3who oppose the Great Cultural Revolution." o±ibid.82Milton, David and Nancy Milton, The Wind Shall Not Subside: Years in Revolutionary China - 1964-1969 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), p 129. , 82Mao Zedong, Speech: 21 July 1966, in The Pepplejs Republic of China 1949-1967: A Documentary Survey: Volume III: 1965-1967, The Cultural Revolution Part. I (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1980), p 1553. 43 Consequently the students began to cover the walls of Qinghua and Beida with dazibao in which they attacked what they saw as bourgeois tendencies at their universities. To fight these bourgeois elements the students formed discussion and criticism groups. Students at Qinghua were the first to call participants in these groups »Red Guards.” The term quickly caught on among the different revolutionary student groups at both Qinghua and Beida. These groups were the first Red Guard units. These early Red Guard units began to coalesce around the most outspoken critics of the authorities at Beida and Qinghua. For example, the aforementioned Nie Yuanzi, because of her recognition by Mao, became the first Red Guard leader at Beijing, while at Qinghua, an outspoken leftist student, Kuai Dafu became the first leader at Qinghua. The Beijing and Qinghua Red Guards actions were buoyed when Mao appeared at a rally wearing an arm-band with Red Guard [hong weibing] written on it, and when Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, appeared at Beida to praise the actions of the Red Guards there. This movement spread throughout all the universities in Beijing, and students throughout China formed their own Red Guard groups in 8 4 imitation of the Beijing Red Guards. 84Lo Fulang, Morning Breeze: A True Story of the Cultural Revolution (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989) , p 10« 44 However, the Beida and Qinghua Red Guards remained the most powerful and respected of the Red Guards, because they were the best informed,85 and by virtue of their status as the first Red Guard units formed, and the first to actively engage in struggle against the revisionism in the universities and in the government.86 Their status as the first Red Guards meant that ’’they received the strongest support from the central authorities."87 Almost all the Red Guard units in the city of Beijing were allied with the main Beijing units at Beida and Qinghua.88 The leaders of the main factions at the two universities, such as Kuai Dafu and Nie Yuanzi, owing to their status as leaders of the Red Guards at those elite schools were among the most powerful figures m Beijing. 85Bennett, Gordon A. and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972), p 71. 86ibid, p 91. 87Ken Ling, The Revenge of Heaven: Journal of a Young Chinese (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1972), p 160. 8°Yue Daiyun and Carol Wakeman, To the Storm: the Odyssey of a Revolutionary Chinese Woman (Berekley, California: University of California Press, 1985), p 201. 89ibid, p 170. 90Ken Ling, The Revenge of Heaven:_ Journal of a Young Chinese (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1972), p 35. The Qinghua and Beida Red Guard groups extended their power throughout China as a whole, by sending out members to "fan up the flames and light the fire of revolution,"90 that is to proselytize their beliefs and their models of organization among the new Red Guard 45 groups forming all over the country.91 Throughout China, middle-school and high school students had also begun to form their own Red Guard groups. However, many of these groups were unsure of their tactics and goals. 91Yue Daiyun and Carol Wakeman, To the Storm: the Odyssey of a Revolutionary Chinese—Woman (Berekley, California; University of California Press, 1985), p 200. 92Bennett, Gordon A. and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972), 93 ibid. 94ibid, p 72. Consequently, when Beida and Qinghua sent out students to teach and organize the Red Guards in other provinces, these emissaries were readily accepted by the provincial Red Guard units. According to Dai Xiaoai, a Red Guard leader in Guangdong province, when Song Xuemin, a Qinghua Red Guard came to organize their group along the lines of the Qinghua/Beida model, a meeting was immediately called to hear the "condescending”92 Song speak.: Song [Xuemin] had just arrived from Beijing. He was a Red Guard from Qinghua. That meant he knew all the latest news and also that he was entitled to our respect. We wanted to know if our organizational plan was correct. Song was the man who could tell us. Naturally we gave him our complete attention. 3 Since Song was a Qinghua Red Guard, his suggestions were adopted, because as Dai believed "opposing a Beijing Red Guard, would be like opposing Mao himself."’^ After Song had satisfied himself that his work was complete he left Dai Xiaoai’s unit to proselytize the organizational model and the tactics of the Beijing Red guards to other units in Guangdong province. p 71. 46 The Beijing Red Guards were believed by many to be the "mouthpiece" of Mao and his faction, consequently provincial Red Guards felt that listening to the Beijing Red Guards was the same as hearing it from Mao Zedong himself. For example, Ken Ling, a Fujian Red Guard leader stated that when the Beij ing Red Guards approved of the Fujian Red Guards attacks on a Party official in Fuzhou, the Fujian Red Guards felt they had received Mao’s personal blessing for their actions: since [the Beijing Red Guards] served as the mouthpieces of the central authority, [their approval] was as good as learning the latter’s intentions directly.95 95Ken Ling, The Revenge of Heaven: Journal of a Young Chinese (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1972), p 162. y ^ibid. 97Matthews, Thomas Jay, "The Cultural Revolution in Szechwan ’’ in The Cultural Revolution—in—the—Provinces, ed. Ezra'Vogel, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, pp 102-103. Thus whenever the Beijing Red Guards approved the actions •of a local faction, in their eyes, it was the same as Q ZZ . • .receiving the approval of Mao himself. The Beijing Red Guards also sponsored rallies and lectures for the provincial Red Guards. Sometimes they even took the leading role in attacking provincial officials.*' These Beijing Red Guards traveled as far as Heilongjiang in the far north, and Xinjiang and Tibet in the far west. Despite this, some Red Guard units did not receive emissaries. However, many of the units that did not receive emissaries from the Beijing, still felt it 47 necessary to establish liaisons with the Qinghua/Beida Red Guards because of their elite status. As Ken Ling a Red Guard leader from Fujian Province said, ’’[everybody] wanted to get close to the favorite child [the Beida/Qinghua Red Guards] of the central authorities," the central authorities being Mao and his group.98 These provincial Red Guard units also sought to ally themselves with the Beida/Qinghua Red Guards in order to strengthen their legitimacy in their own provinces. ^Kraus, Richard, Personal Interview, 25 July 1991, Eiig^QOrego". The Beijing Red Guards' position as the most powerful in all of China was also a result of the fact that the Red Guard newspapers they published were the most widely circulated and read in all of China. The Beijing Red Guards were close to the seat of power of the Chinese Communist Party, and the Beijing Red Guard were often leaked sensitive documents by people inside the government. Government officials leaked documents because they sympathized with the Red Guards and/or because the documents they leaked would incriminate their rivals.” Whatever the case, the Beijing Red Guards access to such documents meant that their publications were the most widely read. Their publications were even sometimes picked up and published by major Chinese publications because of their sensitive contents.Consequently the 98Ken Ling, The Revenge of Heaven; Journal of a Youna Chinese (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1972), p 161. 48 Beijing Red Guards influence was spread not only through direct contact, but also by both their own and by major national publications. The Beida/Qinghua Red Guards, however were not always welcomed by the local Red Guard units. Some Red Guard units did not welcome the intrusion by the arrogant Beijing Red Guards. Other Red Guard units resented the power of Red Guards who were not from their same province.101 However, despite the resentment against them, according to Dai Xiaoai the Beida/Qinghua Red Guards still remained the most powerful group in the Red Guards, and were acknowledged as the leaders of the movement.102 Most other Red Guard groups imitated their structure and their tactics and looked to them for news and inspiration. According to Lo Fulang, even though the provincial students resented the arrogance of the Beida/Qinghua Red Guards, the students in her school started their Red Guard faction in exact accordance to with what »'students in the city of Beijing had done earlier."103 Thus it can be seen that while the Beida/Qinghua Red Guards did not have dictatorial control over other Red Guards, they still had the greatest 1°1Ken Ling, The Revenge of Heaven: Journal_of a Young Chinese (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1972), p 162. ^^Bennett, Gordon A. and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-ai (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972), p 89.i05£o Fulang, Morning Breeze: A True Story of the Cultural Revolution (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 10* 49 influence over the movement in both Beijing and in the provinces. Almost all the other Red Guards respected them and paid close attention to their publications and actions. The elite domination of the Red Guards extended beyond the dominant role of the Red Guards from Qinghua and Beida. The provincial Red Guard movement was also dominated by the elite nationally-run universities located in the provinces. The power of these provincial elite universities was extensive in their provinces and sometimes in provinces near them, but their power was never nation-wide like that of the Beida and Qinghua Red Guards. After Mao called for the formation of the Red Guards, groups appeared in almost every university, high school and junior high school throughout China. In the beginning of the movement almost all of these Red Guard units were active in carrying out Mao’s directives. They attacked and struggled against the officials in their schools. However, as time progressed and the Red Guard movement grew more powerful, hierarchical coalitions formed among the Red Guards. In these coalitions, university students dominant over high school and junior high school students, and students from the elite universities were dominant over the students from less prestigious schools. 50 Dai Xiaoai stated that as a high school Red Guard leader, he had originally played an active role in deciding policy for Guangdong Red Guards. However as the movement progressed, and the Red Guards began to more thoroughly organize themselves and began to attack higher officials, Dai and other high school and junior high school students were excluded from any leadership role in the movement: Previously, middle school students had played a relatively active role ... [However], university students, with their greater access to communication channels, their broader background, and their generally greater levels of experience, emerged as the primary spokesmen for Canton’s student groups. Beginning in January 1967, [Dai's] involvement [in Red Guard activities] came increasingly to be manifested in observation, rather than direct participation in events. By January of 1967, [High] School students had ceased to be a salient leadership force. 04 Even when non-university students were allowed to directly participate in Red Guard activities, they were still led by university students. For example, in Sichuan Province, most of the Red Guard units from junior High and high Schools belonged to state-wide coalitions. In these coalitions, lower—level Red Guards were allowed to directly participate in the actions of the coalition. However, these coalitions were controlled by students from Sichuan and Chengdu universities, and it was these university students who planned policy for all the 104Bennett Gordon A. and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: The Political Biography of Dai Hsiap-ai (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972), p 142. 51 coalition members. Lo Fulang, a Sichuan Red Guard, stated that by August of 1967, Sichuan province was divided by two major Red Guard groups: the 8.26 [Red Guard] organization represent[ed] Sichuan University and The East is Red [Red Guard] group represent[ed] Chengdu University of Communications. All high schools groups [in Sichuan] obey[ed] one or the other of these universities.105 The Red Guard coalitions in the provinces were further dominated by the Red Guard groups from the elite universities. These elite students made the decisions, not only for the non-university Red Guards, but also for the Red Guards from the other universities in the province. For example, in Shanghai, according to Neal Hunter, an Australian teaching in Shanghai during the cultural Revolution, the Red Guards from Fudan University, a national level university, were the most powerful Red Guard group in Shanghai.106 In Guangdong province, the Red Guard movement was dominated by students from Zhongshan [Sun Yat-sen] University, a national level University in Guangzhou, and the leader of the Sun Yat-sen Red Guards, Wu Chuanpin, was the most powerful Red Guard leader in Guangdong.107 As a national level school, Sun Yat-sen University had much greater 105lo Fulang, Morning Breeze: A True Story of the Cultural Revolution (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 120.106Hunter, Neal, Shanghai Journal: An Eyewitness Account of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p 190.107Bennett, Gordon A. and Ronald N. Montaperto, Red Guard: The Political Biography—of—Dai—Hsiao—ai (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972), p 144. 52 resources and a more diverse, politically motivated student body. Zhongshan had liaisons with many other elite universities, including Beida and Qinghua. These connections helped Sun Yat-sen University students to coordinate their actions much better, and obtain information from Mao and the Cultural Revolution headquarters in Beijing before other Red Guard units. Consequently, when Red Guards seized control of the government of Guangzhou [Canton], Zhong Zhongshan Red Guards played a leading role.108 108ibid, p 147. 109ibid, p 148. Thus it can be seen that the elite domination of the Red Guard nationwide by Qinghua/Beida Red Guards, was paralleled in the provinces by local national level schools. Though the elite schools in the provinces were not as powerful as the Qinghua/Beida Red Guards, they had considerable power in their own provinces. Some provincial schools had liaison groups in other provinces who played major roles in Red Guard activities in the other province. For example Wuhan University had a Red Guard Liaison group in Guangzhou which played a leading role in the Red Guard seizure of power from Zhao Ziyang.109 However, the networks of liaison groups never approached the power and nationwide alliances that the Beida/Qinghua Red Guards enjoyed. The provincial 53 universities’ power was mainly limited to their home states. Overall the Red Guard Movement was nationally led by the elite Beijing groups because of their status as the originators of the movement. On the provincial level, the Beijing Red Guards had the most influence, but the elite universities at the provincial level also dominated the student movement in their province. This two-tiered pattern was almost completely repeated during the Democracy Movement. The Democracy Movement, like the Red Guards, originated at several elite national level universities in Beijing. These elite Beijing schools had the greatest power over the movement during its whole progression. In addition, the most powerful non-Beijing students involved in the Democracy Movement, as in the Red Guard movement, were the provincial National Level Universities. The Democracy Movement in Beijing was dominated from the beginning to the end by students from Beida and Beijing Normal University. Students from Beida had the greatest role in the actual creation of the movement. However, as the movement progressed, students from Beijing Normal began to play an equal role in the leadership of the Democracy Movement. Before Hu Yaobang's death, Beida had been the main hotbed of student discontentment in China, for according to Han Minzhu, a Chinese journalist, the Beida students were well aware of 54 "Beida’s ... rich tradition, stretching back to the May- Fourth Democracy Movement, of spearheading student protests against government policies. «HO As early as a year before Hu’s death Beijing students were meeting in the aforementioned ’’Democracy Salons” to discuss democratic reforms. These were the first of the formal democratic discussion groups. Other elite universities in Beijing, such as Qinghua, Beijing Normal, and People’s University [Renda], had Democracy Salons, but according to Han Minzhu, the Democracy Salon movements at the other universities were on a much smaller scale than those at Beida.111 The leaders of the Beida democracy salons, according to Liu Binyan, one of China’s foremost journalists, because of the experience they gained organizing these salons, such as Shen Tong and Wang Dan, went on to become some of the most powerful 112 leaders of the Democracy Movement. U0Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990). p 9. 111ibid, p 15. ii2Liu Binyan, Tell The World, Trans. Henry L. Epstien, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p 35. H^Mok Chiu Yu and J. Frank Harrison, voices from Tiananmen Square: Beijing Spring and the Democracy Movement (New York: Black Rose Books, 1990), p 15. When Hu Yaobang died Beida students took the first steps in starting the actual protest movement. The Beida students would play the greatest and most important role in the early days of the movement. Within several 55 hours of Hu Yaobang's death on April 15th, dazibao began to appear on the campus of Beida, mourning Hu Yaobang and suggesting "the wrong man died."114 The next day Beida students started the first actual protest at Tiananmen. On April 18th, 3,000 Beida students marched to Tiananmen square to lay wreaths commemorating Hu Yaobang. Along the route of their march, they were joined by several thousands students from Renda. Once in the square, the Beida and Renda students decided to present their aforementioned demands for reform to the Standing Committee of the Communist Party at their meeting place near Tiananmen. 114Yi Mu and Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen. (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 271. After the demonstrations had begun in earnest, Beida students formed the first student organization to lead the protests. Called the "Prepatory Committee," it was totally made up of Beida students. The members of this committee saw themselves as the leaders of the growing protest movement. The Beida students believed their school had the foremost tradition of leadership of student movements in China, a reputation they wanted to maintain, for as Yi Mu, another well-known Beijing journalist stated "Beida, which had laid claim to leadership in student movements ever since the May 4th Movement in 1919, did not want to be outdone by any other 56 schools.”115 As a consequence, most Beida students felt that they should be the ones to lead the movement in Tiananmen. The Beida students sought to maintain their position when other student groups tried to play leadership roles. For example, on April 19th a group of Qinghua students wanted to start a separate demonstration at Xinhuamen, a gate which led from Tiananmen to the homes of the high-ranking officials in the Zhongnanhai compound. However, members of the Prepatory Committee convinced the demonstrators not to follow the Qinghua students, but instead to stay with them in the square.117 According to Shen Tong, a leader of the Beida contingent in Tiananmen square, Beida’s dominant role was accepted by students from other schools. For example Shen Tong stated that early in the movement Beida students were leading a march to Tiananmen. During the course of the march they picked up students from other universities. When Beida students decided to leave halfway during the march, the students from other schools would not let them leave because they believed the protest march would not continue without the Beida students, ”’You can’t [leave],' one of them [a Renda student] said. ’If Beida leaves halfway, what will happen to the rest of us?’”118 115ibid, p 47.H^Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1990), p 173.117ibid, p 174. 118ibid, p 204. 57 The Beida students also had a great deal of control over the student movements because students at other universities looked to Beida as a model for their own actions. As the original founders of the Democracy movement, the Beida students were looked to as the most knowledgeable of all the student groups in the movement. Consequently, many of the actions taken by the Beida students were immediately emulated throughout the mass of student groups involved in the movement. For example, Liu Binyan stated that when Beida students decided to boycott classes because of the governments decision to ban them from the square, "students at more than a dozen universities and colleges announced they were also on strike."119 119Liu Binyan, Tell The World, Trans. Henry L. Epstien, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p 12. A turning point in the movement came when the students involved in the meeting decided to organize an official leadership coalition for the democracy movement. Beida ceased to be the dominant power in the student movement. Beida was still one of the most powerful participants in the movements. However, with the creation of the independent student union, students from another elite school, Beijing Normal University, came to play a large leadership role in the movement. From that moment on, the students from Beida, along with Beijing Normal, were the vanguard of the student movement and played the 58 biggest role in organizing the movement. As such, according to Yi Mu, they were recognized by other students as the leaders of the movement from the organization of the independent student union until the crushing of the Democracy Movement.120 120yi Mu and Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 41. 1*1^^ Binyan, Tell The World, Trans. Henry L. Epstien, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p 19. 122Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 191. As the movement grew, and students from over 40 Beijing universities were came to Tiananmen, the students recognized the need for some type of governing body in the square to both oversee food distribution and also to plot strategy for the movement. There already was a student union encompassing most of Beijing’s colleges. It was, however, sponsored by the government and was seen as being a puppet of the central authorities.121 Consequently the students felt the need for an student association independent of the government, it would serve as a council to plot strategy, and would represent all the student groups within the movement, so that if and when a dialogue was granted, ’’the movement would able to 12 2 speak with an unified voice. On April 21, Wuer Kaixi, a Beijing Normal student passed out a pamphlet announcing the establishment of a student association. When the association was elected, students from most of Beijing’s universities were 59 included on its board. Most were from the elite universities like Qinghua, Renda, Beida, and Beijing Normal. However, despite the membership in the new Interim Student Association of Beijing Colleges and Universities [ISABCU] being balanced, throughout the movement, the most powerful and influential leaders of the student movement were mainly from either Beijing Normal or Beida. According to Han Minzhu, an eyewitness to the Democracy Movement, Beida: by virtue of its prestige, its large number of student activists, and its early leadership of the [Democracy Movement], [was] the physical and symbolic center of the movement. 24 Beida students published the News Herald, the independent newspaper of the student movement.125 However, despite the dominant role of Beida, the Democracy Movement was also partly directed by Beijing Normal students. Wuer Kaixi, Feng Congde, and his wife Chai Ling were Beijing Normal students, Wang Dan and Shen Tong were Beida students. In addition Chai Ling had also been an undergraduate at Beida, and was doing graduate work at Beij ing Normal when the Democracy Movement broke out. Those five students were the most important and influential leaders in the student movement, and they had, according to Yi Mu: 123ibid, pp 190-91. . , 124Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990). p 70.125ibid, p 79. 60 naturally emerged as leaders as leaders because they had stood in the frontline of the movement and had played a major role in organizing the demonstrations, in other words those who were willing to stand up and risk the wrath of the government became the natural leaders.125 i2 6yi Mu ancj Mark V. Thompson, Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), p 41. 127Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990) 47.i28shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p 252. Only one of the most important Beijing leaders of the movement, Zhou Yongjun, a student at the University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, was not a member of either Beida or Beijing Normal. Students from these elite schools continued to dominate the movement until the end. Wuer Kaixi was one of the first Chairman of the ISABCU. When the students began their hunger strike on May 13th, the main leader behind the hunger strike was Chai Ling. Chai Ling traveled to Beida and other schools, to promote the hunger strike in order to increase the number of participants.127 By the time the hunger strike started, over half of the participants were Beida students.128 When the students’ demand for a dialogue with Li Peng was finally met, students from Beijing Normal and Beida were of a majority of those present. Wang Dan and Xiong Yan were present from Beida, while Wuer Kaixi was present from Beijing Normal. There were two students from two other universities present. However, the discussion 61 from beginning to end was almost completely monopolized by the students from Beida and Beijing Normal. Wang Dan and Wuer Kaixi made over eighty percent of the student commentary, while the two non-Beida/Beijing Normal Students made only three short comments between the two of them.129 129"Li Peng's Conversation with Student Leaders," in Crisis at Tiananmen (San Fransisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1989), Appendix I pp 168-176. iSOMok Chiu Yu and J. Frank Harrison, voices from Tiananmen Square: Beijing Spring and the Democr^gy Movement (New York: Black Rose Books, 1990}, p 23. In addition to the more famous leaders, other Beida and Beijing Normal students also continued to be the vanguard of the movement, and to be its most committed members. For example, on May 5th all the Beijing schools resumed classes except for Beijing Normal and Beida.130 Students at these universities refused to return to class, because they felt they had not yet accomplished their goals. The domination of the Democracy Movement by Beida and Beijing Normal students continued even after the square was taken over by students from other provinces. Non-Beijing students had been pouring into Beijing since April 21 to take part in the democracy movement. Even though they came to represent a large percentage of the total students in the square, they were denied a corresponding amount of power in the student movement. As their numbers grew, the non-Beijing students demanded to 62 be included in the decision-making process of the independent students union. However, according to Shen Tong, the leaders of the Democracy Movement would not let them join the ISABCU, believing that as the creators of the movement, Beijing students should have the final say in the decisions of the Democracy Movement.131 Finally, a compromise was reached. The non-Beijing students formed their own association, but also agreed to abide by the decisions of the Beijing independent student union.132 Thus the elite Beijing schools continued to dominate the movement. 131Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1990), p 282. 132 ibid. 133Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), p 328. By the end of the movement, non-Beijing students had become the overwhelming majority of the students in the square. At the end of June students from the provinces comprised 70 percent of the students in Tiananmen. However, Beijing students still controlled the movement. On May 23rd the leadership of the student movement had been transferred to a new leadership council, the "Protect Tiananmen Headquarters."133 The make up of this group still favored Beijing universities, despite the predominance of the non—Bejing students in the square. The overall leader of the new group was Chai Ling. Wuer Kaixi and Wang Dan also had prominent roles in this new 63 group. Only one non-Beijing student, Li Lu, a Nanjing University student, played a prominent role in the decision-making process for this group. Chai Ling remained the overall commander of the student movement until the June 4 crackdown. Thus it can be seen that the Democracy Movement in Beijing was dominated from beginning to end first by Beida students, then by a combination of Beijing Normal and Beida students. As the movement grew and began to receive press coverage throughout China, students in other provinces began to hold their own demonstrations. However, the Beijing students remained the overall leaders of the movement nationwide. The Beijing students' authority was acknowledged by schools and student leaders in other provinces. Their authority came from their status as the pioneers of the movement, and because of the establishment of alliances with groups in other provinces. By April 21st, the protests in support of the Democracy movement had broken out all over China. Newspapers reported demonstrations in Wuhan, Guangzhou . ■ *• 134[Canton], Shanghai, Chengdu, Xian and Tianjin. According to Liu Binyan these demonstrations were simply to show support for the actions of the Beijing students.135 However, the Beijing students soon began to 134ibid, p 23 2.135Liu Binyan, Tell The World, Trans. Henry L. Epstien, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), p 18. 64 establish ties with elite universities in other states, so as to effectively coordinate the activities of the Beijing and non-Beijing students. Beida sent out students to other universities in Tianjin and Shanghai. These Beida students asked the student groups in the universities to send daily reports of their activities to Beijing and to establish liaisons with the Beijing students.136 Those universities that the Beijing students did not send emissaries to were contacted by fax, phone and by mail. Students at the non-Beijing schools acknowledged the authority of the Beijing students and made an effort to strengthen their ties with Beijing. By April 24th Beijing students had contacted enough universities nation-wide to create the independent "National Federation of Student Unions of Universities and Colleges.1,137 Although the network formed by these activities was "loose ... and embryonic," they were sufficiently organized that by the beginning of May, student activists in the provinces were coordinating their actions with those of the Beijing students. Thus on May 4, the Beijing students were able to organize a nation-wide protest against the government in commemoration of the May 4 movement. Protests not only 136Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1990), p 189.137Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Deomocracy Movement (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990). p 70.138ibid, p 135. 65 occurred in Beijing and other major cities like Shanghai, Wuhan and Guangzhou, but also in smaller cities like Changsha, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Chongqing and even smaller cities like Taiyuan and Chengdu.13® This network would last until the Democracy Movement was suppressed on June 4th. Thus it can be seen that the Democracy Movement, like the Red Guard movement, was dominated, both in Beijing and in the provinces, by students from two elite Beijing universities. The provincial universities accepted the leadership role of the Beijing schools140 and based their actions on the example and the directions of the Beijing students, for as one eyewitness to the provincial Democracy wrote, 11 the raison d'etre of local [Democracy Movement] activities was to mobilize support, both moral and financial for the students in Beijing.”141 139ibid, p 134.140gj^gj^ Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston. Houghton Mifflin. 1990), p 162.14Inions of the Popular Unrest in Hangzhou April/June 1989,” in The Australian Journal of_C.h_ine.se Affairs, volume 33, January 1990, p 98. However, as during the Red Guard movement, there was a second level of elite domination in the student movement. The Beijing students were the national coordinators of the Democracy Moveme