25 years on, Tiananmen Sq. crackdown haunts China

Contrary to rumours at the time, the documents show that army units did not fight one another.

On a spring evening in 1989, with the student occupation of Tiananmen Square entering its second month and the Chinese leadership unnerved and divided, top army commanders were summoned to headquarters to pledge their support for the use of military force to quash the protests. One refused.

In a stunning rebuke to his superiors, Maj Gen Xu Qinxian, leader of the mighty 38th Group Army, said the protests were a political problem, and should be settled through negotiations, not force, according to new accounts of his actions from researchers who interviewed him.

“I’d rather be beheaded than be a criminal in the eyes of history,” he told Yang Jisheng, a historian. Although General Xu was soon arrested, his defiance sent shudders through the party establishment, fueling speculation of a military revolt and heightening the leadership’s belief that the student-led protests were nothing less than an existential threat to the Communist Party.

The new details of the general’s defiance and the tremors it set off are among a series of disclosures about the intrigue inside the Chinese military preceding the bloody crackdown in Beijing on June 3 and 4, 1989, some contained in army documents spirited out of China in recent years, and others revealed in interviews with party insiders, former soldiers and other people directly involved in the events 25 years ago.

Contrary to rumours at the time, the documents show that army units did not fight one another. But they show that General Xu’s stand against the threatened use of lethal force fanned leaders’ fears that the military could be dragged into the political schisms and prompted party elders to mobilise an enormous number of troops.

Even after a quarter century, the night of bloodshed remains one of the most delicate subjects in Chinese politics, subjected to unrelenting attempts by the authorities to essentially erase it from history. Yet even now, new information is emerging that modifies the accepted understanding of that divisive event.

At the time, Deng Xiaoping, the party patriarch who presided over the crackdown, praised the military for its unflinching loyalty, and the image of a ruthlessly obedient army lingers even in some foreign accounts. But the military speeches and reports composed before June 4 that year, and in the months after, show soldiers troubled by misgivings, confusion, rumours and regrets about the brutal task assigned to them.

“The situation was fluid and confusing, and we underestimated the brutality of the struggle,” Capt Yang De’an, an officer with the People’s Armed Police, wrote in one assessment found among military documents acquired by the Princeton University Library.

 “It was hard to distinguish foes from friends, and the target to be attacked was unclear.” Some former soldiers and officials who agreed to talk about their roles in the crisis said they were alarmed by the state-enforced censorship and silencing of witnesses that has left a younger generation largely ignorant about one of the most devastating episodes in modern Chinese history.

“I personally didn’t do anything wrong,” said Li Xiaoming, who in 1989 was among the troops who set off toward Tiananmen Square, “but I feel that as a member, a participant, this was a shame on the Chinese military.” 

Confirming the accounts

While official secrecy makes it difficult to confirm elements of the new accounts, scholars who have reviewed the army’s internal reports, including unit-level descriptions of mobilisation as well as detailed accounts about the violent confrontations with protesters, say they are authentic.

An earlier attempt to pierce the party’s imposed blackout, “The Tiananmen Papers,” a collection of documents published in 2001, has been dogged by controversy about its intent and authenticity. The interviews and documents show that even at the time few in the military wanted to take direct responsibility for the decision to fire on civilians.

Even as troops pressed into Beijing, they were given vague, confusing instructions about what to do, and some commanders sought reassurances that they would not be required to shoot.

In an interview, a former party researcher with military ties confirmed the existence of a petition, signed by seven senior commanders, that called on the leadership to withdraw the troops.

“The people’s military belongs to the people, and cannot oppose the people,” stated the petition, according to the former researcher, Zhang Gang, who was then trying to broker compromise between the protesters and the government. “Even less can it kill the people.”

There were fewer episodes of outright military defiance, like that of General Xu. No dissident, he had written a letter in blood during the Korean War begging to join the army as an underage youth, according to Yang, the historian who was among the few people to interview him after 1989.

The elite 38th Group Army, which General Xu commanded from a base about 90 miles south of Beijing, was a bulwark protecting the capital.

Having witnessed the student protests during an earlier visit to Beijing, where he was receiving treatment for kidney stones, he feared the consequences of quelling them with troops trained to fight foreign invaders. Sending armed soldiers onto the streets, he warned, would risk indiscriminate bloodshed and stain the reputation of the People’s Liberation Army.

“If there was a conflict with ordinary civilians, and you couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, who would shoulder responsibility for problems?” he later said, according to Dai Qing, a Beijing writer who had access to separate interview notes with the general.

In the end, General Xu agreed to pass the orders to his officers, but not to lead armed troops into the capital. He was arrested, expelled from the party, and served four years in prison, Yang said.

According to an internal history of the army among the Princeton documents, his act kindled rumors among soldiers that officers of the 38th Group Army had resigned en masse and that the army had refused to enter Beijing.

To counter the hearsay, officers of the 38th were assembled to condemn their former commander and pledge unyielding obedience in enforcing martial law, according to the army documents.

But General Xu was not the sole dissenter within the military elite. Col. Wang Dong, a People’s Liberation Army officer and aide to a respected veteran commander, organised the petition of military leaders opposed to martial law, said Zhang, the former researcher. With Colonel Wang now dead, Zhang and others decided that the time had come to step forward with details of his role organising the petition.

Deng and his allies were so alarmed by spreading misgivings about martial law that they disconnected many of the so-called red phones that allowed senior officials to speak with one another, Zhang said. But Colonel Wang offered to use his elite connections to organise a show of dissent from within the military.

Copies of the petition spread around Beijing that May, but its origins and authenticity were unclear, diminishing its impact. But  Zhang, who had contacts with senior military officers, now says that he wrote down the statement and names during a phone call from Col. Wang and then passed it on to friends who made copies.