TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041690/0416006.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.7 KB | 127 lines

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                                                              WORLD, Page 32

CHINA

No Smiling -- It's Subversive


Facing the anniversary of the democracy movement, authorities
go to ludicrous lengths to quench "bourgeois liberalization"


    The call to protest was deliberately low key. In fax
messages Chinese dissidents abroad urged sympathizers on the
mainland to honor the April 15 anniversary of the beginning of
last year's pro-democracy upheaval by simply taking a stroll
through Beijing's Tiananmen Square. But the country's security
watchdogs were eavesdropping. Last week, at the suggested start
of the modest commemoration, police seized the 100-acre square
in the heart of the capital. As soldiers guarded the perimeter,
thousands of schoolchildren performed a ceremony to honor the
nation's revolutionary-war dead. When the security forces
melted away and Tiananmen was reopened to the public, scores of
plainclothes agents kept people from gathering in large
numbers.

    The scene was repeated four days later. This time the
protest was scheduled to coincide with Qingming, a festival in
which Chinese offer respect to the dead by sweeping their
graves. To ensure that the ritual did not turn into a mass
tribute to the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who perished in the
massacre of demonstrators last June, authorities ordered that
Beijing's cemeteries admit only those with death certificates
that proved their loved ones had died within the past year.
Citizens were warned to avoid any display of black armbands or
white flowers associated with mourning. "We were not only told
to stay away from the square," said an incredulous professor
in Beijing. "They also said we could not stroll in public and
smile at the same time."

    No detail of resistance is too small for China's hard-line
leadership to crush these days, despite the lifting of martial
law in Beijing last January. The campaign of repression that
followed the June Tiananmen massacre continues unabated, as
authorities attempt to roll back all vestiges of "bourgeois
liberalization."

    Anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 people, by Western diplomatic
estimates, have been arrested in connection with last year's
protest. Many have never been charged or brought to trial. For
those who do appear before a judge, the prospects are grim.
Earlier this year Ren Jianxin, the head of China's Supreme
People's Court, signaled that the country's move toward a more
independent judiciary had been reversed. Justice, he said,
cannot "be executed without the guidance" of the Communist
Party.

    The security forces have also been hauled further into line.
Last month top officers of the People's Armed Police Force, who
were criticized for failing to contain last year's upheavals,
were replaced by army generals. Police officers were given
doses of ideological indoctrination and loads of new antiriot
equipment. Despite the shape-up, Chai Ling, 23, one of the
three main leaders of the beleaguered democracy movement,
managed to escape a nationwide dragnet. Chai turned up in Paris
last week after ten months on the run within China.

    The Communist Party itself is still being "rectified,"
though less dramatically than the police. Key sympathizers of
deposed party leader Zhao Ziyang, who was sacked for supporting
last year's protests, have been demoted or dismissed. Last week
Premier Li Peng told reporters that Zhao, who has not been seen
in public since last May, is a "free man" but is still under
investigation for political crimes. Meanwhile, the party
process of Maoist-style "self-criticism," or recantation,
continues.

    As that process demonstrates, thought control is enjoying
a new heyday in China. Publishing houses are pouring out tracts
that extol doctrinaire Marxism. Censorship of the press has
been tightened further, and foreign journalists are frequently
subjected to open police surveillance.

    Because students were in the vanguard of the democracy
movement, campuses have been the special targets of the
orthodox juggernaut. Beijing has ordered that the 564,000
students graduating this year be assigned jobs at the
"grass-roots level" -- in small cities or the countryside.
Normally they would have been given mid-level government posts
or allowed to seek work on their own.

    In the meantime, the nation's 597,000 university freshmen
have spent the past school year in virtual isolation from
upperclassmen and faculty members considered politically
suspect. All 800 first-year students at Peking University, a
hotbed of last year's activism, were dispatched to an army camp
outside the capital for intensive military training and
ideological studies. If the brainwashing continues, says a
professor in Beijing, "we will see the ruin of a whole
generation, which is probably the best-educated group in the
country's history."

    But the picture is not entirely bleak. Try as they may, the
authorities have not managed to triumph completely. A
government survey of university students late last year found
that only 20% endorsed the views of the Communist Party. "The
students are defiantly cynical," says an instructor. "When they
heard they were not supposed to smile during Qingming, they
laughed uproariously." And miles away from Tiananmen Square,
beneath Beijing's Marco Polo Bridge, anonymous protesters
managed to pay tribute to the brief freedom of last summer. On
the dry riverbed they arranged hundreds of pebbles to spell out
LONG LIVE JUNE 3. The slogan honored citizens who gathered on
that night last year in a courageous attempt to stop the tanks
from rolling into the great square.


By Lisa Beyer. Reported by Sandra Burton and Jaime A.
FlorCruz/Beijing.