TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/060490/0604007.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.5 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 60

Three Lives, Then and Now



    For thousands of Chinese citizens, the massacre in Tiananmen
Square marked a personal turning point, irrevocably changing
their lives and forcing them to make choices they had never had
to contemplate. That was true for student leaders like Wuer
Kaixi, who headed Beijing's banned independent union of
students. It was also true for intellectuals like Zhou Duo, who
spent more than ten months in jail before being released three
weeks ago, and for officials like Xu Jiatun, who supported
conciliation with the protesters and mysteriously turned up in
California this month for an extended stay in the U.S. Their
stories:

    THE STUDENT

    With his handsome face and suave demeanor, Wuer Kaixi was
the obvious choice as poster boy of the overseas democracy
movement after he escaped from the mainland nearly a year ago.
Since then, however, the young dissident has lost some of his
hero's aura, and his rumored peccadilloes -- spending dissident
funds on a lavish lobster dinner, faking illness during press
conferences to avoid tough questions, and hyperinflating the
number of students killed last year -- have been well
chronicled in the press. But he is the wiser for it. "It was
hard, but that's what press freedom is all about," Wuer, 22,
said cheerfully last week in Paris, where he lives. "No one gets
away with anything."

    Though Wuer enrolled at Harvard last fall, he dropped out
in February, in part to focus full time on his role as vice
president of the Paris-based Federation for Democracy in China.
He had hoped to join the Goddess of Democracy and take part in
broadcasting pro-democracy messages into China from nearby
international waters. But fearing for Wuer's safety, the
project's organizers balked, and now that the ship has been
sequestered by anxious authorities in Taiwan, they plan to sell
it off.

    Wuer remains resolutely optimistic about his country's
future. "Events in Europe and in the Soviet Union have proved
that when the people are determined, the government must give
in," he says. But he recognizes that in the short run, the
outlook is bleak. Recently, Wuer received unconfirmed reports
that his father, a Communist Party member, had been placed
under house arrest in Beijing.

    THE INTELLECTUAL

    When sociologist Zhou Duo heard that the tanks were rumbling
toward Tiananmen Square, where he had been on a hunger strike
to show solidarity with the students, his first thought was to
wave a white flag. But he dismissed the idea as ignoble.
Instead, Zhou, 43, and popular singer Hou Dejian approached the
oncoming soldiers and negotiated an agreement that allowed the
demonstrators to withdraw peacefully.

    Three days later, Zhou went into hiding after he learned
that the innovative Stone Corp., the computer firm he had
worked for as a policy planner, had become the target of a
witch-hunt. Its president, Wan Runnan, now a leading dissident
in exile in Paris, had been close to then party chief Zhao
Ziyang and an ardent supporter of the students.

    Zhou made his way to the coastal city of Yantai, where he
stayed at a Stone guesthouse for three weeks before police
caught him. He was detained in a hostel in the Beijing area,
where, except for a three-day period of solitary confinement,
he was treated relatively well. Zhou was never formally charged
or tried. In December he was told he would be released shortly,
but it was another five months before he, along with 210
others, gained his freedom.

    For Zhou, who is jobless, there are no more thoughts,
however fleeting, of white flags. Asserting that he will
continue to speak out against China's leaders, he says, "I plan
to walk on two legs. One is to find a job. The other, when the
moment is opportune, is to kick their butts."

    THE OFFICIAL

    Everyone insists that Xu Jiatun has not defected. Beijing
says so. Washington says so. And Xu himself says so through
intermediaries. But it is clear that Xu had more on his mind
than the inviting sands of Malibu when he and three relatives
flew from Hong Kong to California four weeks ago. It isn't
every day, after all, that a member of the Communist Party's
Central Advisory Commission takes off for the hotbed of
bourgeois liberalism without permission.

    As the head of the Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong from 1983
until last February, Xu was Beijing's de facto ambassador to
the British colony, which is to revert to Chinese rule in 1997.
Though the 74-year-old Xu's Old Guard credentials are
impeccable -- he was among China's early revolutionaries -- he
advocated free-market reforms and was a close ally of Zhao
Ziyang's. Last year, when the demonstrations in Beijing sparked
sympathy protests in Hong Kong, Xu shook hands with some of the
hunger strikers who gathered outside his office building.

    Xu, who is reportedly living in Southern California, has
said through third parties that he is in the U.S. to vacation
and conduct "a broad survey of American society." So far, he
has visited the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. His friend Lu Keng,
a Hong Kong journalist, says this "research" will keep Xu in
America "for quite some time." Says Lu: "My feeling is that he
won't go back to China until Li Peng is no longer in power. He
may want to avoid retaliation." Xu's old associates in Beijing
may be cursing him, but Lu says the former envoy is "happy and
laughing a lot."