Research Notes on Tian’anmen (Western Imperial Tradecraft and Background) Notes from “Seeds of Fire: China and The Story Behind the Attack on America” by Gordon Thomas, Dandelion Books, Tempe, Arizona, 2001 ISBN 1 893303-54-7
Part I Seeds of Tian’anmen: November 6 1988 NATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATION CENTER WASHINGTON D.C. to November 16, 1988 U.S. EMBASSY BEIJING
Jim Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii
1. “As the hours ticked by to the deadline for war set by the United Nations for Tuesday, January 15—and interrupted by Washington as expiring at noon Eastern Standard Time on that day—it became increasingly clear that Washington was conducting a dialog with the deaf. Yet, anxious to show it was doing everything to avert what Saddam was predicting would be ‘the mother of all wars’, the Bush administration was, for the most part, conducting its efforts as publicly as possible.
2. “The exception was its dealings with the hard-line Communist regime in Beijing. There, extraordinary secrecy prevailed. Only a handful in the administration outside of President George Bush and Secretary Baker were aware of the precise ebb and flow of the discussions. These were first intended to persuade China from vetoing the United Nations resolutions to use sanctions against Iraq shortly after it had invaded Kuwait and then, when the trade embargo failed, to persuade China to support a second resolution authorizing force to be used to expel Iraq from Kuwait.” (pp 143)
3. “The reasons for the secret dealings with China were rooted in the administration’s embarrassment at having to depend on Beijing for support, coupled with a sense of pragmatism, which had come to permeate the Bush presidency more than any of its recent predecessors. To grasp that reality it is important to understand that both UN resolutions had been proposed in the high-minded guise of ‘restoring’ Kuwait’s democratic right to exist as a sovereign nation. Those Americans who squinted into the desert sun and spoke of being ready to fight ‘a just war’ –one that would be swift and decisive, short and sweet, a Panama perhaps, but never another Vietnam—rarely paused to consider that democracy, as they understood it, had never existed in Kuwait. At best, the Gulf Kingdom was a family-run dictatorship that employed foreign labor under often harsh conditions: workers passports were confiscated to stop them leaving until their contracts expired; abuses of human rights were commonplace…Yet China, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, had the power to effectively wreck Bush’s determination to go to war unless Iraq obeyed the January 15 deadline.” (pp. 144)
4. “Bush also had learned much from his most recent experience of war. On December 20, 1989, he had ordered U.S. forces into Panama to arrest its de facto head of state, General Manuel Noriega. The UN General Assembly had denounced the invasion as a ‘flagrant violation of international law’. But for the administration, and indeed many Americans, the lofty ends justified the means: The invasion of Panama would stop drug traffic into the United States; it would restore ‘stability’ to the region. And of course it would ‘restore democracy’ to Panama.” (pp. 144)
5. The president, long castigated as a wimp, was preparing himself for a massive act of expediency, one that would reveal the kind of ruthlessness most doubted he possessed. Only those who served under the President when he was director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew that Bush had the steel to balance the fate of a few against what he saw as the greater good for America”…In this case the few were students, young Chinese who had tried in their homeland less than two years before to stage a revolution Bush had been reluctant to support, despite the fact that its genesis was the one word being increasingly used in Washington to justify intervention in the Persian Gulf—democracy.” (p. 145)
6. “Finally only China still vacillated over the use of force in the two weeks before the U.S. deadline expired. While expressing its concern over Saddam’s action against Kuwait, the Beijing regime continued to combine such talk with veiled criticism of an American-driven military action to remove Iraqi forces….The longer China hesitated, the stronger grew the article of faith in Washington that the success of what was being planned—all out war—depended on persuading the aged leadership in Beijing to support such action. No one in the administration undervalued the necessity of achieving this.”…For a decade China had depended upon sales to the Middle East and loaning out its technical expertise as yet another way to try and balance its embattled economy. In 1990, it had sold over $300 million worth of military hardware to Iraq, Iran and Syria. That had also strengthened its political position as to what Premier Li Peng had called ‘the new true friend of the Arabs.’ (pp. 146-47)
7. “With the collapse of Marxism-Leninism in half a dozen countries in Eastern Europe, the People’s Republic saw itself as the one surviving bastion against [bourgeois or fake] democracy.” (p. 147)…Yet in its very role as Communism’s great survivor, China had given the United States a hold over it. Within the upper echelons of the Bush administration this advantage had come to be known as the Tiananmen Trump. The card had been slipped into the State Department’s diplomatic deck following the massacre of students in Beijing’s historic Tiananmen Square on June 3, 1989….For the preceding fifty-five days those students, encouraged by a million or more, of their fellow citizens, had called for human rights in a most dramatic way. They had peacefully called for democracy in the face of one of the world’s currently most intransigent regimes. Young men and women with names often difficult to pronounce and, at best, an imperfect grasp of English had held the entire world in thrall.” (pp 147)
8. “There was Wuerkaixi, then a twenty-one-year-old bantam cock, whose dark good looks and all-knowing smile went with the California-style denims he wore. The anchor men of the network evening news shows—Rather, Jennings and Brokaw—hung on his every word. He did not disappoint them. His swashbuckling manner and confrontational style epitomized what was happening on Tiananmen Square. Within a week of first appearing there, Wuerkaixi received the ultimate accolade: His face appeared on T-shirts around the world.” (p. 147)
9. “Wang Dan achieved similar instant fame. At the time barely twenty years old, his wan face and physical frailty fitted the popular image of the fearless intellectual. His sweatshirts, baggy pants and hand-me-down black cotton shoes became a style imitated on campuses around the world. His words were endlessly quoted. He became the latest folk hero for a voracious media.” (p. 147)
10. “So had Chai Ling, an elfin-faced twenty-three-year-old. Her matchstick figure strode across the television screens of mesmerized nations. It somehow did not matter that what she said had to be translated. In any language it was a recognizable clarion cry, one that reflected her boundless energy and good humor. She was the revolution’s La Pasionaria—and hauntingly pretty too.” (p147) “There was Liu Gang, tall, slim, and almost handsome, with a liking for Western-style casual clothes that could have come off the rack at Sears. He was a pensive-faced twenty-eight-year-old in the TV group shots of the student leaders—the brilliant, if at times quixotic, thinker who knew which emotional button to push.” (p. 147)
11. “In those same group shots there appeared sometimes a young couple: Yang Li and his girlfriend, who like many of the student activists preferred to be known by one name, in her case her forename Meili. Yang Li had the unfathomable face of a thousand generations of peasants, a physical reminder he was, indeed, the first of his farming family to have reached higher education. Meili had the pale skin of a city girl and the manner and mores of the middle class. They made a striking couple.” (pp. 147-48)
12. “There was Yan Daobao. His tall and languid appearance masked a sharp political mind. To revolution he brought the broadening experience of a spell in California. With it came a preference for being known by his forename Daobao.” (p. 148)
13. “Among them they had dominated the world’s airwaves, showing themselves natural masters of the news bite, the telling quote, and the dramatic decision timed to gain their cause the widest possible exposure. They seemed unstoppable. The seeds of fire burning in their souls had appeared strong enough to sweep away their aged rulers and the deeply repressive system they had created fifty years before to control the world’s most populous nation….No one—not the reporters on the spot, their editors at their desks—stopped to ask if this could really be allowed to happen, not just by China’s rulers, but by all the other Western leaders, who each had a vested interest in ensuring that the status quo remained.” (p. 148)
14. “There was Britain with its vast trading ties to China. Her Majesty’s then prime minister Margaret Thatcher had made it plain that she wanted nothing—and no one—to threaten those trade links. Her attitude found its echo in Paris, Bonn and all those European capitals where governments approved massive business deals with China, on any given day worth billions of dollars…This attitude found its ready supporters in Washington, in all the corridors and offices where profit ruled supreme, where the view of China was primarily that of a vast untapped market. Its people—already more numerous than the combined populations of the United States, the Soviet Union, and all of Europe—represented a nation ready for Western investment and know-how. Every year twelve million more Chinese were born, each one adding to the attraction of the marketplace….The students had threatened all this by using a word they insisted would shake off that cruel jibe of Karl Marx: that their county was ‘a carefully preserved mummy in a hemetically-sealed coffin’… The word was democracy. “ (p. 148)
15. “Weeks before the first student marched, in the small colony of embassies inChina’s capital, expectations had reached a fever pitch. The diplomats knew from what people were saying, and sensed from the attitude of Chinese officials, that momentous events were taking place, that the founding fathers of the communist regime were increasingly locked in a deadly power struggle. Yet China, as they also knew, remained what it was at the time of the emperors: a country where mystery is a cult, secrecy a religion…Ambassadors asked each other how they could penetrate the bamboo walls when their embassies were like so many fortresses permanently under siege by the agents of Public Security. The Gonganbu, who followed their every move, listened shamelessly to their telephone conversations, vetted their telexes, opened their mail, and interrogated their domestic staff daily…American diplomats worked, albeit often uneasily, alongside their Soviet counterparts. The envoys of Britain and France found themselves in the same hutongs, the alleys of Beijing, as their colleagues from Poland and Romania. Australia’s diplomats dogged the paths of the Japanese. The envoys of Iran and Iraq hurried after each other. It was, remembers one European diplomat, ‘rather like something out of Alice in Wonderland.’ “(p. 149)
16. “Yet at first it seemed to the diplomats that their governments were not heeding what was being reported. In London, Washington, and elsewhere, China watchers in foreign ministries disagreed about what the portents meant; politicians tried to fit the pieces into their constantly changing global jigsaws…But many weeks before the first public call for democracy rose over Tiananmen Square, a number of governments knew what was about to happen and. Like the United States, had decided their responses would be dictated by wider considerations. For America, among much else, there was the need to maintain its CIA listening posts on the Sino-Soviet border and build upon its ever expanding trading links with China. For the Soviet Union, there was a question of what effect the students would have on Mikhail Gorbachev’s historic state visit to China. For Australia and other countries around the Pacific Rim, there were equally pressing economic and political questions to be considered.” (p. 148)
17. “In every capital city with ties to China, preparations on how to react to the gathering momentum with what was happening on the university campuses in Beijing. There, student factions were increasingly penetrated by the intelligence agencies of the superpowers, and their every change of plan became quickly known in Washington and Moscow. It was, said one intelligence officer there, the most penetrated student movement since the sixties. Those reports all helped leaders such as George Bush come to a decision…While the world watched the unfolding drama in Tiananmen Square, President Bush was secretly balancing pressures from the CIA and his military and economic advisors on the one hand to do nothing to endanger the administration’s links to the Beijing regime, and from the American people on the other to support the students.” (p. 149)
18. In the end, political pragmatism prevailed. In Washington, London, and other capitals, decisions were taken that however harshly the Chinese leadership chose to deal with the students, those leaders would not be ostracized for long. There would be official condemnation, of course, if only to diffuse public anger over their actions. But it must not go beyond that: Political, military and economic relationships with China were too important to be seriously disrupted…In all the places where they could have reasonably expected a firm commitment of support—Bush’s Oval Office, Thatcher’s Downing Street, and the offices of other leaders who fell into line—the students had become for all practical purposes expendable by those fateful days in June 1989.” (p. 150)
19. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1988 NATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATION CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.: “The six-story structure on the corner of M and First streets in the southeast quadrant of the city is known as Federal Building 213. It resembles a warehouse and appears no different from all the others around the old Washington Navy Yard on the bank of the Anacostia River. It is, however, enclosed by a fence strengthened to resist a Beirut-style car bomber and its gates are guarded by armed men…There are further indications that this non-descript building houses some of the most important elements of America’s strategic network. The first is the blue-and-white sign above the main entrance: National Photographic Interpretation Center. The second is the massive air-conditioning plant bolted to one side of 213. Seventy-five feet long and rising through floor after floor of bricked-in windows, the system cools the computers inside the building. Some are the size of a room, others of a house. The real monsters run the length or an entire floor. Day and night they sift and scan millions of pieces of information, slotting them into place among billions of items already stored in the database…The computers are sophisticated enough to correct distortion coming from the imaging sensors aboard the satellites the United States has positioned in space, eliminate atmospheric effects, sharpen out-of-focus images, turn them into three-dimensional objects, enhance the contrast between objects and their backgrounds, and, if need be, remove them totally from their surroundings for closer inspection. The computers also eliminate sun glare, take away shadows, and image objects totally obscured by cloud by using infrared radar. They can even use their radar ‘lenses’ to penetrate the earth and locate a thermonuclear rocket in its silo, or missiles hidden in a tunnel.” (p. 153)…”On the third floor are the China watchers. As well as monitoring its military installations—missile silos, air bases, weapons factories, nuclear reprocessing plants—they keep track of China’s agricultural and industrial development, its oil and gas production. They look for anything that can provide further insights into the country’s present situation…. “Now, eighteen months before the events in Tiananmen Square would become ingrained in the memory of untold millions of people, one of the photo interpreters assigned to keep watch over Beijing processed a sequence of satellite photographs taken from high over the city. They showed an area of several miles to the west of the great square, which was as usual filled with milling crowds of sightseers.” (p. 154)
20. On the keyboard of his video display unit he tapped in instructions that gave him access to the computer in which all of China is reduced to digital imagery.”…Moments later, on the screen appeared a high definition three-dimensional image of a military barracks in the corner of the district. Its parade square was filled with hundreds of soldiers. The technician pressed a tab to produce a hard copy from the laser printer beside the screen. A 24” x 24” photo appeared in seconds…Next he fed further instructions to the computer. Onto the screen came a succession of close-up images of some of the soldiers. Their heavy winter clothing was clearly visible…Onto the screen cam a star bedded in cloth. It was an enlargement of shoulder-tab of an officer’s uniform (p. 154)…’Nineteen photographs processed. They cover various resolutions. No cloud cover or atmospheric distortion. Photo sequence (1-8) shows the People’s Liberation Army Barracks Number Four in Wangshow District, West Beijing. Photo Sequence (9-13) shows it is currently HQ of the 27th Photo sequence (14-19) indicates elements of the Army are leaving. They are probably being sent to Tibet’…His report completed, the technician electronically transmitted it…until finally, if deemed important enough, it would form part of the President’s Daily Brief, a summary of the most sensitive and exclusive intelligence…The last time the technician’s work had appeared on the brief had been when he processed details about the previous year’s student unrest in Beijing. Then the satellite cameras had clearly caught the reaction of the Beijing authorities, a massive crackdown with widespread street arrests. Since then there had been no noticeable sign of student activity…The technician began to study the latest images from the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing…The satellite cameras had again photographed a group of old men shuffling along the towpath beside their private lake. The interpreter’s task was to identify who was present and who was missing from the Chinese leadership. The intelligence analysts at Langley, the State Department, and other federal agencies had learned to tell a great deal from a man’s presence or absence on the towpath, from whom he walked beside or avoided. When a man was not there, was he sick? Or out of favor? Orr even dead?…The technician knew this report would have an eager reader in Vice-President George Bush, soon, barring an unforeseen disaster, to become the forty-first President of the United States.” (p. 155)
21. “When he was director of Central Intelligence, Bush had insisted he be shown every intelligence item about China, however inconsequential. The old men of Zhongnanhai had long been a Bush fixation. He had been known to call at the oddest hours for more details about their latest sightings. He was like a birdwatcher. No matter how many times he saw them shuffling along, George Bush wanted to know more. (p.155)
22. “Webster had read the NID, the National Intelligence Daily, an agency-produced summary of the main overnight intelligence developments, and the PDB, the President’s Daily Brief, which contained the most sensitive and exclusive items from all U.S. intelligence agencies…Among them was a report on the Chinese government’s deal with Britain’s Cable and Wireless Company to purchase fiberoptic communications equipment sophisticated enough to ensure it was virtually secure against electronic bugging. The system was to be used to completely rewire the Zhongnanhai compound…When China first tried to buy the equipment three years earlier, President Reagan personally convinced Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that the sale would seriously hamper the CIA’s intelligence gathering. The agency often shared with Britain information it obtained in the People’s Republic. Mrs. Thatcher cancelled the contract…In a DCI EYES ONLY memo Webster had inherited from a predecessor, Admiral Stansfield Turner, the agency’s policy on spying on its allies was clearly encouraged. Turner wrote that ‘no one could surprise like a friend’. Mrs. Thatcher’s approval of the deal once more showed that.” (p. 172)
23. “The CIA had long ensured Zhongnanhai was liberally sprinkled with electronic bugs. Lives had been risked to plant listening devices in the compound’s buildings and trees and along the paths surrounding its lake. CIA officials regularly left the U.S. embassy in the city’s legation quarter to drive past Zhongnanhai. Their cars carried diplomatic number plates and were fitted with gadgetry to ‘vacuum’ conversations gathered by bugs. Though the Chinese Secret Intelligence Service electronically swept Zhongnanhai with regularity, Webster took pride in knowing that for every device located, another soon took its place….Bush had laid great store on information obtained from bugging the Chinese leadership compound when he was head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing in 1975 and, a year later, director of the CIA. He has spent many hours of his twelve-month stint in his suite on the seventh floor at Langley reading the intercepts of the old men who run China.” (p. 172)
24. “Webster was determined to convince Bush the Cable and Wireless deal was not a mortal blow, like those that had decimated U.S. intelligence gathering in Iran and Lebanon. As well as Zhongnanhai’s ground bugs, ultra-sophisticated hardware in space made him privy to military and political secrets being discussed by China’s leaders…Their words were sometimes snatched out of the air by aircraft hurtling through the earth’s outer atmosphere at twice the speed of sound. What they missed, other equipment silently garnered…A hundred miles out in space, satellites routinely observed the tidal wave of China’s two hundred million city dwellers surging to work. The satellite sensors were so sensitive they could distinguish between the beeping and honking of the three-wheelers and the jingle of the bicycle bells or separate the everyday sounds of China’s villages, home for two-thirds of all the world’s farmers. Their cameras were so powerful they could if required, have identified the type of fur on Li Peng’s hat or the tint in Zhao Ziyang’s glasses…Between 1,000 and 10,000 miles further out in space were more satellites endlessly monitoring China’s radar, measuring its ranges, frequencies and power levels. At 23,300 miles—the geosynchronous orbit, where objects in space remain stationary in relation to the ground—were yet more continually listening to, among much else, the microwave-link telephone conversations between members of China’s widely scattered People’s Liberation Army. At 60,000 miles, a quarter of the way to the moon, a solitary satellite waited, ready to capture the first double-flash of a thermonuclear device being activated in one of China’s launch sites….Webster had been told by the National Security Agency, like every DCI at his first briefing: If a farmer slaughtered a pig in China’s remotest province, within minutes NSA could provide a playback of the animal’s scrams.”…Primarily though, the system was to support politics at the highest level. The result of its eavesdropping helped to create U.S. foreign policy, shape a suitable diplomatic response, or exploit differences.”(p. 173)
25. The CIA analysts saw the students as responsible for much of the erosion of Party authority. Licensed and encouraged by Mao, at first they were the vigorous voice of proletarian power. They then began to act autonomously, and eventually mindlessly. Finally on April 5, 1976, they rampaged through Tiananmen Square, with Mao himself the target of their fury. Deng Xiaoping became a hero, calling their action ‘a popular uprising’. He had stamped his imprimatur on the legitimacy of mass protest in the heart of the capital. He had done so again when the Democracy Wall movement briefly flowered. It had helped to consolidate his political position. Agency analysts still disagreed whether Deng had cynically exploited the students or had been forced to suppress them by the conservatives of Zhongnanhai as the price for their support.” (p. 174
26. “CIA files contained details about their leaders. Wuerkaixi was described as ‘a super activist. Image conscious and prepared to lead from the front. Not all students like his confrontational style.’ Wang Dan was ‘working to create an independent student movement’ Yang Li was ‘one of the leading student strategists.’ Yan Daobao was ‘a militant’; Liu Gang, a twenty-eight-year-old physics major at Beijing University was characterized as ‘brilliant, if at times a quixotic thinker’; Chai Ling, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student at Beijing Teacher’s University seemed ‘a born revolutionary’—more committed than most of her male compatriots.’ The student leaders were credited with being ‘well spoken’ and ‘choosing their targets shrewdly. They draw moral strength from nationalism, the hard facts to support their arguments from the Wall Street Journal. They cite the Pope on the strategic struggle against social evil and know how to exploit Gorbachev’s perestroika for their own ends.’ The files repeatedly stated that the student leaders knew how to take an issue, human rights, and show that the basic denial of choice was what ultimately separated Communism from Democracy and would, in the end, doom it….Analyst had noted that in China ‘the state monopoly on mass communications, the lack of a multiparty system, and the absence of a genuine market economy, allowed student leaders to constantly reiterate that a nation which shaped so many of the laws of civilization should now be allowed to live within their framework.’ (p. 174)
27. “It was a heady philosophy. But was it strong enough to change the course of China’s political life? And, most crucial for Webster, should he recommend to the new administration that the United States begin to support the students in their aims? Should Bush encourage them to push for greater reform, freedom of speech, assembly and association? Or should the incoming President to curb his support for their democratic aims so as not to weaken the growing commercial and other ties linking the two countries? (p. 174)…The United States had played an important part over the past decade in helping China to become the fastest growing economy in the world. American corporations had made huge profits from doubling or even quadrupling the incomes of millions of Chinese and giving them a better standard of life. Yet with the GNP of the People’s Republic still only averaging $350 a year per capita, more huge profits were to be made from business joint ventures. Americans were digging mines and operating luxury hotels in China. The lure of the market was often its sheer size. A manufacturer had only to sell one can of cola in a year to each of those billion Chinese to become very rich. In addition there was the bonus of paying low wages; the average Chinese industrial wage was about $60 a month, less than a day’s salary in the United States. There was also the attraction for U.S. investors of training cheap labor with American technology making China still more dependent on the United States…All these were important considerations in Webster’s mind as he tried to decide what advice to give the President’s team.” (pp. 174-75)
28. “When they were seated, each with a copy of his position paper before him on the table, Webster told them: ‘I am going to switch things around a bit. I want to start with the student situation. I want to show you why they are probably going to be the key to what we can expect…’From this moment onward George bush would be fully apprised of exactly what the students of China were planning. At each step they took he would be given a choice of options, which ultimately came down to two: to support or not support them. That was the bottom line, in an updated version of President Truman’s famous saying that the buck stops here…It was an awesome responsibility, and as he began his briefing, Webster had no real idea how the next President would shoulder it. For his part the CIA director would be evenhanded, merely presenting the facts and being careful not to shade them with opinion. That would come later, if he were confirmed in his post.” (p. 176)
29. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1988 EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, BEIJING; The American Embassy compound is the largest in the legation quarter. It occupies most of one side of Xiu Bei Jie, a tree-lined avenue…The CIA agents who make their sweeps around Zhongnanhai have long learned to accept being followed….They work from a building in the compound known as Spook City, which has the appearance of a mansion in upstate New York. It has white walls and a solid looking front door. Its windows have anti-bugging alarms, primed to go off if any listening device is trained on the glass. Hidden detectors warn of parabolic microphones directed against the building. The roof has a number of aerials….The chancery is the most important building in the compound. Its exterior would grace an affluent American suburb. The ground-floor reception rooms are imposing. But behind the fire doors lies a warren of offices. Here, many of the embassy’s 110 diplomats work in often crowded conditions. For them China is another hardship posting in the service of their country.” (pp. 176-77)…One of them, James Laracco, the counselor for economic affairs…was a neat and meticulous man who brought to his work a formidable intellect, able to reduce the most complex issues to concise sentences. For most of this day he had been working on a report explaining some of the problems China would have to address during the first term of the Bush administration. The report was part of a briefing package for the President-elect…(p.177)
30. “Laracco wished Bush could be standing here with him, watching the young Chinese around the guard post. He would tell the next President they were part of the problem confronting China. There were millions more like them, educated and disenchanted. And out there in the vast hinterland were a far greater number, uneducated but equally disenfranchised. They presented China’s leaders with a growing threat….The problem facing Laracco was how to convey that opinion without sounding alarmist…His legal pad was already covered with his analysis of why ten years of economic reforms had failed. As usual, he had jotted down headings, the framework in which he would fashion and contain his arguments… ‘Population: no motivation to work harder. Inflation: remains on the increase. Government: has failed to curb corruption’, Laracco had written. He began to expand his argument. ‘The result is that the rising standard of living, and expectations, parallel the rising complaints. Past legacies continue to burden the country.’…He penned a judgment. The economy remains trapped in a no man’s land. On the one hand the reformers, led by Zhao Ziyang, are unable to move closer to a genuine market-oriented economy, while the conservatives under Li Peng are trying to return to total centralized control. It is a recipe for disaster.’…He believed the disaster could be triggered by China’s greatest and most pressing problem: how to cope with its population growth. (pp 177)
31. “It had needed almost 4,000 years for China to produce a population of 500 million. Yet in three decades, the 1950s to the 1980s, the figure had doubled. Mao had encouraged the soaring birth rate arguing that the larger the population, the greater would be China’s work force. It was a piece of Marxist dogma that did not take into account the basic problem of too many mouths and not enough food…Mao had introduced a public health program that had pushed the average life expectancy from thirty-two years in 1948 to sixty-four in 1988 (pp. 177)…To counter the problem of longevity coupled with a population explosion, Deng Xiaoping had introduced the most stringent family planning in history.” (p 177) Laracco began to formulate his next point. He too saw the students as having a key role in China’s future. They had learned from the mistakes of the past. He had little doubt that in any new protest movement they would be better organized and more persuasive and appealing. The inarticulate unemployed could well be swept along by the student’s passionate entreaties. A brute force of such magnitude would be almost impossible to subdue. Then China itself would be engulfed by ferment. Foreign investment in the country would be destroyed…Over the past decade $11.5 billion had been invested by the United States, Japan and Europe and China (p. 178)…Currently Portman Cos, the Atlanta-based developer, was engaged on a $175 million building project in Shanghai. The Dow Chemical Company had a $56 million contract to erect a processing plant near the seaport. The Texas-based Helen of Troy Corporation had contracts worth $68 million for hairdryers produced in China. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was engaged in a multimillion-dollar joint venture with the Chinese to manufacture transmissions systems in Shanghai. The General Foods Corporation had a similar deal to produce tapioca and instant coffee and other beverage mixes. American toy makers, garment makers, and distributors of cheap telephones, calculators, and radios from China had all helped to swell an investment program that was part of China’s sensational ten-year romance with the West in general, and the United States in particular, that had begun when President Jimmy Carter normalized relations with China in 1979.” (pp 178-79)
32. “Despite his pessimism over what had happened in the past decade, Laracco still believed that the only way forward for China was for the United States to continue to draw the country into ‘ a web of economic, technological and military ties which would prevent the Middle Kingdom from plunging back into internal struggle.’ …He would recommend that the new administration should do nothing to encourage the students.” (p. 179)
33. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1988 TIANANMEN SQUARE BEIJING to DECEMBER 26, 1988 “Several hundred miles in space a satellite camera captured the moment and captured it and transmitted it, as part of the early morning sweep of the city, to the National Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington. The technicians responsible for monitoring China now had fresh orders….They were to keep track of any signs of ‘untoward student activity’. The order had come from CIA director Webster and had formed part of a general brief to the agency’s operatives in China itself. President-elect Bush had specifically asked Webster to keep him personally updated on events in China with, according to one operative, ‘particular emphasis on that those students might be thinking of doing.’(p.183)…In ordering that, the incoming President was signaling that China’s students were very much a matter of concern for him, though Webster still had no clear idea exactly how Bush intended to reflect that interest. The CIA knew that to second-guess the President-elect on the matter was as tricky as predicting events in China. The country’s aged leadership had an uncanny knack of cofounding outsiders. At the moment, Webster had been told, ‘they are bumping over small potholes on the road to reform.’ (pp. 183-84)
34. SAME DAY,LATER FOREIGN LEGATION QUARTER BEIJING: “The first meetings of the day, some over breakfast, were being held in various embassies as diplomats and professional intelligence officers resumed the endless task of trying to discover what the Chinese leadership was planning….In the Canadian embassy on San Tun Li, Ambassador Earl S. Drake was closeted with senior staff. The Secret Intelligence Service officer assigned to the embassy began by briefing them on the latest visit to Beijing by a Canadian-born rocket scientist, Dr. Gerald Bull…Not only could China be plunged into recession if the students created serious unrest, but foreign confidence in China’s ability to honor its commitments would fade…The Canadian intelligence officer suggested that if the students once more took to the streets, there could be a significant difference in their tactics this time. They might appeal to the West to openly support their demands. Canada could well find itself in the forefront of such an appeal. In the officer’s view, ‘that could rock more boats than a stiff breeze does on the St. Lawrence Seaway.’…It was agreed that monitoring the student activity should become an important part of Canada’s intelligence presence in Beijing.(p. 184)…A similar decision had already been taken at the French embassy a few compounds further along the street. There Ambassador Charles Malo and minister-counselor, Gerard Chesnees, had sat over breakfast with Nicholas Chapuis, the cultural counselor. With them was the embassy’s senior intelligence officer, who operated under the cover of being one of the French attaches…Chapuis, a likable, glad-handing diplomat, had spent the previous day talking to students and their foreign expert teachers at one of the university campuses. He had learned of the meeting held in the nuclear shelter. In Chapuis’s view, the students were ‘muscle flexing.’ (pp. 184-85)…Ambassador Malo warned that nothing must be done ‘in the name of France’ to encourage them. To do so would place at risk the thousands of contracts between French and Chinese companies amounting to $4 billion, much of it in low-wage light industry…Similar sentiments were being expressed in missions as far apart on the political spectrum as the Soviet Union’s and Australia’s. In a score of embassies throughout the legation quarter, diplomats were beginning to focus their attention on the contry’s student population. In the words of Lindsay J. Watt, New Zealand’s ambassador, ‘these young folk had the potential to raise a whole storm—and when the dust settled there’d be no telling what had been blown away.’ (p. 185)
35. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1988, WASHINGTON, D.C. (Brick Townhouse 716 Jackson Place across from White House): “He [Webster] took them on a world tour, moving from Latin and Central America to Asia and South Africa. The next stop was Russia…Webster said the country was in trouble. He added emphatically ‘big trouble’…As well as having many economic problems, Moscow was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain homogeneity; there were too many ethnic groups and autonomous republics seeking independence. Webster added, Gorbachev could be presiding over the collapse of Soviet Communism…Tower shifted in his chair. ‘He’d never allow that’, Tower said, He’d have to go back to the old ways. Terror and mass deportation. Break the people before they get a chance to break the system.’ (p, 190)
36. “The director focused their attention on China’s internal situation….Ideological disagreement was deepening within the leadership. The outcome depended on whether the economy could remain on its ambitious course without inflation getting totally out of control. Yet if the economy remained on track, it could only increase the pressure for fuller democracy. That pressure was now beginning to come from outside the country…Many of the 40 million Chinese living overseas had been both wealthy and had kept their emotional links with their motherland. They had welcomed its reconstruction by pouring in money. In the past year alone $15 billion had been invested by Taiwan. In all, Chinese overseas investment totaled $70 billion. With it had come a call for greater democracy and the often thinly disguised threat to withdraw funding unless the demand was met…The country’s students were mobilizing. As usual, they were being led by those on Beijing’s campuses, where a total of 180,000 students were in residence. There was still no clear indication of what they would do to push for democracy.”…Webster said there was one question that would have to be faced and answered, Should the United States support the demands of democratization and encourage its allies to do so, or should it sit back and watch how political dissent would develop?…There was silence in the room. Then Baker said there was no need for him to remind everyone that as little as possible must be done to disturb America’s economic, political, and intelligence links with China. The secretary of state-designate then demonstrated how well he had absorbed the briefing paper Webster had circulated…’China faces two clear problems. One: Who will take over from Deng? None of the Politburo members has the power to prevail over the others in a factionalized environment. Two: The Chinese government is not strong enough to regulate the economy even if it can be tough with political unrest. That unrest cold increase as the benefits from reform reach their peak and the sources of economic growth become harder to predict.’…Baker then summarized the report prepared by James Laracco, the counselor for economic affairs at the United States Embassy in Beijing> Baker painted a portrait of China in the grip of low efficiency and growing inflation, currently at 30 percent, with some food items over 100 percent. Corruption was endemic, the credibility of the Party slipping, and the threat from student-led demonstrations growing more serious (p. 191)…Bush turned to Baker. ‘As soon as an opening arises, I want to go to Beijing.’ He made a chopping hand motion. ‘I want to sit down with Deng Xiaoping. I want to see where he is going.’ Another chop. ‘ I want to see how far we can go with him.’ …Webster nodded. He told the room that the aged Emperor Hirohito of Japan was finally at death’s door, he could only survive, at most, a few more weeks…Bush was smiling. ‘Perfect. I go to the funeral and on the way home I call in to see Deng.’..He once more chopped the air. (pp. 191-92)
37. MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1988 UNITED STATES EMBASSY, BEIJING “In Spook City it was business as usual for the handful of CIA officers who comprised the agency’s Beijing staton. Most of them had spent their Christmas Day making the rounds of other missions, listening and picking up the latest information. Their travels yielded very little, except a few hangovers…The exception was the man the others called Tom. He had spent his Christmas on a train returning from Nanjing. Ostensibly he had gone there to address the local business community in his guise as a member of the embassy’s economic staff. In reality he had visited an asset, or informer, a student at Nanjing University…Tom had deemed what he had learned sufficiently important to encrypt and transmit to Langley: The students’ union at Nanjing University, until recently moribund, was once again highly active. At a recent meeting attended by several hundred students, their leaders had said the economic situation was in a mess because of mismanagement by the central government…’In our discussions, a [Tom’s asset] said that the overwhelming reaction of the meeting was there must be change and that the students must lead the way’, Tom reported to Langley. (p. 198)
Some Research Notes on “Seeds of Fire” by Gordon Thomas Part 2
Jim Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii
- “MONDAY JANUARY 2, 1989 CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: “At the first 9:00 A.M. staff meeting of the New Year, Webster and his senior aides considered the Politburo meeting at Beidaihe. The National Security Agency had put together a full account. NSA staff supplement the work of CIA officers operating undercover from U.S. embassies and carry out the majority of eavesdropping operations abroad, regularly providing verbatim transcripts from high-level foreign government meetings…Part of the report had come from satellite surveillance and the agency’s own ultra secret and state-of-the-art collection technology. Some of the details had been confirmed by the National Reconnaissance Office, the low-profile agency with special responsibility for what its brief only called ‘other overhead intelligence gathering.’ This included the use of not only satellites but also spy planes. The NRO reported primarily to the Secretary of Defense. In practice, Webster controlled their activities. A portion of the report had been marked SCI, for Sensitive Compartmented Information, indicating the content was especially sensitive and would be seen only by those on the BIGOT list, still only a handful in the incoming administration.” (p. 214)
- “Many questions were being discussed at the staff meeting. Would Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang become increasingly isolated? Or would he try even harder to push through his reforms? And if he did, would he appeal for public support? Could he continue, for instance, to use newspapers such as the World Economic Herald to promote his ideas? Published in Shanghai, the paper now had an influence far beyond the city. It was read in all the capitals of the world and recognized as an advocate for reform”…”Fang Lizhi, the most astute of China’s intellectuals and a physicist hailed as the country’s Sakharov, had once more put his huge authority behind the call for human rights. Fang’s strategies had underpinned the 1986-87 student political protests. As a result he had been dismissed as vice-president of the University of Science and Technology at Hefei. But because of his worldwide reputation, no other action had been taken. Fang had continued to run a highly vocal campaign for change from his Beijing apartment. An old friend of Zhao’s, he demanded much that echoed the Party Secretary’s beliefs. The day of the Beidaihe meeting Fang had written to Deng asking that he release all political prisoners…’Without the right to express democracy, there can be no development’, he had concluded…If Fang had made the appeal with Zhao’s full approval, that undoubtedly placed the Party Secretary openly in sympathy with student demands and must surely further encourage their militancy. With Fang behind them, and Zhao behind him, would the students want to translate their demands into action?…Webster’s analysts said that if they did, the most likely day they would choose was the coming May 4, the seventieth anniversary of an important date in China’s recent history…” (p. 215)
- “On May 4, 1919, four thousand students had marched into Tiananmen Square protesting China’s humiliation at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles. The victors of the First World War had decided that Japan, not China, should receive Germany’s former territories on the Chinese coast. The students had chanted that China’s humiliation was the result of a corrupt political system…The May Fourth Movement, the first recorded organized student protest in China, had swiftly frown to challenge the country’s entire educational and social system. That summer too, Beijing had echoed with the call for unprecedented political change, an end to China’s feudal rule and the introduction of rule by law. The chant for ‘democratic reform’ had been heard in Tiananmen Square for weeks (p. 215)…The protest had even led to the birth of the Communist Party, and May 4 had remained a highly emotive celebration in the Party calendar.” (p. 215)…”But recently Deng had tried to play down its importance. His focus was on the coming October, the fortieth anniversary of the Chinese state…Yet Webster and his staff knew that May 4 would prove critical given the mood of China’s students…It fell on the eve of the forthcoming Sino-Soviet summit; Gorbachev would find himself in Beijing in the middle of student upheavals. Would he want to postpone his historic meeting with Deng until Deng’s house was in order? Or would he use the student protests for his own purposes, to push the idea that even in China, Communism must change?…It would be unthinkable for Deng to cancel the May 4 celebration. But could he control it? And would Zhao use the occasion to invite futher reforms? Would the Party Secretary be ready to set the youth on a path that could plunge China into chaos? Would Hu Yaobang emerge to support them? And how would the protest be stopped? What would the Army do? The commander of the 27th Army was still canvassing support from Tibet for his fellow commanders in China to take a strong line with any future unrest. Would he succeed?…Webster wanted as many answers as possible before Bush went calling on Deng…He told his staff the key to China’s future cold once more be in the hands of young people who almost certainly did not understand the responsibilities they had. In every contact the agency had with them, the director stressed, absolutely nothing must be done to encourage them to believe the United States would do anything to support their aims.” (p. 216)
- “MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1989 BEIJING: “In a few days the newly-elected President of the United States would come to Beijing, giving China the honor of being the second nation he would visit after his inauguration. The President and the First Lady would arrive from Tokyo after attending the funeral of Emperor Hirohito later in the month, but that would be largely a matter of protocol, not politics. Having the new leader of the Western world come for a state visit was seen as a major political coup for China’s leadership…No one doubted that as well as the glittering pomp and ceremony, there would be some very tough bargaining that would have far-reaching implications for China’s future. One of Cassy’s friends, an American diplomat in Beijing, had reduced the Bush visit to two questions: ‘Can the President and his hosts ensure that China continues its economic openness while not losing its ideological purity? Can China’s leaders ensure that domestic factors be made to interact with external factors?’… Other diplomats with whom Cassy was friendly, especially those from Europe, had predicted that Bush would go out of his way to convince his hosts that the last thing America wanted was to push Beijing backward, either to isolationism or into the arms of Moscow…When she had told Daobao, he had been genuinely shocked. He said all the student leaders had hoped President Bush would deliver a clear statement asking for an acceleration in human rights in return for continued U.S. economic support…Once more she had though how naive the students were. She was certain their aspirations were low in the calculations of America’s foreign policy makers. Her U.S. diplomat friend said there was simply too much at stake to risk upsetting Deng Xiaoping and the other old men of Zhongnanhai.” (p. 223)…A number of her Chinese friends said that the Bush visit was further proof of China’s standing in the world. This feeling had been reinforced by the news of the Sino-Soviet summit scheduled for May, which would officially mark the end of the long freeze in relations between the Communist super-powers.” (p.223.224)…[Yang Li]folded his arms before he spoke. ‘Do you think President Bush understands that China is to Gorbachev what Europe was to Peter the Great, a stage for him to try out his new political thinking?’…Cassy shook her head. I’ve no idea what the President thinks.’ There was a deliberate sharpness in her voice. The idea that she was infallible on American foreign policy had begin to wear thin…But Li continued to press. ‘Many Chinese feel the visit of the Soviet leader is not only a rapprochement with our people, but represents the first real challenge to the new administration in Washington. If that is so, then Bush will most certainly do nothing to upset our leaders. Therefore all our expectations will be based on a false premise. So should we not try and make our views known to the president?’…There were murmurs of agreement throughout the room. Conversations sprang up among several students as they debated what Li had said.” (p. 224)
- “SAME DAY LATER AT THE GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE” …”Foreign Minister Qian Qichen began by saying that the United States could no longer regard its relationship with China as being based upon a common opposition to Soviet expansion in the region. Americans now realized that China was at ‘the takeoff stage’. Every U.S. company doing business in the People’s Republic was anxious to develop those links, especially at the expense of the Japanese… Qian Qichen continued to argue that Bush would be anxious to present the United States ‘as an Asian power’. Sensing the bafflement of some of his listeners, the foreign minister explained the phrase: America wishes to be a major partner in China’s plans to replace Japan as the net superpower to emerge from the Pacific. Bush had indicated this desire by nominating James Lilley as the next ambassador to China. The diplomat had served in the region before and was known to be ‘a friend of China’s’. Henry Kissinger had spoken for Lilley. In the foreign minister’s view there could be no higher recommendation…Kissinger Associates had been helpful over the Bush visit, as always, providing supplementary briefing papers on U.S. expectations and what the new administration was prepared to offer in return. The United States wanted to increase its economic ties with China. In return, it would view with understanding how China resolved its internal problems. Stripped of all the verbosity that characterizes so many Kissinger Associates documents, it came down to that simple tradeoff… (p. 225)
- SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1989 BEIJING: …”Once more there was silence. Bush and his entourage knew why. China’s most celebrated dissident, astrophysicist, Fang Lizhi, had been included on the guest list in a belated move by Bush to appease what the President had called ‘the liberal element’ in the United States… Fang was to be the token dissident at the banquet. He would be there to dispel a growing impression that the new administration had established what Fang himself had recently called ‘a double standard on human rights’, tough on the Soviet Union and soft on China…Already Bush’s spokesmen, confirming that Fang had been invited, had made it clear that Bush had no intention of actually meeting the dissident, any more than the President intended to raise the subject of human rights in his discussion with China’s leadership…It was Zhao Ziyang who raised the subject.” (p. 227) He launched into what some State Department officials came to call ‘a tongue-lashing’ on the dangers for anyone who meddled in the internal affairs of China. (pp. 227-228)…While Bush sat somber-faced, hands clasped in his lap, Zhao delivered Deng’s message that those Chinese dissidents who advocated Western-style democracy could cause the nation’s economic reforms to fail…’That will neither contribute to the stability of China’s political situation, nor will it be conducive to the friendship between our two countries’, Zhao concluded…The warning shot drew no response from Bush.”…Hours later when Fang and his wife set out by car to attend the barbecue at the Great Wall Sheraton, they were stopped by police and told their invitation had been cancelled, almost certainly on the orders of Deng Xiaoping. Next day, as he left China, Bush expressed his ‘regret’ that Fang had not appeared at the festivities….Even before the plane left Chinese airspace, the first posters were being put up by the students around Beijing University. They demanded the right of ‘full intellectual and political freedom’ and ‘the right to meet whom we wish in the name of democracy.’ The students had finally delivered their first public proclamation.” (p. 228)
- “FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1989 GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE…Li Peng continued criticizing Fang for his latest statement to an American newspaper, that the students ‘are counting the days to May 4.’ The prime minister said this comment was tantamount to ‘excitement’ for the students to take over a celebration that belonged to the Party. The May 4 celebration was ‘a patriotic event’ which had paved the way for Communism…Vice-premier Yao Yilin’s rasping voice said ‘the problem went all the way back to the schools. Teachers have forgotten the reason why they teach, to instill proper patriotism and true socialist values.’… Beijing Party Secretary Li Xiaming led the cries of support with a strong attack on those ‘who want to pamper our youth with foolish ideas instead of pressuring them to be our next line of defense against the spread of bourgeois liberalism.’ (p. 233) SAME DAY, LATER, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: On Webster’s desk was a report marked CONFIDENTIAL, the lowest form of classification within the agency. It signified that material could ‘reasonably be expected to cause some form of damage to the national security.’ (p. 233)
- The document was the combined efforts of the half-dozen Chinese-speaking agents who accompanied Bush on his visit to China. On returning to Washington they had assembled in a fourth-floor conference room at CIA headquarters…On of the agents was a veteran of the days when the CIA had shipped arms to the Afghan rebels via China. Another had in 1979 helped create the first intelligence ties with China…In their days in Beijing, in the guise of visiting newsmen, the CIA operatives had spoken to a number of students and their supporters…Gullible and unsuspecting about who they were confiding in, several student leaders, including the voluble Wuerkaixi and the studious Wang Dan, had revealed enough to show that the students were only waiting for an excuse to demonstrate…The report concluded that the students believed that by calling for democracy, they would automatically receive the endorsement of the Bush administration despite the President having gone out of his way in China to give them no such encouragement…Having initialed the report and sent it on its way through the labyrinth of the Washington intelligence community, Webster ordered one of his assistants. To draft in his name an encoded instruction to Beijing Station—housed in that splendid colonial-style mansion known as Spook City—in the embassy compound to intensify its surveillance and penetration of all student activities. … The CIA had invested more, and had more to lose, in China than any other foreign intelligence agency. What Webster had once called ‘a bunch of kids politically wet behind the ears’ were most certainly not going to be allowed to threaten that investment or the billions of dollars American businesses had placed in China.” (p. 234).
- THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1989 WASHINGTON D.C. “DCI Webster’s reading on the way to work this morning included a report prepared by the FBI on Chinese intelligence activities in the United States (p. 237)…The FBI report also warned that some students might try to organize protests in the United States in support of the growing calls for democracy emanating from Chinese campuses. That would cause considerable embarrassment to Washington and the U.s. business community.”…(pp. 234-235)…Webster knew that the FBI was not alone in expressing concern about China’s students. The CIA’s Moscow station had reported the Kremlin viewed with ‘real concern’ the prospect of the students trying to embarrass Gorbachev during his state visit. From London had come evidence of ‘anxiety’ within the Foreign Office that the students would interfere with Britain’s delicate negotiations over the future of Hong Kong, due to be returned to China in 1997…CIA officers in Paris and Bonn reported that the French and German governments were under pressure from their business communities to do nothing to encourage China’s students in their search for democracy…One report, which had intrigued Webster, had come from the U.S. embassy in Dublin. It revealed that student leaders had visited the Irish embassy in Beijing and spoken to a diplomat there about the precise techniques needed to run a successful hunger strike. The diplomat, after stressing that the Irish government did not support such methods of protest, had given the students details of how the IRA manipulated public sympathy by such methods…Webster doubted if Beijing authorities would allow matters to go that far.” (p. 238)
10. “Cassy felt at that moment she was ‘part of history and privileged to be the only foreigner to be here to witness it’… She was wrong. Watching discretely nearby was the CIA officer Tom. From now on either he or one of his colleagues would maintain a permanent watch on the activities in the square. Other intelligence operatives would closely monitor developments on the city’s campuses. Their reports would enable the analysts, linguists, psychologists, and behaviorists at Langley to piece together what was happening. To help them to anticipate new events, still more agents would continue to vacuum up the mumbled words of China’s leaders in their compound at Zhongnanhai, capturing their fears and growing fury over what had begun to unfold beyond the high walls of their compound. The technology of the most sophisticated intelligence gathering agency in the world was being brought fully to bear on the last great secret society on earth.” (p. 244)
Research Notes on Western Intelligence Tradecraft Tian’anmen Seeds of Fire, Gordon Thomas Part 3
1. MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1989 BEIJING: “Daobao called the brief appearance in Tiananmen Square by the students ‘a testing. We wanted to see how the authorities would respond to a deliberate illegal action.’ … The Chinese Constitution recognized the right to demonstrate. But after the massive student protests of 1986-87, Li Xiaming, Party Secretary of the city, had introduced a by-law forbidding all public demonstrations that did not have the written consent of the Public Security Office. In practice it only issued permits for state-approved demonstrations…On the seven-mile journey back to the campus on Saturday evening the students had been ebullient: There had been no move by the authorities to intervene…Later Daobao promised a packed meeting in the coffeehouse. ‘They will do nothing because we will insist we are only showing respect for Hu [Yaobang]’…Late on Sunday evening the student leaders came together in a lecture hall at the University of Politics and Law in the city’s western suburbs…Eyes blinking owlishly behind thick-framed glasses, Wang Dan read out a message from Fang Lizhi, who was an authentic hero to the students. ‘The death of Hu is an opportunity for you to show the government you are unhappy with the present situation.’ Hours before, Fang had issued a similar statement to foreign journalists who knocked on his door seeking comment on Hu’s death. Fang’s support was greeted with jubilation by the student leaders; they had long seen him as someone who could look beyond the immediacy of the situation and judge its long-term effects.” (p.245)…”As if in anticipation of victory, Wuerkaixi wore a new denim jacket, a gift from one of the foreign expert teachers on campus. (p.245)…Another student had given Wang Dan a stronger pair of shoes, but the nearsighted student leader steadfastly refused to abandon his sweatshirt and black baggy pants. He said proudly that his close were as distinctive a uniform as Wuerkaixi’s. Chai Ling, as usual, had no time for such nonsense. Her slim legs were encased in a pair of old jeans, her face devoid of makeup (p. 246)…
2. At meetings, the student leaders also revealed the first hint of discord among them. Wuerkaixi, Daobao and Yang Li were among those who called for all-out militancy: abandoning the classroom to demonstrate throughout the city’s campuses, and then marching in force on Tiananmen Square. But even they had no clear idea what they would do there or how long they would stay…Wang Dan and Liu Gang continued to lead the call for caution. Nothing must be done that would allow the authorities to say theirs was not an act of genuine mourning but only of protest. Dan urged they must move slowly and carefully, all the time trying to anticipate the responses from the public and the leadership; they must constantly keep the memory of Hu to the forefront. Posters must call for Hu’s remains to be placed in a coffin alongside Mao’s in the mausoleum on Tiananmen Square. Other posters should tell Deng Xiaoping to admit he had made a mistake in dismissing Hu. But the content of the calligraphy ‘must be dignified and appear non-threatening to the leadership. This will then place us in a position where the leadership will still feel unhappy with us, but will have to accept our motives for demonstrating.’ There would be time enough, Wang Dan added, to decide what to do after this opening maneuver. The important thing was to make ‘a dignified statement’ to the memory of Hu Yaobang… But now, on this Monday morning, a plethora of new slogans and posters had sprouted not only throughout the city, but across the country. While some paid respect to Hu, many strongly condemned the Party and its leaders. There were blunt attacks on the crisis in education. And in the economy, the rampant corruption and lack of morality among Party officials, the resistance of the leaders to genuine political reform, and the suppression of freedom in the media. Most startling of all, thousands of posters launched a personal attack on Deng Xiaoping…Daobao and another student had been jointly responsible for organizing what they called ‘our poster war’….The militant students continued to plan, Wang Dan and the others who had urged caution were swept along by the enthusiasm and determination of Wuerkaixi.” (p. 246)…“The death of Hu Yaobang and the student protest in Tiananmen Square had produced a flurry of activity among foreign diplomats. Throughout Sunday they had composed appraisals and sent them to their foreign ministers.” (p. 246)…Some of the judgments were based on reports from intelligence operatives. Agents from the CIA, KGB, and European intelligence services had tapped their contacts on campuses—students and tutors, some of them ‘foreign experts’ to try to assess how the student leadership would respond to the former Party Secretary’s death. Dogging their footsteps were Qiao Shi’s agents on a similar mission. One European intelligence officer would recall that ‘not since the good old days of Berlin at the height of the Cold War could I remember so many of us out on the hoof.’…Britain’s ambassador, Sir Alan Donald, had dispatched to London a lengthy telegram warning that Hu’s death would be apotheosized by the students into a symbol for democratic reforms but was ‘unlikely to change the balance of power among the leadership.’ …Donald, a tough pragmatist behind his easygoing smile, had been in Beijing less than a year. But his reputation as one of Britain’s most astute diplomats in the Far East had been established from his time as political advisor in Hong Kong. The Chinese regarded the fifty-five-year-old Donald, who was fluent in Mandarin, as someone with whom they could do business. He had shown that by boosting Britain’s bilateral trade to a new record of 1.5 billion[pounds] a year…With it had come an increase in joint ventures, especially in technology and manufacturing. Donald had also played a key role in encouraging the Chinese to believe Britain would do nothing to jeopardize the handing over of Hong Kong. Underscoring his telegram was a reassurance that Hu’s death would not change Britain’s deepening relationships with the Middle Kingdom…The same sanguine view was being expressed to their government by other senior diplomats in Beijing. The student march on Saturday night was seen by Ramond Burghardt, the counselor for political affairs at the American embassy, as no more than ‘letting off a little steam.’ …However, by this Monday morning a rather different view was beginning to prevail at the embassy…CIA officers had gotten wind of the meeting at the University of Politics and Law and learned of the rash of posters that had appeared overnight attacking Deng Xioping and the leadership. The intelligence officer known as Tom had returned to the embassy with photographic evidence showing the extent of the protest posters. He told colleagues that Beijing University ‘is awash with banners calling for just about anything.’ …Diplomats and intelligence officers making the rounds of the city’s other campuses found the mood tense and expectant…This feeling was confirmed by Jeanne Moore, the young American journalist employed on the staff of the Party’s English language newspaper, China Daily. When Jeanne had come to work on Sunday, she had been given a copy of the Politburo eulogy for Hu Yaobang to translate into English. It struck her ‘as a fairly typical piece of leadership-speak’…The mood in the newspaper offices on Jintai Xilu was as tense as on the campuses…(p. 247)… Jeanne was sure that ‘the editors knew, from their own conversations with Zhongnanhai, that Hu’s death had caused great public speculation. In any other country this would be the major political story of the day, but this was China. Nothing could appear, would appear, without official sanction. And no one was going to give us that. The tension we all felt was caused by the frustration at being forced to accept the situation. But we also sensed that the students could be up to something serious. It was the same feeling just before the 1986-87 uprising, the same edginess and expectancy.’ (pp. 247-48)…She had called the paper’s bureaus in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hang Zhou. They reported that Hu’s death had led to posters critical of the Party and leadership appearing at local college and university campuses…Leaving the office on Sunday night, Jeanne saw the staff bulletin board contained several expressions of sympathy over Hu’s death. Impulsively, she h ad organized a collection among the staff to buy a wreath for Hu…This morning she had gone to a florist near the China Daily compound and purchased one fashioned from spring flowers. Walking from the shop, holding a large wreath in her hands, she had felt slightly foolish. She had no idea where she would place the tribute…When she returned home to her husband Jiang, a distinguished academic, told her what the students next planned to do. Jeanne realized she had found the solution to what to do with the wreath. She told Jiang she had also decided to keep a diary ‘to record all those things that were beginning to happen but would never find their way into print.’ (p. 248)
3. Barr Seitz, a tall, ruggedly handsome Yale graduate [Skull and Bones?] and another of the foreign experts teaching English at Beijing University, knew on this Monday morning ‘that the action was just around the corner, and IU sure wanted to be part of it.’ He confided that to the diary he had started since arriving in China…Seitz, whose father Raymond, was a senior State Department official in Washington, had come to Beijing the previous September after majoring in Chinese political science. Like most other foreign experts he received a monthly salary of $120 for teaching one class a week. He used his ample spare time to improve his written Chinese…Barr had developed a keen and sensitive ear for what was happening around him. What he had heard and seen in those weeks past convinced him that the students ‘are ready to blow’….During the weekend a student brought Barr home to meet his family. The youth and his parents had spent all their waking time talking about the portents of Hu’s death…Barr had once been struck by how ‘desperately the Chinese asked for change. My hosts were simple people with no great aspirations, except to have more of what any American would regard as the basics of life: a TV, fridge, maybe even a car. They tried to fit Hu’s death into that framework. Would his departure be used by the hardliners to cut back on such things or could it be used as a chance to push forward? I couldn’t imagine that kind of debate taking place anywhere else. It was a forcible reminder just how different were the value systems here from back home’ (pp.248-49)…On the way back to the campus, the student had told Barr: ‘You know those movies where the cavalry ride in and drive out the bad guys? Well, we are the cavalry. You want to ride with us?’…Bar had smiled and said he would think about it…By this Monday morning he had decided what he would do. He would try to get a part-time job with one of the U.S.TV network bureaus, which would be reinforcing their local staff to prepare news stories for the forthcoming Gorbachev visit. With his knowledge of the language ‘and how this town works’, the twenty-two-year-old figured he could hold his own ‘with any of those media stars when it came to getting things done, Chinese style.’ Working with a network would also give him a chance to get an overview of where the ‘student cavalry’ were heading.” (p. 249)