Book suggests Chinese leaders were split over Tiananmen crackdown

Student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989

In this story: Deng feared house arrest? 'They're really asking for it!' Papers published in book RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

HONG KONG -- Papers smuggled out of China by a disaffected civil servant provide a remarkable behind-the-scenes glimpse at how communist Chinese leaders responded to the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising.

If genuine, the documents reveal deep-seated paranoia by the party's top leaders, who responded to demands from hundreds of thousands of students and pro-democracy supporters by sending in the army.

Using machine guns, Chinese soldiers fired on the crowds, killing hundreds. Thousands more were rounded up in a nationwide crackdown.

Deng feared house arrest?

With Beijing paralyzed by protests on May 17, 1989, the standing committee of the Politburo, China's highest decision-making body, met at the home of Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader.

"If things continue like this, we could even end up under house arrest," Deng is quoted as saying. "After thinking long and hard about this, I've concluded that we should bring in the People's Liberation Army and declare martial law in Beijing."

According to the documents, Deng was encouraged by several members of his inner circle, but Zhao Ziyang, the pro-reform Communist Party general secretary, objected.

"Comrade Xiaoping, it will be hard for me to carry out this plan. I have difficulties with it," Zhao is quoted as saying.

Deng carried the day, ending seven weeks of protests when he sent in the troops.

RESOURCES The Tiananmen Papers (from Foreign Affairs Magazine)     VIDEO ARCHIVE Chinese government thwarts democracy movement -- June 3, 1989 (requires Quicktime)     IN-DEPTH SPECIAL Tiananmen: Ten Years Later    VIDEO CNN's Rebecca MacKinnon looks at the fallout from the Tiananmen revelations Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media) CNN's Mike Chinoy details new report that reveals what lead up to the Tiananmen Square crackdown Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     IN-DEPTH Visions of China     MESSAGE BOARD Share your thoughts on today's events in China

But that decision was not a majority one, as only two of the standing committee's five members voted to declare martial law. Deng, however, rammed the decision through with the support of eight retired but still-powerful hard-line party elders.

"The minority yields to the majority!" Deng exulted.

'They're really asking for it!'

The smuggled papers, said to be minutes of secret high-level meetings, Chinese intelligence reports and records of Deng's personal telephone calls, give a flavor of how agitated these old revolutionaries were at the student protesters occupying the Square.

"Who do they think they are, trampling on sacred ground like Tiananmen so long! They're really asking for it," Wang Zhen, a member of Deng's inner circle, is quoted as saying. "We should send the troops right now to grab those counterrevolutionaries ... What's the People's Liberation Army for, anyway?"

The documents depict then-Premier Li Peng, now number two in the ruling hierarchy, as manipulating information to spur Deng and the elder leaders into launching the crackdown.

And they show how the elders chose then-Shanghai party boss Jiang Zemin, now China's top leader, as the new party chief, without going through the official procedure of a standing committee vote.

Papers published in book

The documents, published as "The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leadership's Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People," was edited by Andrew Nathan, a professor of political science at Columbia University, and Perry Link, a professor of Chinese language and literature at Princeton University.

Deng

Nathan and Link, both well-known China experts, told The Associated Press the documents are consistent with the smattering of information already available outside China and with the testimonies of other former officials who have since fled.

The two professors also spent hours interviewing the former civil servant, who now lives outside China and uses the pseudonym Zhang Liang. They say he painstakingly transcribed original records from files in Beijing and elsewhere onto computer disks, which he brought with him out of China.

The 489-page book contains only brief excerpts from the disks, which, if printed out, would total about 15,000 pages in English.

Orville Schell, dean of the journalism school at the University of California-Berkeley and author of several books on China, worked with Nathan and Link. He said he was skeptical about the authenticity of the documents at first.

"Everyone involved in this project went on an odyssey from skepticism to belief that these were genuine," he said. "The most important thing was to be able to talk with the compiler."

He said the author's extensive knowledge of inner workings of Chinese government and the clarity of his motive in releasing documents -- helping reformers now jockeying for position in Beijing -- helped convince him that the work was legitimate.

CNN Hong Kong Bureau Chief Mike Chinoy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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CIA World Factbook 2000 -- China

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