Chinese government says Tiananmen papers are fake

In this story: Government tries to block disclosure Papers claim internal dissent on protests Disclosure may have negative effect on reform RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

BEIJING, China -- Papers released in the United States outlining the decisions Chinese leaders took in ordering a crackdown on democracy demonstrators in 1989 are fake, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday.

"Any attempt to play up the matter again and disrupt China by the despicable means of fabricating materials and distorting facts will be futile," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said in a statement issued early Tuesday.

The papers were purportedly smuggled out of China by a disaffected civil servant and were published over the weekend.

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It was the first official reaction to the papers, which were purportedly smuggled out of China by a disaffected civil servant and published in the United States.

But an editor of the book said the papers are authentic. "I agree with the statement that any attempt to put forward a fabrication would be completely futile," Andrew Nathan, co-editor of the book, told CNN.

"It would also be futile to try to cover up the fact that these documents are real documents," said Nathan, a professor of political science at Columbia University. "I sympathize with the authorities. At this point, the book has just been published. They really cannot know whether they're real or not, but as they research the matter, they will find that they are real documents."

Beijing has long argued the protests were an anti-government rebellion that had to be crushed to safeguard economic growth and communist rule. It has ignored calls for an inquiry into the crackdown that began June 4, 1989, in which hundreds were killed and thousands arrested in a nationwide effort that also froze debate about political reforms.

The papers are said to be based on minutes of secret meetings, intelligence reports, and logs of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's phone calls. They detail conversations Deng, who ordered the 1989 crackdown, had with other Communist leaders.

Zhu said that the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government believed the steps taken were "highly necessary to the stability and development of China." He said the conclusions the CPC and the government took regarding the disturbance "would not change."

Government tries to block disclosure

Initially, the government had no comment about the documents and China's wholly state-run media did not report them. But news of the papers leaked into China via the Internet, foreign radio broadcasts and word of mouth, stirring the beginnings of debate.

Chinese Web site censors sought to silence the discussion. One message that detailed CNN's coverage of the documents was deleted within minutes of appearing on a popular chat site. But other messages, some questioning why news of the documents was suppressed and whether they were authentic, briefly got through.

"To know whether the Tiananmen Papers are true or not, just look at them on an overseas Web site and judge for yourself. ... If one has done no wrong why fear other people knowing?" one surfer, using the name "sakel," said in a Web posting that was later deleted.

Said to be based on the minutes of secret high-level meetings, Chinese intelligence reports and records of Deng's private phone calls, the documents were published in "The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leadership's Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People." The 489-page book was released in the United States over the weekend.

If genuine, they offer a rare glimpse into the motivations and fears behind the communist leadership's decision to order troops into Tiananmen Square.

Papers claim internal dissent on protests

The papers detail how hard-line and reformist Chinese leaders disagreed about how to handle the huge pro-democracy demonstrations. The documents show how Communist Party elders led by Deng imposed martial law, ousted reformist party chief Zhao Ziyang and replaced him with Jiang Zemin, now China's president.

As with "Deep Throat," the secret source whose information helped expose the Watergate scandal, the identity of the civil servant who compiled the materials was a perplexing mystery for Chinese.

Wu Guoguang, a former aide to purged party chief Zhao, said the fact the papers got out indicated the existence of a faction within the Communist Party that supports political reform and wants the Tiananmen crackdown re-examined.

"Maybe the person who carried the documents is not a very high-level official, but quite senior leaders must have known about this," Wu said by telephone from Hong Kong.

The former civil servant, who uses the pseudonym Zhang Liang, painstakingly transcribed original records from files in Beijing and elsewhere onto computer disks, which he brought out of China, according to the book's editors, Nathan and Perry Link, a professor of Chinese language and literature at Princeton University.

Nathan says Communist Party members associated with the civil servant believe that challenging the official view that the Tiananmen protests were a violent anti-government riot will help spur political change.

Disclosure may have negative effect on reform

Bao Tong, once a senior communist official and adviser to Zhao who was imprisoned after the crackdown, said the documents could have a negative effect in China.

"It's possible some people will be scared and therefore say `politics cannot be reformed, news must continue to be blocked off, rights must be stripped away to an even greater extent,"' said Bao, who spent seven years in prison and another year detained in a guest house for leaking word of the crackdown.

But Bao also said the documents would be a revelation to a majority of today's government officials who were not privy to the leadership battles of 1989.

"It will make them reconsider how this incident happened, what kind of problem it was, what kind of society China's is, what kind of system we work under, what procedures and systems are used in Chinese decision-making, how did Tiananmen happen and how can we avoid a recurrence?" Bao said. "Everyone will be bound to consider these questions."

Dai Qing, a journalist of the 1980s also imprisoned after the crackdown, said the documents' release could convince President Jiang and Li Peng, China's No. 2 leader who as then-premier declared martial law in 1989, that it is not safe for them to step down in the coming two years, as is expected.

"If it has an effect on political reform in China it will be a bad one. It can't have a good effect," said Dai, now an author and frequent government critic. "It will make them even more obstinate."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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CIA World Factbook 2000 -- China

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