Special Event:
Legacy of Tiananmen Square

Aired June 4, 1998 - 6:30 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The assault on Tiananmen Square is now underway. Troops have entered the square from both the east and the west. There has been gunfire. There are people dead. There are people wounded in various places around Beijing. There are bodies and injured and dead all over the place. But at this hour contrary to some reports, we can see the goddess of democracy -- that replica of the Statue of Liberty still standing in Tiananmen Square.

Soldiers have now taken over Tiananmen Square. The protest there is thick. The crackdown is going to take many more hours, if not days before it is complete -- before we will know how many people have died, how many people have been wounded and just what kind of damage China has (UNINTELLIGIBLE) economic and political reform -- before taking its place as a respected member of the international community.

All those kinds of issues must suffer enormous consequences from what has happened here. But that's for the future, for the moment the iron fists of the People's Liberation army has come down on Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. The student protest has been crushed.

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CHINOY: It's been nine years since, as CNN's Beijing bureau chief I stood and watched as the Chinese army put an end to pro- democracy demonstrating in Tiananmen Square. Broadcast around the world, the crackdown for many, even today, remains the defining moment in shaping public perceptions of contemporary China.

But, with President Clinton due in Beijing shortly on a state visit that will controversial begin with a Chinese military honor guard inspection in the Square itself, perhaps this 9th anniversary is a good time to look back, both at what happened and what it means today.

It began with a death of Hue (ph) a reformist who had been general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party until his ouster by hard-liners in early 1987. When Hue he died in April 1989 students at Beijing University and other campuses were stirred into action.

Led by people like Wang Dan a Beijing University history major and Chi Ling (ph) a psychology student at Beijing Normal University, they took to the streets. As children of China's elite, their demands

on the face of it, were modest. They wanted, not revolution, but reform. More government openness and accountability, greater personal and political freedom, an end to corruption.

But with China's senior leader Deng Xiaoping, the architect of an economic reform process that excluded political change, presiding over a ruling elite divided between moderates and party ideologies the students demands exploded like a bomb -- Deng sided with the hard- liners in condemning the student movement as counterrevolutionary.

But a polarized leadership let the protest continue and gain momentum. With each passing day the students were joined by growing numbers of ordinary people fed up with arbitrary Communist Party rule and worried about the dislocations of Deng's market style economic reforms. The turning point came with the May visit to Beijing of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, pioneer of a more radical reform process in the Soviet Union.

As the international media descended on the Chinese capital to cover the summit, the stage for this grand diplomatic drama was literally stolen by the protesting students who began a hunger strike to back up their demands for change. For almost a week, the world watched in amazement as the students and their supporters occupied the symbolic heart of China, while Deng's government was forced to reschedule one Gorbachev event after another.

An unprecedented humiliation, all of it shown live on television across the globe. To those of us covering the drama, the story rapidly became what seemed to be a clear cut case of good guys and bad guys, especially when a day after Gorbachev's departure the hard- liners gained the upper hand in the Chinese leadership, declared martial law, mobilized the army in the suburbs of Beijing and pulled the plug on international satellite broadcasts.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE #1: The government has ordered us to shut down our facility -- Alec. We'll have to shut it down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE #1: OK. The government has ordered -- Our policy is the government has ordered us to shut down our facility. We are shutting our facility.

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CHINOY: For the next two weeks, there was an uneasy standoff during which moderate student leaders like Wang Dan tried to convince the protesters to declare victory and leave the Square while more radical activists like Chi Ling urged that the demonstrators remain. The question was whether the movement would run out of steam before the authorities ran out of patients.

But at the start of June, the protesters received a boost, students at the Central Academy Of Fine Arts built a goddess of democracy, a striking resemblance to the American Statue Of Liberty. They delivered it to Tiananmen square and it was displayed just across from the famous portrait of the father of China's communist revolution Chairman Mao.

Late on the night of June 3 and into the morning of the 4th The People's Army now created finally moved against the people of Beijing. Leaving a trail of bloodshed and bodies, the army took control of the Square, the Goddess Of Democracy was demolished. But as we witnessed two days later the spirit of defiance was not. The years have not dulled the emotional power of the image of that man in front of the tank, an image that has become one of the centuries great symbols of resistance to tyranny.

The fallout from the crackdown was swift and enduring. From annual commemorative marches in Hong Kong which continue to this day, to economic sanctions and political pressure from the west, to an American presidential candidate whose first run for office included the following declaration.

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WILLIAM J. CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: An America that will not coddle tyrants from Baghdad to Beijing.

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CHINOY: Tiananmen produced a dramatic transformation produced a dramatic transformation in international perceptions from China, from a pragmatic, rapidly modernizing partner to a brutal, authoritarian pariah. Nowhere more so than in the United States.

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ROBERT MANNING, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: The image of Tiananmen is permanently etched on the American psyche. I don't think we have gotten past that.

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CHINOY: Today, the ghosts of Tiananmen still linger over the Square and over much of the discussion about China. But after almost a decade, they serve as much to muddle as to clarify our understanding. For the China of 1998 is in fundamental ways not the China of 1989. The key players and the country have moved on, even if much of the world appears not to have noticed.

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CHINOY: He still resembles the picture on the government's 1989 most wanted list.

Slender with the delicate features of a college student. To those of us covering the story, Beijing University history major Wang Dan always seemed the most thoughtful of the Tiananmen protest leaders. The most clear eyed about the promise of that spring. And as he told us in an interview just before the crackdown about the risks.

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WANG DAN (through translator): My parents said they've watched me grow up. They know if I'm arrested or jailed, my only crime was that I loved my country.

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CHINOY: Wang Dan did go to jail for a total of 6 and a half years. When he was freed and sent into exile in the United States in April, his face was harder, the trauma of his ordeal evident. And with the benefit of almost a decade's reflection, Wang Dan publicly confessed to another trauma, a knowing guilt that he was partially responsible for the bloodshed.

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DAN (through translator): When so many people died, I have a feeling of moral guilt in the matter, and imagine I'll have it all my life.

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CHINOY: What haunts him most is his failure, in his eyes, to convince the students to leave the Square.

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DAN: Why do I feel responsible? First, I didn't try hard enough to get the students to leave. No matter how worthy our aims were, when so many people are killed, then the achievement doesn't count.

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CHINOY: Chi Ling, self-styled commander in chief of those occupying Tiananmen Square always seemed the most emotional of the student leaders. After the crackdown she and her then husband made a dramatic escape from China, announcing her flight to freedom in a tearful video.

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CHI LING, PROTEST LEADER: It seems like a long time, nine years, but it feels like just yesterday.

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CHINOY: In her long exile in the United States, Chi Ling has campaigned vocally against the Beijing regime, becoming something of a celebrity, even appearing at the 1992 Democratic convention. Unlike Wang Dan, she does not fault herself or the students for what happened, even though she urged the demonstrators to stay on the Square.

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LING: I do not have any regret. But I do have some survivors guilt because the bullet did not choose me, I lived. Many of my dear friends died and left life forever.

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CHINOY: Out of China for nearly a decade, Chi Ling's perception of the country's current leadership remains almost entirely negative.

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LING: It is this leadership, this regime, has all the power to choose to jail you, to arrest you, and to kill you or let you free. This is what we need to change.

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CHINOY: Young, inexperienced and impassioned, Chi Ling and many others who fled to U.S. after the crackdown eventually found themselves politically marginalized despite their often fleeting fame. Today Chi Ling is finishing up a degree at Harvard Business School and getting ready for a job with corporate American.

But, some exiled voices are being heard in China. In the Hong Kong studios of Radio Free Asia, a U.S. government funded station whose signal is beamed to China, Han Dun Fang (ph) is making his regular broadcast. Han led an independent trade union during the 1989 protest and spent several years in jail before being expelled from China and taking up residence in Hong Kong.

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HAN DUN FANG: I got time to speak to people in China -- and to the workers particularly -- on air three times a week. Through Radio Free Asia's program, and you know, I'm receiving telephone calls every day from the workers -- I view that now I'm living with the workers together because I'm talking to people every day on the phone.

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CHINOY: Although it led to imprisonment and exile, Han Dun Fang, like Chi Ling has no regrets about his role in 1989.

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FANG: Of course not. I was part of the movement and I was involved deeply, and I'm glad I was there to be -- to be part of the history and I mean even personal life that was a turning point of my personal life.

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CHINOY: For Han Dun Fang the Beijing spring's most important legacy was to undermine the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party in the eyes of the Chinese people.

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FANG: At that moment in '89 June 4, and almost every Chinese people, we don't believe in communism anymore. We don't believe the Communist Party is -- the representative of people anymore.

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CHINOY: Wang Dan preparing to resume his long interrupted studies at Harvard University has no love for the party that imprisoned him. But, he remains convinced there is a dynamic for change under way in China now, fueled by the country's market style economic reforms.

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DAN (through translator): In all these years, Chinese society and its people have changed a lot. I hope western countries can consider this fact.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE #2: Democracy award.

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CHINOY: As an exile, though, his own political role remains uncertain.

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DAN (through translator): There are limitations. Honestly speaking I admit by myself I don't have much of an impact. But I'll always see thing from China's viewpoint. After I have studied, I want to return to China. I don't have any intentions to stay forever in United States.

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CHINOY: Three paths to exile, three idealists facing the consequences of choices made almost a decade ago, forced to watch from a the outside as their country takes a new and unusual directions.

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CHINOY (voice-over): It was a time of heady idealism.

When those who marched believed they could change the world. But for many Chinese who joined the 1989 democracy movement, the passions have cooled as the memories have faded. After almost a decade, the clear cut choice between good and evil no longer seems so simple.

Thirty-nine-year-old Xiang Hong spent a year in jail after the crackdown. Now he runs a Beijing high-tech company and has put his activist past behind him.

XIANG HONG, FORMER DISSIDENT (through translator): Our intentions were good, but a lot of young students got carried away.

Looking back at some of the judgments we made about how to get things done, yes, I think some were wrong, or inappropriate for China's special situation.

CHINOY: Xiang Hong still sees himself as an agent for change. But it is a transformation that he, and many others, believes will take place through not through demonstrations, but through China's market-style economic reforms.

HONG (through translator): I've seen all kinds of things happen around me. Some had to do with the huge changes in Chinese economic and political life. And I've felt some of these changes here in my own company. Generally, I've found that since we now have an elementary market economic structure, by continuing down this road, China will have a glorious future.

CHINOY: It is a road that, since the Tiananmen crackdown, has undeniably changed the face of China. The lavish new department stores, the well-stocked markets, the thriving restaurants, all testify to an explosion of economic growth in recent years. An explosion set off when China's late leader Deng Xiaoping declared after Tiananmen that allowing people to make money would make them less inclined to protest on the streets. A trade-off to keep the Chinese Communist Party in power to be sure, but one which has produced a degree of openness in China unthinkable when I first visited the country 25 years ago.

Today, there are Internet cafes where ordinary Chinese, can with some restrictions, surf the World Wide Web. "We can connect with the whole world," says this woman, "international, Hong Kong, inside China, everywhere."

There are bowling alleys to cater for the leisure interests of a newly-emerging middle class. There are churches bursting with worshipers; religion making a come back with the discrediting of socialism as China's state ideology. Some, like this church in Beijing, officially sanctioned by the government. Others, like this house church, operating openly without government permission.

There has even been a cautious experiment with elections at the village level; carefully monitored, of course, with bread and butter concerns, not the legitimacy of the Communist Party, the main issue. But still, a first chance for China's peasants to choose their local leaders in a secret ballot, and perhaps a stepping stone to further political reforms.

In the leadership, too, there are been major changes. Deng Xiaoping, who called the shots in 1989, died last year. A new generation led by President Jiang Zemin has taken over. With the exception of the highly-unpopular Li Peng, now head of the countries's rubber-stamp parliament, virtually all the top officials directly responsible for the Tiananmen bloodletting have passed from the scene. The government says none of these changes would have happened without the crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

TANG GUOQIANG, CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESMAN (through translator): Now, when we look back, we find that had we not done so

at that time, China could not have maintained social and political stability in all the following years. It could not have advanced reform and opening-up program continuously. It could not have achieved sustained and rapid economic growth.

CHINOY: And yet, the ghosts of Tiananmen Square will not go away. On this, as on all other anniversaries, security in central Beijing has been stepped up. The sensitivities of the Chinese government, particularly acute now with President Clinton due shortly at a time of rising domestic discontent over unemployment, corruption and the other dislocations of accelerated reform. Despite the economic pragmatism, cultural openness and ideological flexibility, dissidents are still being detained and the leadership continues to resist calls for a reassessment of the events of 1989.

LIU JI, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (through translator): There is no way the government can reverse its position on June 4th. Wunt (ph), Chi Ling, and the others who instigated the disturbance, is responsible. No government can change its mind about the bad elements.

CHINOY: A repressive government presiding over an astonishing social and economic transformation. Former political prisoners at the forefront of China's experiment with capitalism. Others watching from exile while anguishing over their past actions.

(on camera): Nine years on, and there are still more questions than answers. Just how many people died when the army moved in? Who was the man in front of the tank, and what happened to him? Did the crackdown destroy the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, or by forcing it to speed up reform give the party a new lease on life? Could it all happen again?

(voice-over): Tiananmen as history, Tiananmen as symbol. The history, we now know, was more complicated. What we portrayed as a straight-forward story of black and white, contained more ambiguities and shades of gray than was apparent during those feverish days and nights in the Square.

But Tiananmen as symbol endures, a symbol of hope and fear, of memories suppressed but not erased. A symbol ironically so powerful that, nine years later, it obscures as much as it illuminates the paradoxes and complexities of China today.

I'm Mike Chinoy.

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