nyt (2013) elite in china molded in part by tam

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June 3, 2013

Elite in China Molded in Part by

TiananmenBy ANDREW JACOBSand CHRIS BUCKLEYBEIJING For four days, more than 400 of Chinas brightest political minds gathered in

smoke-clouded halls at a Beijing hotel, vigorously debating the nations future.

It was April 1989, and after a decade of economic transformation, China faced a clamor for

political liberalization. Days later, protests erupted in Tiananmen Square, and the lives of

those at the meeting took radically different turns. Several are now national leaders,

including Li Keqiang, Chinas prime minister. Others ended up in prison or exile, accused ofsupporting the demonstrations that shook the Communist Party and ended with soldiers

sweeping through the city on June 4, shooting dead hundreds of unarmed protesters and

bystanders.

The atmosphere at the meeting was to let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools

of thought contend, said Chen Yizi, who helped organize the conference. Afterwards, it was

impossible to hold a meeting like that where everyone was willing to debate different points

of view.

This year is the 24th anniversary of the bloodshed, and the first under a party leadership

dominated by officials with such intimate and ambivalent ties to the events of 1989. Many

top leaders served their political apprenticeship in the 1980s, when the boundaries between

the permissible and the forbidden were not as stark and heavily policed as they are now.

Their careers and friendships, and sometimes their viewpoints, overlapped with intellectuals,

officials and policy advisers who were jailed or dismissed after the June 4 crackdown.

Few expect Chinas new leaders, installed in November, to overturn the official verdict that

the protests were a counterrevolutionary rebellion that had to be crushed. But the

immersion of todays leaders in the political experimentation of the 1980s raises the question

of whether they will be more open to new ideas and discussion than their immediate

predecessors in high office.

Chinese leaders openly debate competing approaches to the economy, but their calls for

political liberalization have become increasingly rare. For now, at least, any potential

embrace of the more freewheeling spirit of the 1980s appears to be hindered by the

conformism demanded of those who have ascended in the hierarchy and their dread of

being accused of ideological heresy.

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Yet the lessons of June 4 and its repressive aftermath may weigh on the new leaders,

especially if they are confronted by another political uprising, said Wu Wei, a former aide to

Zhao Ziyang, the reform-minded party leader ousted shortly before the crackdown.

For those in power now, its still a heavy political burden, even if its one that they can never

openly discuss, Mr. Wu said. Now the people who took part in that time are middle-aged or

older, and its still a knot in their hearts.

Prime Minister Li, now 57, was one of six current members of the elite 25-member Politburo

who attended the meeting, according to Zhong Dajun, an editor for the official Xinhua news

agency at the time. Others included Li Yuanchao, the vice president; Wang Qishan, the chief

of anti-corruption investigations; and Yu Zhengsheng, who deals with policy toward religious

groups, ethnic minorities and nonparty groups.

Many of these future Chinese leaders were among the hundreds of thousands of students

who crowded into universities beginning in the late 1970s, eager for knowledge after years of

rote-learning Mao Zedong Thought during the Cultural Revolution, when colleges were

mostly shut or paralyzed by ideological campaigns. Photographs showed them dressed in the

blue or green cotton coats of the Mao era, a reminder of the drab conformity they yearned to

escape.

Throughout the Tiananmen upheaval, Xi Jinping, the nations current president, was a local

official in Fujian Province in Chinas southeast, far from the protests in Beijing. But his father,

Xi Zhongxun, a veteran Communist turned supporter of economic reform, had been a friend

of Hu Yaobang, the Communist Party leader demoted in 1987 for his liberal tendencies and

whose death in 1989 sent thousands swarming into Tiananmen Square to voice their grief

and demand steps toward democracy.

There are some indications that the elder Mr. Xi obliquely signaled opposition to martial law

but stepped into line after June 4, said Warren Sun, a historian at Monash University in

Australia.

At the time, China had abandoned the ideological zealotry of Maos era and pursued market

reforms under Deng Xiaoping that allowed farmers, factories and traders to escape state

fetters. The economic changes were accompanied by a ferment of new ideas and calls for

political opening and cultural renovation, despite counteroffensives against spiritual

pollution led by conservatives.

What we all shared was the belief that China had to reform, and to do so urgently, said

Chen Ziming, a writer. The only real division among students and scholars was whether toreform the economy first, or take on political reform first, or do both at the same time.

Many of Chinas current leaders started climbing the political ladder in this febrile


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atmosphere, when it was not unusual for officials to mix with advocates of more radical

change, and even to show some sympathy for them. As a student, Li Keqiang socialized with

Hu Ping and Wang Juntao, two firebrands who threw themselves into the unbridled student

elections of 1980. Friends say Mr. Li sometimes joined in campus salons, where students

stayed up late into the night debating electoral politics, Western philosophy and the excesses

of authoritarian rule.

Later, friends say, Mr. Li was cajoled by party officials into giving up the chance to study

abroad and instead became a cadre in the Communist Youth League.

At the time, we had a lot of views in common, said Mr. Wang, who was jailed after June 4

and left for the United States in 1994. A lot of the issues that came to divide us hadnt arisen

yet.

Other future leaders came from similar backgrounds. Wang Qishan, the current

anticorruption chief, won prominence in the early 1980s as one of the four reform

gentlemen, young intellectuals who advocated shifting away from a rigidly planned

economy. Later that decade, he sat on the editorial committee of Toward the Future, a series

of books avidly read by students.

Chen Yizi, the former leader of the government institute that organized the Beijing

conference, recalled having long chats with Mr. Wang and one long conversation with Mr. Li

in 1988. Referring to Chinas recently retired leadership, Mr. Chen said, This generation

should be more enlightened than Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao and their generation.

By 1989, divisions were tearing at the Communist leadership. Despite a decade of economic

growth, students and intellectuals were dismayed by corruption and the partys reluctance

to emulate the changes sweeping the Soviet bloc. The broader public was also irate about

official privilege and price reforms that had unleashed inflation.

Those tensions flared after the death of Hu Yaobang, when the mourning in Tiananmen

Square escalated into demands to curtail the power and privilege of the partys elite throughsteps to democracy and free speech.

Mr. Zhao and other relatively moderate members of the party hierarchy advocated

measured political liberalization and press freedoms to defuse discontent. But hard-liners

argued that liberalization was a menace, not a cure. They had the backing of Mr. Deng, who

was more enthusiastic about economic reforms than about political compromise.

Wang Juntao, the democracy advocate, recalled meeting Li Keqiang, his former universityacquaintance, for a last time in mid-May 1989, when Mr. Li was among a group of officials

trying to coax students to end a hunger strike and return to class. As a student, he used to

speak his mind, Mr. Wang said. Now some of that pushiness was gone. Hed become an


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official who deferred to his superiors, but I still think he had a sense of justice.

By the time the government declared martial law in Beijing on May 20, Mr. Zhaos authority

was broken, and Mr. Deng and party conservatives prepared a harsher response to students

clogging Tiananmen Square. Two weeks later, soldiers and tanks plowed toward the square,

and China went through a convulsion of purges and imprisonments.

To navigate these reversals, former acquaintances said Mr. Li and other Communist Youth

League officials showed a ruthless pragmatism to ward off suspicions of disloyalty, taking

steps that included attending meetings at which they denounced the protests as

counterrevolutionary. To survive in the party, you have to become an opportunist, Mr.

Wang said.

Soon after the June 4 crackdown, Xi Jinpings wife, Peng Liyuan, a singer in a military

troupe, was among the performers who entertained troops in Tiananmen Square.

Photographs of her performance, published in a Peoples Liberation Army magazine in 1989,

spread briefly on the Chinese Internet this year before disappearing a reminder of the

sensitivities of that time.

The party system changes people, said Mr. Wu, the former official. Once you go down that

path, you learn that to defend yourself, you have to defend the system. But I dont believe

that era left no traces on them.

Andrew Jacobs reported from Beijing, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong. Patrick Zuo

contributed research.
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nyt (2013) elite in china molded in part by tam

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