I just finished reading the Tiananmen Papers. The book is a collection of official government and party documents smuggled out of China by a pseudonymous reformer, presumably one with access to such information, intent on revealing the Chinese leadership's motivations behind the crackdown against the democracy activists. The English language edition is a much-expurgated version of the Chinese edition, with helpful summaries of events and documents provided by the editors. The Tiananmen Papers suffers from the obvious potential flaw that their authenticity cannot be established. Indeed, the editors admit they "have no basis for proclaiming [the Tiananmen Papers'] authenticity with absolute authority" and that "no one outside of China can completely vouch for the authenticity of these transcripts". Nevertheless, the editors (Andrew J. Nathan, Perry Link, with Orville Schell providing a discussion about authenticity) -- all respected sinologists who visit China frequently and speak the language -- ultimately agreed to attach their names to the publication because the compiler of the Tiananmen Papers gradually established sufficient credibility.

Nevertheless, it remains that the papers' veracity cannot be conclusively established. Unfortunately, having read nothing else about China apart from news stories, this book of yet-to-be-proven value now represents the full breadth of Chinese history rattling around in my skull. As such, there is no controversy or theme that I have researched and analyzed. Instead, I have provided below a blog-like series of disjointed, transitionless, and unrelated discussions of topics from the book that struck my interest.

The students were patriots first, democrats second.

To call the students democratic activists is easy shorthand, but it oversimplifies the movement. They did indeed demand more openness and less corruption. But they never (at least not until the People's Liberation Army actually enforced martial law) actually called for abandonment of one-party governance. Indeed the students in Tiananmen square were actually asking for very little. Originally, they took to the streets to simultaneously mourn the death of reformer Hu Yaobang and demonstrate against official corruption. (Yaobang, a figure popular among liberals and reformers, suffered from the "two disses" (see below): disrespect and dismissal by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).) Initially, even conservatives within the government, including Deng Xiaoping and Premier Li Peng, sympathized with the concerns of the protestors. But when the marchers refused to go home, conservatives overreacted and labeled the students' activism as "turmoil" in an editorial in the official People's Daily. You and I might not think much of the label, but in China there is a quality of riotous treason associated with the word. From the April 26 editorial to the June 4th bloody crackdown various student groups, all jockeying for influence, made an ever-shifting set of demands: resignation of Li, resignation of Deng, end to official corruption, dialogue with Li and/or Deng and/or General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, and freedom of the press, among others. But the one demand that remained at the top of all the lists was retraction of the "turmoil" accusation. More than wanting democracy, the students wanted to be considered patriots. That they were both patriots that also yearned for freedom, irrespective of priorities, makes the massacre doubly tragic. Had Li and Deng understood this, as Zhao did, the crackdown might not have been necessary.

From the CCP's perspective, the butchers of Beijing made the right call

One would have hoped that, in light of the democratic revolutions throughout the world in the late 80s and early 90s, that Li's and Deng's decision to send in the troops would have ultimately resulted in a dangerous backlash from within China and without. Unfortunately for democrats, but fortunately for the Chinese totalitarians, just the opposite has happened. The troops so successfully crushed the student movement that 13 years later there is nary a whisper of democratic agitation audible from the student, intellectual, or worker populations. The Elders (Communist Party members, including Deng, with no official designation, but granted ultimate authority by the People's National Congress), Li, and the rest of the Politburo Standing Committee saw that the student movement included many, many ordinary Chinese. All of the Elders and Politburo members expressed apparently sincere concern for reforms and the danger of instability. Indeed, nearly all of the debate over enforcing martial law centered on preventing dangerous instability. Letting the democracy marchers continue their marching would, they said, bring about the end of CCP rule, Deng's all-important economic reforms, and, therefore, the state as well. Much of their own language, however, revealed that perhaps more was at stake than the future of Deng's open-door policies. Some of the language sounded less like tough love and more like old-fashioned tyranny. Wang Zhen, one of the Elders and the Vice President of the People's Republic (and from the meeting transcripts, apparently the most blood thirsty of them all), expressed his hostility toward the student movement quite openly: "We need to get the PLA ... out there hitting those counterrevolutionary rioters as hard as they can, arresting where necessary, killing when they need to, and being absolutely sure no rioters get away."

The truth is that there was also their personal well-being to consider. Had the movement succeeded, Li and all the rest would probably still be under house arrest (if not dead from old age). The Party rulers knew this -- and admitted to it. Elder and Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Li Xiannian, in a rare moment of veracity, threatened that "If we don't put Beijing under martial law we'll end up under house arrest." For them the crackdown was the only choice -- it would preserve both the Party and their privileges. The pathetic post-massacre rationalizations offered by the Politburo members revealed their defensiveness. Perhaps they knew they had done wrong; perhaps they understood that there really is no insurmountable contradiction between political liberalization and economic liberalization. Ultimately, it must be said, the crackdown was the Politburo's means of personal self-preservation.

We see today how well the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has learned the lessons of Tiananmen. The brutal repression of the Falun Gong faithful has been a masterfully successful attempt to preempt a future, uncontrollable, anti-government movement. Deng forshadowed this war against this harmless spiritual group just after the Tiananmen crackdown: "In the future, whenever it might be necessary, we will use severe measures to stamp out the first signs of turmoil as soon as they appear." Jiang Zemin will never have to worry about hundreds of thousands of Falun Gongers march in Tiananmen Square because many of them, dangerous or not, are already in prison or dead.

And despite the outrage in the West toward both the Tiananmen Square massacre and the repression of Falun Gong, neither the students nor the cultists have much to thank the West for. Within a year, the Bush administration sent secret envoys, including Brent Scowcroft, to share champagne toasts with the butchers of Beijing. The Europeans, with all their self-righteous love for constructive engagement, abandoned sanctions, too, and are now constructively engaging in trade with China.

Why would the right wing of the CCP conclude anything other than that they were right and Zhao Ziyang -- the true hero of the Communist Party -- was hopelessly naive?

The CCP governs by concensus, but only the back-stabbing, conniving kind.

The first half of the Tiananmen Papers is quite dull. This is largely because the Politburo's Standing Committee (the government organ that truly governs China, despite the fact that the Chinese Constitution grants final authority to the People's National Congress) seemed to agree on virtually all issues until just before the crackdown. There were no heated debates, as you might expect to see in a government under siege. Indeed, there were very few votes taken to determine the course of events. Every step of the way, General Secretary Zhao sought consensus in his path toward peaceful resolution. He praised the patriotic aims of the students and emphasized that their goals for less corruption was official Party policy. The rest of the Politburo echoed that praise and wisely followed his leadership.

Unfortunately, the April 26 "turmoil" editorial made a manageable situation nearly unmanageable. The editorial represented Deng's view of the situation, although Deng allowed Zhao to take the lead on resolving the crisis. Zhao realized too late the damage the editorial had caused, but still attempted to persuade the Politburo Standing Committee to retract it. Li refused to go along because Deng could not be seen to have been wrong. This is where the consensus collapsed -- or at the very least, the old consensus was replaced by a new one. Seeing that Zhao's peaceful approach was slow-going and might require too much contrition, Li and Deng favored martial law.

The Standing Committee, until then united behind peaceful resolution, could not find agreement on imposing martial law. So the issue went to the Elders, who quickly decided to send in troops. Refusing to play a part in violence against patriotic students, Zhao resigned from his position and the rest of the Standing Committee fell into line and backed martial law and the crackdown to the very end. That is, there was a consensus behind the martial law order. Nevertheless, clearng the Square wasn't enough. The Party had to punish Zhao for refusing to go along with the violence. As a result, he became the scapegoat. There was no sense of irony in the Committee members' words as they accused Zhao of sympathizing with and encouraging the rioters. This just goes to show that leading by consensus doesn't mean you can't still end up with a knife in your back.

The Chinese Like to Count

Although there is something bureaucratic and communist-sounding about precise counting of thoughts and ideas, all Chinese -- whether dissident, communist, or nationalist -- seem to love the accounting aspect of political philosophy. (I'm sure few outside of China knew that philosophy had an accounting component.) Here are some examples, in reverse numerical order:

• the five difficulties and one peculiarity;
• the four basic principles;
• the four modernizations;
• the four don'ts;
• the three people's principles; and (believer it or not)
• the two whatevers.

I don't imagine very many people here know what these phrase represent or why they need to be counted, so I've provided a brief definition for each:

• the five difficulties and one peculiarity -- describes the obstacles strategic planners must overcome in order to ensure the success of soldiers from rural backgrounds acting in an urban environment;
• the four basic principles -- standards of ideological correctness laid down by Deng Xiaoping in 1979: adherence to Marxist-Leninsist-Maoist thought, to the dictatorship of the proletariat, to Communist Party leadership, and to socialism;
• the four modernizations: Zhou Enlai's 1975 plan to achieve modernization by the year 2000 in industry, agriculture, national defense, and science and technology;
• the four don'ts: post-crackdown (June 6) means for former student activists to tune out government propaganda: don't listen, don't read, don't believe, don't ask;
• the three people's principles: guiding principles for Republican China, still honored in Taiwan: nationalism, democracy, and public welfare; and (believer it or not)
• the two whatevers: CCP founder Chen Duxiu, obviously either the laziest or most obsequious political philosopher of the party, asserted that "We must resolutely uphold whatever policies Chairman Mao adopted, and we must steadfastly abide by whatever instructions he gave." Deep.

I suspect that the proclivity to count results from its poetic or clever literary appeal in the Chinese language -- an appeal obviously lost in translation. Anyway, I was trying think of examples here in the United States of such a literal approach to identifying elements of political culture. We do have our own examples. Reports written by experts within the government are often called "white papers", irrespective of the color of paper on which the report appears. Counting appears in FDR's four freedoms (from fear, want, and two other awful things). But generally U.S. history lacks the mathematical precision of Chinese political thought. Here are some possible Chinese-like alternatives to aspects of our own history:

• the two sets of ten shall-nots: The Bill or Rights and the Ten Commandments
• the three whoop-assings: World War II, the Persian Gulf War, and the War in Afghanistan
• the one era of the three Democratic-Republican presidents: The Era of Good Feeling
• the two evils, the second containing three separately evil components: the Evil Empire and the Axis of Evil
• the two perhaps-we-shouldn't-haves: the Vietnam War and Somalia action
• the two pledges: to the flag of the United States of American and to the republic for which it stands
• the one revolutionary principle (or, alternatively, "the one 'no' and the one 'without'"): no taxation without representation

You get the picture.

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