On the evening of Friday 3 June unarmed Peoples Laberation Army (PLA) troops were sent on foot from the outskirts of Beijing towards Tienaman Square. The people of Beijing and the students repulsed them, with minimum violence. But this was no serious attempt to break up the democracy movement protests. In fact, the troops were sent cynically to be beaten up, in order to provide a pretext for the carnage which was to follow the following evening.
But despite the almost nonviolent dispersal of the troops, the waiting battalions on the edge of the city were immediately told that their comrades had boen savagely heaten by the students. The units brought into Beijing to carry out the Deng Xiaoping Li Peng coup were from Manchuris and the Rusrian border. They had heen kept in ignorance of the events in Beijing and the other major Chinese cities. and fired up with stories of about counter revolutionaries trying to overthrow "socialism",
It is now clear that the Deng-Li Peng faction in the Communist Party leadership had intended all along to massacre the student protestersand the large numbers of workers who supported them. The bloodbath was postponed for two reasons; first because the regime could not carry out their ruthless action during the Gorbachev visit, and second becuuse the Beijing garrison and neighbouring units were unwilling to plough through the barricades crocted by the workers.
The coup has a deadly logic. The CP leadership had the choice of either making major concessions to head off the democratic movement, or to drive it off the strects with terror. Once a military solution has hoon decided upon, it can only be successful by heing carried through to the end. And that means murdering the protesters in their thousands - and random killing to intimidate the workers. The ruthless action of the coup was prompted precisely by the link up between the students and the workers, including the un
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CHINA:
Countdown to a massacre official independent trade unions, who established their own organising centre in Tienaman Square,
Two events sparked off the student protests in late April. First, the death of Hu Yaobang, a veteran of the Long March, sacked two years ago by Deng following the student prutests of December 1986. Hu Yaobang was considered a liberal and "responsible for the student upsurge. The demonstrations after Hu's death had strong parallels with the mass demonstrations in Tienaman Square after the death of Zhou Enlai in 1976. The second event was of course the visit of Gorbachev, clearly associated in the minds ofthe student protestors with democratisation, with the glasnost which China has not seen, despite the radical perestroika" in the economy since 1978.
During Gorbachev's visit up to two million people demonstrated around Tienaman Square and the Forbidden City. It is clear that a Fierce struggle inside the CP leadership was already taking place during the Gorbachev visit, between the Deng-Li Peng faction and the reformers" led by Zhoa Ziyang. In fact, there were already tensions in the leadership before Gorbachev's visit, with Former president Li Xianian spearhcading a conservative atlack on the "liberalism" of Zhao Ziyang.
By the time of Gorbachev's departure on 18 May, the Li-Deng faction had won the power strug gle, turing for support to the 'Consultaive Council' of party elders, which crucially includes the veteran Peng Zhen, fomer mayor of Beijing, who led a long struggle against Mao, from 1959 to the end of the Cultural Revolu tion. Also vital to Deng's alliances is Prosident Yang Shangkun, a former field marshal, whose son is said in he army chief of staff. Yang's influence with the army was apparently vital in securing the coopcration of its com-
Martial law was declared lato on the evening of 19 May. Reports suggest that Deng then left Beijing to consult with party and military leaders in Wuhan. China's party and military structure is heavily dependent on regional tion and leaders. It was the Communist Party regional leaders' op position to Mao Zedong which led to the unleashing of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. It seems likoly that the regional army commanders extracted promises of more power and resources to the army, in retarn for their loyalty to the reginie.
Up until the declaration of martial law the democracy movement bad created deep divisions in the state apparatus, Magistrates and soldiers in uniform. journalists from the Peoples Daily and state broadcasting network, and mil lions of workers joined in the movement. The first attempts to niove troops into the city, on the weekend of 20-21 May, were met by a popular uprising of the workers of Beijing, whose burricades and mass fraternisation with the troops prevented their entry into the centre of the city. For the whole of the next week, barricades were erected each evening to keep out the troops as the workers mobilised.
But by the end of May the movement started to experience a crisis of perspective, as the news that Zhao Ziyang had been defeated and put under house arrest leaked out. In the absence of any organised political opposition to the Communist Party, the de facto perspective of the movement was for a change in the CP Jeader ship to implement democratic refonns. When this appeared less and less likely students began to drift off,hack to their campuses in niber cities or in Beijing itself. A debate broke out among the students about whether to end the
To everyone, it appeared that the regime was staying its hand, and waiting for the movement to peter out, In reality it was preparing to bring hundreds of thousands of troops from Manchuria and the Soviet border to crush the rebel-
Lion.
It is now clear that the factories of Beijing were in constant turmoil during this whole period. A motorcyclist unit called the Flying Tigers brigade sent bundreds of workers to factorics to mobilise them in support of the students. The Beijing Independent Trade Union Federation began to recruit heavily, and in organise a permanent presence in Tienamen Square, The workers soon came under heavy pressure, with wamings that anyone seen in Tienaman Squarc would be sacked. After 20 May the secret police began to visit the factories to arrest the leaders of the independent union federation.
At the time of writing (6 June) reports are still coming in of fighting in Beijing, and of strikes and disturbances in other major cities incloding Shanghai. Some reports say Beida university has been invaded by troops, others that students have built barricades and are preparing to defend their campuses against the expected onslaught. For 48 hours groups of workers and students have been attacking military convoys with Molotov cocktails. There are also persistent reports of fighting between army units, the meaning of which is not clear as we go to press.
Whatever the immediate outcome of the fighting, the Li Deng faction in the leadership is bound to lose in the end. They have Inst all popular support and legitimacy. The workers and students of China have written one of the most glorious chapters in the history of the struggle for socialist democracy. Army power alone can never Imally defeat the mass opposition of millions, When people are prepared to die in the bundreds, in their thousands, to defeat repression, then its days are
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