China The Wrath of Deng

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

Surely this way madness lies. Having suffered through the massacre of thousands, China continued to lose its mind, lurching from question to question, contradiction to contradiction, sorrow to sorrow. Who was in charge? Would soldiers of the People's Liberation Army fight one another? Had the yearning for political change been snuffed out or merely suspended? What next for an anguished nation of 1.1 billion?

China last week was not the China of freedom banners and victory signs. That China perished on June 4. The new China brutally rejected the demands for change that are sweeping the Communist world. But in ordering the bloody suppression of the democracy movement, the government lost much of its authority, leaving itself isolated and condemned at home and abroad. There are even fears that Chinese Communism may be reaching backward for a discredited tool. Warned a Western diplomat: "Everything that has gone on has been preparation for Stalinist terror. Deng Xiaoping is an old Communist who , believes that when you don't observe party discipline, you are dead."

Yet, after days of invisibility, as Deng and his conservative supporters, appropriately clad in Mao suits, paraded across the television screen to show their grip on power late last week, the contradictions -- and the questions -- remained. For the time being, the old men seemed to be in control again. But for how long? If the Chinese were being cowed into submission, a long- standing compact between them and their government had been broken. Tiananmen Square and Beijing might belong to the P.L.A., but the struggle for control of China is far from over.

That did not appear to matter in the red-walled Zhongnanhai compound, where China's leaders live and work. The dead apparently did not matter either to the aging revolutionaries who came to power by force 40 years ago -- and used force to keep it. Reason itself did not seem to matter. The government that once trumpeted the need to "seek truth from facts" manufactures facts to buttress lies.

In the days after the Tiananmen massacre, government organs pressed a surreal drive to mislead the country about what had happened. Most of the victims of what they described as a battle against "counterrevolutionary insurgents" were soldiers, claimed a government spokesman, who placed among the dead a few hundred troops and only 23 students. Hours later, those figures were revised again and turned into impossibly good news by a man in military uniform on state television. Said the officer: "Not one person died in the square." Late last week state radio was even claiming that no soldiers opened fire in Tiananmen.

The truth was different, and Beijing knew it. An estimated 5,000 citizens died in only a few hours between Saturday night and Sunday morning after units of the P.L.A.'s 27th Army launched their brutal assault to oust pro-democracy students from Tiananmen; the exact number of victims may never be known.

From June 4 to June 8, as the leadership was enveloped in an unseen struggle for power, the world searched for signs of reason amid the turmoil. The country's rulers finally began to re-emerge, but not reason and not humanity. First came Premier Li Peng, 60, the front man for the regime's hard-line faction, giving the lie to rumors that he had suffered a gunshot wound. On TV he praised the soldiers who had killed and maimed to wrest the capital from the demonstrators. "Comrades, you must be exhausted," Li said. "Thank you for your hard work."

At about the same time, the government issued harsh martial-law decrees ordering leaders of the prodemocracy movement, "important figures who incited and organized this counterrevolutionary insurrection in the capital," to turn themselves in for "lenient treatment." The decrees set up a spy-and-report network, complete with 18 telephone hot lines, so that citizens could help round up dissidents. Fearful of arrest, student leaders who had survived the carnage went underground or fled the city. The astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, a leading dissident who was prevented by the government from dining with George Bush during the President's visit last February, sought refuge in the U.S. embassy; the presence of the "traitor" there provoked Chinese complaints of American meddling.

The next day Deng, 84, China's supreme ruler for the past decade, made his first appearance on television in nearly a month. At his side were Li and a host of top leaders and party elders, as well as representatives of all key factions in the military, including those who had been considered loyal to party moderates. Present too were President Yang Shangkun, 82, a former army general and the reputed mastermind of the Tiananmen attack, and Qiao Shi, 64, the state security chief who may become General Secretary of the Communist Party. Conspicuously missing was the incumbent in that post, the moderate Zhao Ziyang, whose whereabouts have remained unknown since late last month, when he held sympathetic talks with student representatives in Tiananmen. The officials applauded as Deng hailed the soldiers. "Facing a life-threatening situation," he said, "our troops never forgot the people, never forgot the party, never forgot the country's interest." He had condolences for the families of soldiers killed during the upheaval but not a word for the victims in the protesters' ranks.

By then the arrests had started. All over Beijing, Chinese who had Western friends began to disappear, either into hiding or, in increasing numbers, into jails. In one incident opposite the foreign-community compound of Qijiayuan, some 30 Chinese were taken in by security forces. In another part of town, 28 more were led away. "It is the night of the long knives," said a Western diplomat. The total in custody at week's end: 400.

The government's lurch backward to the thuggish practices of the Cultural Revolution may be the only way it knows to deal with another kind of madness: popular anger. At the time of the massacre, many citizens were so incensed that the P.L.A. was being used against the people that they ambushed stray groups of soldiers with fire bombs, bricks, clubs, even bare hands. Later, outgunned and powerless, the resistance turned to words. In the shadow of the Beijing Hotel, a young man spotted a military helicopter hovering over Tiananmen and wrathfully wished destruction on it. "Fall down!" he cried. "Fall down!" Across the square, a worker stared angrily at a group of soldiers and muttered, "So many died, but not in vain. It's not over yet, just you wait. We'll get you in due time."

Other vengeful visions proved illusory. When units of the 38th Army, a contingent normally based in Baoding, rolled into the city three days after the Tiananmen bloodletting, residents cheered them on, hoping they would drive out the hated 27th. "Let it be blood for blood!" shouted bystanders. But the 38th Army supported the 27th and martial rule.

After a decade of reform that the Chinese had hoped would lead to steady economic and social progress, why had chaos and barbarity suddenly descended on Beijing? No answer had meaning for long. Even as Li and Yang appeared at Deng's side, speculation was rife that the Premier and the chief of state were dispensable. Rumors about Deng's frail health were not resolved by his appearance on television: his left hand trembled, his face was puffy, his eyes ringed with dark circles. But as he spoke, his words grew in coherency and exuded authority. At one point, he dismissed an unwanted bit of prompting from Li with a withering look.

As the week wore on, it appeared that whatever power Deng and his colleagues held came from the guns of the P.L.A. Intelligence specialists believe the army has played a role not only in securing the capital but also in preparing for further repression. One possible goal: to scare off prying foreigners.

Constant and mysterious military movements stirred confusion and alarm. Tank convoys rumbled to the east, away from Tiananmen, only to return a few hours later. Armored vehicles were deployed at a strategic cloverleaf east of the square, as if awaiting attack by another military force. Rumors of skirmishes, even artillery duels between the "bad" 27th Army and the "good soldiers" of the 38th Army, fluttered through the capital. With fear of an armed confrontation rampant, foreign governments ordered the evacuation of their nationals. Beijing airport was packed with diplomats, tourists and businessmen waiting for tickets and specially chartered planes to leave a capital seemingly under siege.

Furthermore, soldiers on trucks careened through the diplomatic quarter, shouting "Go home! Go home!" Yet others sprayed bullets into the walls and windows of Jianguomenwai, a compound occupied by foreigners. One diplomatic analyst is convinced that under the cover of random gunfire, military snipers were deliberately shooting up apartments inhabited by diplomats who had the previous night disrupted what appeared to be preparations for a surreptitious execution of young Chinese men. "What they did in the foreign compound," said this intelligence expert, "was to attempt to drive out every foreign eye so they can go about their executions." Western photographers and television crews have been roughed up.

In fact, the expected confrontation between military factions never materialized. By the end of the week, 27th Army soldiers who had participated in the Tiananmen assault had decamped and were replaced by fresh troops from other regiments unconnected with the massacre. Only hours after Deng's appearance on TV, long columns of armor left the city. The military maneuvers served mainly to camouflage a deep political conflict. The massacre at Tiananmen may have been just a violent stage in the ongoing struggle of succession, not unlike the turmoil that has occurred throughout Chinese history whenever a dynasty waned.

For the past several years the Communist Party has been facing the question of who will ultimately replace Deng. He complicated the problem by purging his own chosen heir, the reform-minded party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who was relieved of his job in 1987 for not quickly crushing student demonstrations. Hu's replacement as designated successor was Zhao, who now appears to have also fallen victim to Deng's displeasure.

Throughout his years in power, Deng balanced moderate vs. hard-line factions in every organ of the state -- the party, the government, the military. The result was paralysis: important decisions were frequently avoided or ignored. Deng remained the ultimate arbiter, but hobbled by age and his penchant for toughing out dilemmas, he increasingly played off would-be successors against one another, letting their disagreements fester into bureaucratic skirmishing.

The death of Hu last April precipitated a crisis. When expressions of grief sparked in Tiananmen the demands for greater democracy, differences between the factions left the leadership impotent to take a united stand on how to cope with an unprecedented event. As the leaders dithered, the protest swelled.

The students' modest calls for more democracy and less corruption not only confronted the leadership with fundamental questions about China's future direction but also created an opening for political jockeying. According to one theory, Zhao, 69, the leader reputedly most willing to adopt more open politics, took advantage of the situation to ask for greater authority. From Deng, Zhao reportedly sought the power to grant some of the students' demands. Sensing an attempt at a power play, Deng refused.

An internal document leaked through Hong Kong claims Deng then demanded action and the suppression of all perceived threats to the party's central authority -- namely himself. In spite of Zhao's refusal to support the imposition of martial law in Beijing, Deng pressed ahead with plans for military rule with Premier Li and President Yang.

Yang turned to the 27th Army, normally based in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, and largely composed of ill-educated peasant conscripts with no ties to Beijing, for the harsh job of clearing Tiananmen. The President has personal links to the 27th through his brother Yang Baibing, who is top political commissar of the P.L.A., and Chief of Staff Chi Haotian, said to be another relative.

But what may have been planned only as a show of force turned into a bloodbath. Soon armed soldiers and unarmed protesters were locked in furious combat. Ruan Ming, a former lecturer on Marxism at Beijing's Communist Party School, argues that a propaganda blitz mounted by the government last week to justify the Tiananmen sweep was an attempt to "salvage the situation and save face."

As architects of the debacle, Li and Yang could eventually prove liabilities to Deng, and he might have to jettison them. An alternative could be provided by Qiao Shi, an unfamiliar Politburo member, who emerged as a rising star after a telegram from the Supreme Court congratulated him for his support of the military crackdown.

Little is known about Qiao, but he is thought to be one of the more politically agile members in the party elite. In the days leading up to the crisis, he reportedly abstained from a crucial vote when the party was paralyzed over how to act on the student protests. That demonstration of neutrality may have made him acceptable as a compromise leader to all sides. "He is a very shrewd man," says Ruan. "He was elevated to the Politburo by Hu Yaobang. But when Hu was ousted, Qiao acted against his former mentor and sided with Deng."

Yet the problem for Li, Yang, Qiao or anyone else trying to rule China in the post-Tiananmen era is not more street protests. In the few days after the massacre, demonstrations and strikes did erupt in several key cities -- from Shenyang in Manchuria to central Wuhan to southern Guangzhou. Students and workers set up barricades in Shanghai, China's largest city and economic hub, and paralyzed the public transportation system. But the activism soon petered out. Protest rallies shrank from the ten thousands to the tens. On Shanghai campuses, student associations dissolved. With the crackdown officially under way, the vast majority of people -- even in the once radical Shanghai -- have been frightened into nervous silence.

Putting down dissent through repression and propaganda is one thing; finding the road toward political and economic recovery quite another. In Beijing, much of the public transportation system has been destroyed or damaged. Losses to the national economy are estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Japan, China's largest foreign-aid donor, has announced a halt in negotiations for a $120 million loan for an oil project. The U.S. and Britain have suspended all public and private arms sales to China for the foreseeable future: the P.L.A. alone needs to replace more than 300 vehicles smashed or burned in the taking of the square.

Despite the government's assurances that it will continue to keep its doors open to the outside world, foreign trade -- $82.6 billion in 1988 -- can be expected to slide steeply in the next few months. Though China may want to trade, will anyone want to trade with China? As foreigners have fled the country, joint ventures with Western and Japanese firms are frozen. Even before the protests erupted, inflation, corruption and unemployment had put a brake on progress; hesitation by outsiders to invest in China will only exacerbate these problems. Said a senior British diplomat: "First, there is the revulsion factor in the wake of the bloodbath that will keep a lot of Westerners away. Second, there is the question of confidence. Deng built that up, and now it lies destroyed. No one is willing to invest unless there is reasonable assurance of stability. Restoring international confidence will be % one of the leadership's toughest tasks."

The task may be impossible without a wholesale change in the leadership, which is not likely soon. Deng was deservedly admired for having navigated China toward economic modernization, but his achievement is tainted by the blood of the demonstrators killed in Beijing. The aged conservative revolutionaries surrounding him are out of touch with a population whose majority is under 40 years of age. The P.L.A., contrary to its popular repute, has shown itself to be the regime's, not the people's, army. Said a senior British diplomat last week: "There is not a single institution that has not been besmirched in these past weeks." The threat of civil war has not entirely vanished -- if only as a psychological rather than an actual battle. The students' calls for democracy had unparalleled national support, which may have gone underground but will not go away. Perhaps 300,000 troops are still encamped around the capital. The Communist Party leadership is distrusted by large numbers of its own people. The men at the top have been condemned by the outside world as the enemies of the people.

Elsewhere in the Communist world, leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev and Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski are trying to break old patterns by channeling unrest and rising expectations into a limited evolution toward more democracy. China's old men seem to have missed the message -- and sacrificed much to their desire to retain absolute power. Forced to choose between accommodating change and maintaining the regime, they chose tyranny.

With reporting by David Aikman, Sandra Burton and Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing and Richard Hornik/Shanghai