China The Face of Repression

By William R. Doerner

The punishment was swift. Escorted from their cells in a Shanghai prison, the three shackled men were led to an execution ground outside the city. If tradition was followed, executioners stepped behind the prisoners and fired a single pistol bullet into the base of their skulls. Six days earlier, the three men were convicted of torching a train that had plowed into pro- democracy demonstrators on June 6, killing six people; the court took only a few days to reject their appeals. The procedure was similar in the Shandong province capital of Jinan, where 17 were put to death for "seriously endangering public order." Seven more were executed in Beijing, convicted of "attacking" People's Liberation Army troops that participated in the Tiananmen Square "clearing operation," which took the lives of many hundreds.

There was little likelihood that the 27 deaths would be the last. A wave of repression was sweeping across China last week: many among the 1,600 reported to have been arrested so far could eventually face the same fate.

China's legal philosophy, dating to imperial times, has generally favored the state over the individual, though in recent years that imbalance ameliorated somewhat. But in the wake of the government's brutal assault in Tiananmen Square, there was little surprise in China when, beginning June 7, the Supreme People's Procuratorate relayed "emergency notices" to public- security agencies throughout the country, warning them not to be "hamstrung by details" in prosecuting those accused of "counterrevolutionary" crimes.

The executions allowed Premier Li Peng, the principal target of the student demonstrators, to declare victory for the government. At a meeting with relatives of soldiers killed in the clashes, Li announced that the "counterrevolutionary rebellion is basically over." Nevertheless, he warned, "quite a lot of rioters are yet to be apprehended, and we can in no way leave them unpunished." None of those executed last week were identified as students; most were called workers or unemployed.

The announcement of executions triggered a second round of sanctions by the Bush Administration, which earlier banned U.S. arms sales and military contacts with Beijing. Many other Western nations condemned the killings, but most took only token measures against China. The U.S. measures outlined last week include a suspension of nonmilitary exchanges between high-level American officials and their Chinese counterparts and a promise to apply U.S. pressure on international monetary organizations to deny new loans to Beijing. The actions were calculated to convey U.S. revulsion but at the same time, as Secretary of State James Baker put it, preserve a "very important relationship." Many members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, were less than satisfied. Said Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell: "There cannot be business as usual with a government that takes actions like these."

Ever since Deng Xiaoping, China's senior leader, made his first post- massacre appearance on June 9, a speech he delivered on that occasion has been political topic No. 1 in China. In one version of the speech, he reportedly defended the Tiananmen operation as necessary to prevent China from becoming another Poland, where the Communists have been forced to share power with the independent Solidarity trade union.

Last week a somewhat different version of the speech appeared in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. There was no reference to Poland, but Deng said that "some comrades don't understand the situation" in China, in that the revolt was not merely the work of "misguided" people but also that of a truly "rebellious clique." The second version also contained approving references to the "open policy," allowing Chinese ties to the outside. Said a senior Asian diplomat in Beijing: "The line to the world is reassurance. To China, it is terror."

Another message that emerged from Beijing was that the power struggle at top levels of the party had finally been settled. On Saturday, following a two-day meeting of the Central Committee, officials announced the ouster of Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. In a report read by Premier Li, Zhao was $ accused of holding "unshirkable responsibilities for the shaping of the turmoil" of the past two months. Zhao was also stripped of his other official posts, making his disgrace more complete than that of his predecessor Hu Yaobang, who was allowed to remain on the Central Committee following unrest in 1987. Named new General Secretary was Jiang Zemin, 62, a member of the ruling Polituburo and party head of Shanghai. Though regarded as more technician than ideologue, he tends to side with the conservatives, who have clearly now consolidated their position.

With reporting by William Stewart/Beijing