http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1x0nd955 No online items Finding Aid for the China Democracy Movement and Tiananmen Incident Archives, 1989-1993 Processed by UCLA Library Special Collections staff; machine-readable finding aid created by Caroline Cubé. UCLA Library Special Collections UCLA Library Special Collections staff Room A1713, Charles E. Young Research Library Box 951575 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/ © 2009 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 1821 1 Descriptive Summary Title: China Democracy Movement and Tiananmen Incident Archives Date (inclusive): 1989-1993 Collection number: 1821 Creator: Center for Chinese Studies and the Center for Pacific Rim Studies, UCLA Extent: 22 boxes (11 linear ft.)1 oversize box. Abstract: The present finding aid represents the fruits of a multiyear collaborative effort, undertaken at the initiative of then UCLA Chancellor Charles Young, to collect, collate, classify, and annotate available materials relating to the China Democracy Movement and tiananmen crisis of 1989. These materials---including, inter alia, thousands of documents, transcribed radio broadcasts, local newspaper and journal articles, wall posters, electronic communications, and assorted ephemeral sources, some in Chinese and some in English---provide a wealth of information for scholars, present and future, who wish to gain a better understanding of the complex, swirling forces that surrounded the extraordinary "Beijing Spring" of 1989 and its tragic denouement. The scholarly community is indebted to those who have collected and arranged this archive of materials about the China Democracy Movement and Tiananmen Incident Archives. Languages: Languages represented in the collection: EnglishChinese Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library Special Collections. Los Angeles, California 90095-1575 Physical location: Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact the UCLA Library Special Collections Reference Desk for paging information. Restrictions on Access COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Open for research. Advance notice required for access. Contact the UCLA Library Special Collections Reference Desk for paging information. Restrictions on Use and Reproduction Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], China Democracy Movement and Tiananmen Incident Archives (Collection 1821). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. UCLA Catalog Record ID UCLA Catalog Record ID: 6671829 Biography / Administrative History For seven extraordinary weeks in the spring of 1989, China came alive. Emboldened by the example set by university students in Beijing, millions of ordinary Chinese citizens began to express themselves openly and spontaneously in ways never before witnessed in the forty-year history of the People's Republic of China. In massive demonstrations held in hundreds of Chinese cities, ordinary people complained of rampant corruption and nepotism in government; others called for augmented freedom of speech and assembly; still others savagely lampooned the country's aging, authoritarian Communist Party leaders, calling on Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng to resign for the sake of the country's best interests, for the sake of the people. For China's habitually stoic, long-silent millions, it was an exhilarating experience; it was the best of times. Exhilaration soon turned to horror, however, as China's insecure, chaosaverse senior leadership, fearful of losing political control, made a fateful decision on June 3, 1989, to use deadly force to clear demonstrating students and their nonstudent supporters from Tiananmen Square—Mecca of the 1989 people's movement. With the military assault on Tiananmen, the best of times quickly became the worst of times. No one knows just how many people were killed or wounded in the machinegun fire that echoed throughout the streets of central Beijing on the evening of June 3-4. A few estimates place the number of civilian dead as high as 2,600; most estimates are more conservative, within the range of 300-1,000 killed. Whatever the true casualty count, the "Tiananmen massacre" represented a national trauma of the first magnitude. While historical memory of the "Beijing Spring" of 1989 has inevitably begun to fade with the passage of time, a few highly evocative, stereotyped images continue to provide a potent, if shadowy, reminder of what transpired. The solitary figure of a young Chinese civilian, captured on film calmly facing down a column of tanks, resonates powerfully today in annual U.S. congressional debates on the renewal of China's most favored nation status, in widening U.S. public support for Tibetan 1821 2 independence, and in the appearance of an entirely new epithet in the English lexicon: "The Butchers of Beijing." The currency of these various resonances and reverberations reminds us of the critical importance of preserving, as accurately as possible, historical memory. It is to the furtherance of this task of preservation that the present volume is dedicated. Contrary to widespread belief, relatively few students—probably fewer than fifty—died in the military assault. Nor was there a wanton massacre of students in Tiananmen Square itself. Most of the killing took place on or near Beijing's major east-west thoroughfare, Chang'an Boulevard, well to the west of Tiananmen, where ordinary citizens had massed in an effort to block the army's access to the square. A careful attempt to weigh varying estimates of civilian and military casualties appears in Timothy Brook, Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement (Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 164-169. See also Richard Baum, Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (Princeton University Press, 1994), chap. 12. The Tiananmen Crisis: Origins and Development The Chinese student demonstrations of spring 1989 represented the culmination of a remarkable decade of economic reform and social change. With the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping two years later, China's new leaders recognized the urgent need to jump-start their country's stagnant, centrally controlled economy and to restore the badly flagging confidence of the Chinese people in the wisdom, virtue, and beneficence of the Communist Party. As China threw open its doors to the outside world and began to move, fitfully at first, toward a more decentralized and market-centered economy, demand for political reform also grew. Initially inclined to respond positively to calls for a more vibrant "socialist democracy," Deng Xiaoping grew more cautious in the aftermath of the spiraling 1980-1981 Polish Solidarity crisis. In Poland, each new liberalizing reform measure granted by the government had served to fuel popular demands for even greater political and economic concessions, culminating in the regime's infamous 1981 declaration of martial law. With this "Polish nightmare" available as a negative example of the effects of unfettered political liberalization, Deng decided that political reform would have to wait until after the fruits of economic reform had been realized. As a result of the growing disjunction between economic liberalization and political conservatism in the 1980s, pressures began to build. Denied a legitimate political outlet for their mounting frustration, thousandsof Chinese students took to the streets, initially in the winter of 1986-1987, demanding better treatment for themselves, more open and democratic political institutions for their country, and a more equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of economic reform. Angered by Communist Party General-Secretary Hu Yaobang's passive acquiescence in the face of rising student "provocations," a group of elderly CCP conservatives denounced the student demonstrations and accused Hu of supporting "bourgeois liberalization." With Deng Xiaoping's consent, Hu was removed from office in January 1987. With his removal, China's students lost their most powerful patron. The sudden, unexpected death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, the result of a massive coronary failure, set in motion the events that culminated in the "Tiananmen massacre." Angered at the regime's shabby treatment of their late hero, students at Beijing University gathered to march from their campus on the outskirts of the city to Tiananmen Square, several miles away. At first demanding only an official rehabilitation of their fallen hero's good name and reputation, the students were offended by the government's unwillingness to respond—or even to engage in open dialogue. Following Hu's public funeral ceremony on April 22, thousands of students staged a sit-in at Tiananmen Square, refusing to move until the government agreed to open a dialogue. The government's conspicuous silence was met by new, larger demonstrations. In the days following Hu Yaobang's funeral, students conducted daily marches to Tiananmen Square, drawing increasingly larger audiences of sympathetic bystanders