by Josephine M.T. Khu

Last year the world watched with amazement as a
democracy movement of unprecedented scope swelled in the
People's Republic of China (PRC), and only a few weeks later
with shock as the armed might of the PRC government was open-
ly wielded to crash the dissent. What the cameras did not docu-
ment is the true tragedy of Tiananmen. Behind these images is a
story of the Chinese democracy movement that suggests that the
spontaneity and disunity of the movement, and the problems of
Organization and leadership that beset it, made the state's
brutality an unnecessary action in its aim of controlling the
movement.

A study of how the spring 1989 democracy movement
began and developed is crucial, I believe, to understanding its
significance, and will perhaps give us an idea of how similar
movements in China will arise and function in the future. In this
paper I will be examining the structure and function of the par-
ticipatory mechanisms set up by the students during the spring
1989 movement. I will look into what major student organiza-
tions were involved, how they came into being, what their func-
tions were and how they worked, and the people involved in
them.

The first evidence of an emerging student political move-
ment was seen soon after the death of Hu Yaobang, former
general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, on 15 April.
While the first student demonstrations did not occur until the
eighteenth, the flurry of critical big-character posters on univer-
sity campuses around the country and the virtual mountain of
flowers and memorial wreaths placed by students and citizens
on Tiananmen Square were early indications of an unrest strain-
ing to find fuller expression.

The use of the death of a national political figure as a chan-
nel for articulating discontent or criticism of the present regime
is a Chinese tradition of long standing. The most recent example
of this prior to Hu's death occurred in 1976 with the death of
Premier Zhou Enlai, when thousands of Beijing citizens gathered
in Tiananmen Square to demand change. There are practical
reasons behind such a practice. The existence of political repres-
sion in China means that spontaneous gatherings of large num-
bers of people are rarely tolerated except in certain exceptional
circumstances, and mourning the death of a prominent member
of the regime is one such circumstance. Because outright
criticism of the regime can be dangerous, extravagant praise of
a departed leader regarded by dissenters as having struggled for
the good of the people against the tyranny of the dominant fac-
tions in government is used to imply criticism of present leaders.
Thus support for the deceased Hu Yaobang, appreciated by stu-
dents and intellectuals for his championing of greater intellec-
tual freedom and by the general public for his personal honesty
in a political system regarded as being riddled with graft and
greed, at first masked, then acted as a spur for the democratic
movement. Political repression also means that large gatherings
of people can be difficult to arrange. Without the full freedom to
communicate ideas, it can be difficult to make arrangements for
a large-scale protest at a specific date and place. Therefore, the
sudden death of a national figure can be used as a safe and con-
venient signal for political action. ¹

The demonstrations that followed in the wake of Hu's death
were presaged by activities earlier in the year that indicated a
growing political boldness on the part of China's intellectuals.
The "democracy salons" on the lawns of Beijing University,
which began in May 1988 and continued into 1989, brought the
discussion of liberal ideas into the open. In January, academics
petitioned for the release of political prisoners, an activity in

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