JANUARY 15, 2001 VOL. 157 NO. 2

Analyzing the Tiananmen Papers
An American sinologist explains why he believes the documents are real
By ORVILLE SCHELL

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A stunning new book gives a revealing account of the power struggle in Beijing that led to the massacre

As the protests in Beijing gathered strength in late April 1989, China's leaders convened an emergency meeting. "This is no ordinary student movement," pronounced Deng Xiaoping, the country's paramount leader. "This is a well-planned plot." And with that, the demonstrators were officially branded "counter-revolutionary," a treasonous label, and the stage was set for the massacre that would ensue six weeks later.

The leaders' exchanges, including Deng's dramatic statements, are described in astonishing detail in the documents that form the basis of The Tiananmen Papers. But are the accounts true? A trio of sinologists—Columbia University political science professor Andrew J. Nathan, Princeton University Chinese literature scholar Perry Link and I—took on the challenge of trying to evaluate whether or not this unprecedented collection of documents was authentic.

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Originally, we were skeptical. After all, the materials were transcribed from computer disk; they came from a source who insisted on remaining anonymous; they originated from within a Marxist-Leninist government not known for putting truth ahead of propaganda. By the end, however, we were convinced that this trove of papers—including minutes of Politburo Standing Committee meetings, accounts of leaders' phone conversations, reports from public security bureaus and military units—were credible.

Given the absence of absolutely identifiable sources, we set about verifying the documents to the greatest extent possible. Link and I had been in China during the spring of 1989, and all three of us have written substantially about that period. Thus we were all familiar with the sources against which one could check any new claims, and weighed every newly documented "fact" against the records in search of telltale signs of contradiction or spin. We found a few minor glitches, but nothing alarming. We also circulated early versions of the manuscript to a select group of people around the world who were familiar with such documentary sources. Not one raised any major warning flags.

We were heartened, too, by the absence of strong polemic. After all, if somebody was weaving a synthetic web of untruth, he would surely have a discernible political motive. (Forget the profit incentive: no one involved in this project expects the book to make much money.) In fact, it struck us that the documents were all the more credible for their absence of sensational material. Consider the treatment of former Premier Li Peng, who is often identified as the villain of Tiananmen Square. Rather than appearing as a tyrannical madman, Li emerges in the documents as a solid party disciplinarian, true to his principles. The atmosphere described in Standing Committee meetings is low-key; China's leaders seem calmly in touch with reality. Such straightforward characterizations suggest authenticity.

I wish I could say more about our source, who is credited in the book under the pseudonym Zhang Liang. He is a real person, not a composite. We have met him many times, and ultimately we came to trust him. He has made himself available to us for many months, and his responses to our endless questioning gave us confidence in the documents' authenticity. There are things we learned about him that, for his safety, we cannot reveal.

To be sure, "Zhang" has a purpose: he hopes the book's publication will help spark a reevaluation of what transpired in 1989 and accelerate political liberalization in China. Since such a debate can't openly take place inside his own country, he felt compelled to take the documents beyond China's borders.

How should the reader approach The Tiananmen Papers? Unlike with The Pentagon Papers, one can't go to official sources to double-check their provenance. But much of what we have learned about China over the past 50 years has come from sources that couldn't be corroborated in an official, airtight manner. Consider the intelligence Taiwan has gathered on the mainland, or Harvard scholar Stuart Schram's painstaking efforts to piece together texts of Mao's speeches and statements from unofficial sources.

In the end, the question was whether or not to publish. We concluded that if we didn't move forward, we would be in effect suppressing a significant body of source material. This was no small decision for us. After all, our reputations are on the line. But while we can't vouch 100% for the documents' authenticity, we feel sufficiently comfortable to put our names on this project. In the end, of course, it won't be our collective wisdom that rules on the veracity of The Tiananmen Papers. History will have that final judgment.

Orville Schell, author of many books on China, is dean of the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley

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