Despair and Death In a Beijing Square

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U.S. officials believe the attack on the students reflected desperation on the part of the country's gerontocracy, led by Deng Xiaoping. But though the crackdown was obviously meant to intimidate the people-power movement, it could have the opposite effect. Disaffected Chinese citizens are calling for the people "to unite in the open or underground," as one of them put it, "to seek revenge for all the deaths."

Though of greater magnitude, the massacre was gruesomely reminiscent of the Tiananmen Square riots of 1976. Widespread revulsion over that bloodbath led to the downfall of the infamous Gang of Four, headed by Mao's wife Jiang Qing, and the ascendance to power two years later of Deng. Unable to accept the new world crying out from the streets, Deng appears to have reverted to a hoary Maoist maxim: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." With devastating carnage, Deng proved he could unleash the firepower. But now that his regime is riding the military tiger, can it dismount without being torn to pieces?

The troops brought to the capital from all over China during the past few weeks are said to be loyal not to some central command but to various factions in the leadership. Thus while numerous units remained behind barricades, others, like the 27th Army, wreaked destruction in the city. Reports of heavy fire inside the Forbidden City, where police and P.L.A. units are routinely billeted, led to speculation that the rival units were shooting it out with one another. Furthermore, said a Western academic in Beijing, "there was very clearly a battle between two different army units on the road to the airport."

The bloody denouement of the demonstrations seemed to be the direct result of Deng's attempts to retain the upper hand in a protracted power struggle among China's leaders. The disarray was signaled by the failure in recent weeks of party elders to reach consensus on the formal ouster of party chief Zhao Ziyang, who had lost favor because he sympathized with the student protesters. Within the party rank and file, the hard-liners' attempts to brand Zhao a counterrevolutionary had met with silent resistance and even mutters of bu dui (not correct).

Added to that was the sudden re-emergence early in the week of a quartet of octogenarian revolutionaries, among them economist Chen Yun and former President Li Xiannian. This seemed to indicate that Deng was seeking support against Zhao from the very men he had once sidelined for resisting his economic reforms. Analysts in Beijing feared that Deng had cast his lot with this ideologically rigid Gang of Elders, as the group was dubbed. Such fears were buttressed by renewed government denunciations of "bourgeois liberalization," the phrase that presaged a conservative crackdown two years ago. Some Chinese found a good deal of irony in the awkward situation. "The 80-year-olds," commented one wag, "are calling meetings of 70-year-olds to decide which 60-year-olds should retire."

Apparently Deng's strategy prevailed. Throughout the week, party documents circulated detailing the events that contributed to Zhao's unofficial removal. As recounted by President Yang Shangkun in these papers, Zhao's offenses included failing to support a harsh editorial in the People's Daily that condemned the demonstrators and refusing to join other Politburo members in backing martial law.