by Richard S. Ehrlich
BEIJING, China -- After congratulating troops who slaughtered an estimated 1,000 pro-democracy supporters and other civilians, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and other hardliners plunged the nation into a society of informers, arrests and witch-hunts by secret police.
Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich
Website, more Asia news by Richard S. Ehrlich plus the non-fiction book of interviews, documentation and investigative journalism, titled: "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews
June 1989
Deng Xiaoping's Informers, Arrests and Secret Police in Tiananmen Square Crackdown
"To the officers who took part in putting down the rebellion, we extend our warm greetings," Deng said in a surprise, nationally televised broadcast Friday.
It was Deng's first appearance in three weeks, proving he and fellow hardliner Prime Minister Li Peng oppose the hundreds of thousands of people who demonstrated for greater liberty, press freedom and an end to corruption.
"The riot developed into a counter-revolution uprising because there were people who want to overthrow the communist party and the socialist system," Deng added in an address to senior officers of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
"Our army is the people's army and is the steel wall of the people," Deng said as the PLA officers dutifully took notes while seated around a large circular table decked with glasses of tea.
Deng -- who was previously praised by the West for opening China's economy to international investment -- made the appearance dressed in a gray Mao suit after mysteriously disappearing for more than three weeks.
Many Chinese believed rumors that Deng was dying or dead.
By appearing with senior military officers of various units -- along with Li and other hard-liners -- Deng and the government were trying to present a face of unity and normality to disguise factional squabbling over the weekend massacre of civilians.
For many Chinese, however, a more ominous and immediate concern is the new crackdown unleashed by the government against pro-democracy supporters.
China has suddenly returned to its dark days as an Orwellian society where neighbors, friends and relatives are ordered to inform on each other.
People are now afraid to express their views, and dissidents are fleeing or hiding from possible arrest, imprisonment or execution.
Students and others who demonstrated and survived are now scattered throughout this vast nation, having fled the capital after troops seized Beijing's central Tiananmen Square.
Authorities meanwhile repeatedly flashed two telephone numbers, 5124848 and 5125666, on nationwide TV and demanded citizens turn in anyone involved in the pro-democracy movement.
TV broadcasts repeatedly showed victorious soldiers goose-stepping across Tiananmen Square, raising China's red flag, and guarding the capital with assault rifles backed by tanks, armored personnel carriers and other weaponry.
Police on Friday raided Beijing University campus, a recent hotbed of discontented students, and arrested at least a dozen unidentified youths, witnesses said.
Police also reportedly destroyed gruesome photographs of students who were killed or injured by soldiers during the weekend.
China's communist society has always relied on neighborhood informants, secret police, plain clothed infiltrators and other covert means of monitoring people's behavior.
Many Chinese and Western analysts fear a nationwide witch-hunt for pro-democracy supporters will keep the movement suppressed and relatively silent, or polarize society and result in more violence.
University campuses in Beijing are now largely deserted.
Many students said they were leaving Beijing, not in fear, but to instead tell people in their distant hometowns "the truth" about the bloody suppression by troops in the nation's capital which left an estimated 1,000 people dead.
Soldiers fanned out throughout Beijing on Friday, securing some neighborhoods by standing back-to-back on street corners and extending the perimeter of their control.
The pro-democracy movement is now at a severe disadvantage because so many of its supporters and leaders were killed during the weekend.
During the army attack on Tiananmen Square, many demonstrators battled troops with rocks, bottles, gasoline bombs and their bare hands.
Without any real weaponry, however, and by mostly professing non-violence, they will face difficulty challenging the military's control of Beijing or defend themselves in other cities if authorities move to crush future demonstrations.
Because of China's tightly controlled society, pro-democracy activists also lack efficient means of communicating with each other to coordinate future protests or spread their views.
The government, seizing the advantage, is now producing what some diplomats call, "The Big Lie."
The regime is using its control of TV, radio, newspapers, schools, factories and other institutions to put out propaganda denouncing the demonstrators as "thugs" and portraying the ruthless troops who killed them as "heroic."
Though many Chinese disregard such distortions, countless others across the country have no other source of information, and may believe the regime or shy away from any involvement in fear of another power struggle which might cost them their jobs or lives.
The government's display of brute military strength, meanwhile, has frightened Beijing residents.
When a convoy of more than 120 tanks and armored personnel carriers roared at top speed down Changan Avenue eastward from Tiananmen Square at midnight on Friday, some residents crouched on their knees and peeked silently out their darkened windows fearful that troops might again randomly open fire.
The new crackdown, harsh propaganda, staged shows of force, and political unity remind many of the horrors of the 1965-76 Cultural Revolution in which political loyalty to then-Chairman Mao Zedong became an obsession throughout Chinese society and turned all independent thinkers into outcastes.
During the Cultural Revolution, people were forced to falsely accuse each other of imaginary crimes, simply to gain protection from being similarly accused by someone else.
As a result, people exhibited almost zombie-like obedience to whatever radical ideology swept the nation, and were terrified of not maintaining so-called "correct thought."
Such dehumanizing control of China's population would be harder today because Deng has decentralized power and allowed more modern and international influences to take hold, in his effort to restore the economy and modernize the nation.
Many in the younger generation leading the pro-democracy movement do not have memories of personally suffering under the Cultural Revolution, and thus may defy fresh attempts to be subdued.
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