Tiananmen: The Papers and the Story

Review of Politics

Volumn 64, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 149-165

  Moody, Peter R ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84937381486     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500031648     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. Excerpts from the most significant of the documents also appeared simultaneously in Foreign Affairs, adding to the attention given the release. Andrew Nathan, “The Tiananmen Papers,” Foreign Affairs, 80,1 (January-February, 2001).
2. A more pedantically literal rendering would be: “True Picture of China's June Fourth.”
3. Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao (New York, 1994).
4. Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Blackhouse (New York, 1977).
5. See Charles Hamilton, The Hitler Diaries: The Fakes that Fooled the World (University Press of Kentucky, 1991). To be fair, Schell cites Trevor-Roper only on the coherence of the diaries. The other adjectives are from my own malice.
6. Yao Ming-le, The Conspiracy and Death of Lin Biao (New York, 1983).
7. Also possibly in this category is Jacob d'Ancona, The City of Light, translated and edited by David Selbourne (London, 1997), which purports to be the writings of a Jewish merchant in China on the eve of the Mongol conquest. As with the Blackhouse and Yao accounts (but unlike Hitler's), no original manuscript has been produced.
8. Jin Qiu, The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident and the Culture of Power (Stanford University Press, 1999).
9. For old examples, see The Politics of the Chinese Red Army: A Translation of the Bulletin of Activities of the People's Liberation Army, edited by Chester Cheng (Hoover Institution Press, 1966);
10. Rural People's Communes in Lien-Chiang: Documents Concerning Communes in Lien-Chiang County, Fukien Province, 1962-1963, edited by C. S. Ch'en and Charles Price Ridley (Hoover Institution Press, 1969). These sets of documents were captured in military raids; most are come by more prosaically.
11. Zhang Liang, as explained below, was one of the founding statesmen of the Han dynasty, around 200 BC. Xiao He was one of his colleagues. In a further comment on the work, Nathan says Zhang Liang told him Xiao He is the name of a “writing group” employed by the state council. “The Tiananmen Papers: an Editor's Reflections”, China Quarterly, 167 (September, 2001), pp. 724–737.
12. Sing Tao Jih Pao, May 28, May 29, and June 1, 2001.
13. See Xu Jiatun Xianggang Huiyi Lu (Xu Jiatun's Memoirs of Hong Kong) 2 Volumes, (Taipei: United Daily News Publishers, 1993), pp. 372–373. Zhao spoke to Yang on May 6 and to Xu on May 4. He asked Xu to convey his feelings to Yang. The substance of what Zhao says to both men is, as might be expected, identical (Xu, however, summarizes much of what is quoted directly in the volumes under review here); the wording is very close, but not identical. When Zhao proposes that, to set an example in combating corruption, the behavior of his own children be officially investigated, Vang says, “Xu Jiatun has already told me what you have said about this.” Papers, p. 174;
14. True Story, p. 313. Xu himself has been quoted as saying the collection is “about 70 to 80 percent” accurate. CND-Global Editors, June 29,2001.
15. Wei Li, Lucian W. Pye, “The Ubiquitous Role of the Mishu in Chinese Politics,” China Quarterly, 132 (December, 1992), pp. 913–936.
16. For another recent sociological exploration of the movement, see Dingxin Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2001).
17. In the English version of the meeting discussing arrangements for the funeral of Hu Yaobang, Li Peng urges that a “close eye” be kept on the universities, and is reassured by the Party boss in charge of education that there will be no trouble there. Li Peng was actually in Japan at the time, and in the Chinese version his words are attributed instead to Zhao Ziyang (Papers, p. 22;
18. True Story, pp. 108109). In the English, Yang Shangkun tells Deng Xiaoping that General Xu Qinxian, commander of the 38th Army who refused the order to enforce martial law, is the son of General Xu Haidong. The Chinese version adds a parenthetical comment to the effect that while this is what Yang actually said, the younger Xu is not really the son of the older. Papers, p. 219;
19. True Story, p. 523.
20. Vang Shaoming, Shangkun's son, has publicly denied that he is Zhang Liang. Sing Tao Jih Pao, June 2, 2001.
21. For Yang Baibing's continued sniping at Jiang, see Cheng Ming, February, 2001, pp. 6–7.
22. On the rivalry of the two and the mistreatment of Hu's followers by Zhao's people after Hu's fall, see Duan Ming, Deng Xiaoping: Chronicle of an Empire (Boulder, 1994), pp. 175–176.
23. Zhang Liang has a passage where Deng whines to Yang Shangkun about how he is forced to bear the responsibility and blame for everything. Papers, p. 218;
24. True Story, pp. 521–524.
25. Jacques Ellul, Autopsy of Revolution (New York, 1974).