A popular uprising spread across China Saturday in protest against a government decision to impose martial law on the center of the capital and restore law and order with the help of the army.
The country`s communist leadership, vacillating for weeks over how to handle a student rebellion pressing for democratic reforms, was holding emergency sessions 24 hours after Premier Li Peng threatened tough measures to confront what he called anarchy and nationwide turmoil.
His speech was followed 10 hours later by martial law for the center of Beijing and its inner suburbs. Foreigners were warned to abide by curfew regulations. The foreign media was ordered to have no contact with curfew violators and to write no reports that ”might incite the masses.”
But millions ignored the curfew orders. Shops and private markets functioned normally. Construction workers continued with their tasks while below the building sites, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to cheer marching protesters.
Reports from China`s main cities said people took to the streets in tens of thousands to protest against Li`s decision to suppress the rebellion by force.
Troop convoys, mobilized to move on the capital, were still bogged down on the outskirts of Beijing by mobs who argued and pleaded with the soldiers to abandon their mission.
The convoys, which approached the city from three directions shortly after midnight Friday, seem to have been split by indecision and the unexpected and vehement opposition from the populace. Usually reliable reports said the commanders of the 38th Army, stationed near Beijing, had refused to move against the students.
Parts of the army convoys remained at barricades put up to block their access to the city center. Others have turned back, eyewitnesses reported.
Near the Feng Tai suburb, 20 miles south of the center of Beijing, 50,000 people surrounded a convoy of 10 army trucks. Witnesses said after a few hours the soldiers, armed with assault rifles, abandoned their trucks and fraternized with the crowds.
”People treated them like heroes and provided water and snacks for them,” the witness said. ”Some of the trucks simply drove away. Many soldiers stayed on among the crowd.”
As night came in Beijing, nearly a million people milled along the main avenues leading to Tiananmen Square where the student rebels are ensconced. The crowd was euphoric. People flashed the V-for-victory sign as trucks carried workers and students toward the square.
Banners and slogans called for China`s senior leader Deng Xiaoping and Li to step down. Their slogans used language reminiscent of the days of the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976 when youths were allowed to run amok in the country. A victim of those days was Deng himself. He was paraded through the capital with a dunce`s cap on his head.
Saturday night banners again read: ”Beat down Deng Xiaoping.”
Hundreds of thousands milled around Tiananmen Square, cordoned off by thousands of disciplined youngsters forming human chains and directing traffic and supplies.
At the edge of the square a young boy, no older than 14, commanded with a whistle over 200 students, most of them much older. On his whistle commands his ”troops” allowed people to cross the street or were stopped from crossing.
The boy had a megaphone slung around his shoulder. Now and then he made a rousing speech about the people`s power, then lit a cigarette to take a rest. Young people have taken over traffic duty and set up checkpoints near the square to scrutinize the identity of adults.
Their new slogan is ”Power to the people.”
Students set up a checkpoint on the airport road leading from Beijing`s main airport 15 miles into the city. Cars coming from the airport were backed up for half a mile as the youngsters checked the identity of drivers and passengers, travelers told The Tribune.
Ragged youths clambered over army trucks to argue with the young soldiers, many of them from the provinces and apparently unaware of the purpose of their mission.
When the first conveys rolled up against barricades of vans and buses, youths slashed army truck tires, others attached slogans to the vehicles, some distributed leaflets among the soldiers.
Eyewitnesses said youths wrestled with soldiers after the troops attempted to remove the barricades. The soldiers did not use their firearms, water cannons or tear gas.
On Saturday night, the capital was abuzz with reports of emergency meetings among the communist hierarchy caught by surprise by the reaction to Li`s tough stand to restore law and order.
Li aligned himself firmly with Deng. He accused subversive elements and a handful of manipulators of maligning China`s senior statesman and champion of economic reforms for their own political purposes. He said China was facing chaos.
Li said during a nationwide broadcast that student leaders could no longer control the situation in Tiananmen Square ”packed with extremely excited crowds who keep shouting demagogic slogans.”
”If we fail to put an end to such chaos immediately and let it go unchecked, it will very likely lead to a situation which none of us wants to see,” he said.
Under the curfew signed by Beijing`s mayor and authorized by Li, foreigners were told the stay away from the demonstrations. Foreign embassies have asked their dependents to exercise prudence. The U.S. embassy asked family members of its staff to stay away from the Tiananmen Square area.
So far the mobs showed no hostility towards foreigners.
Groups of young toughs occasionally rocked the cars of residents slowed down by the demonstrations until they made the V-for-victory sign. Once the sign was made the mobs clapped and allowed the vehicle to pass.
Throughout Saturday, student orators using stepladders as rostrums, lectured people at street corners about their aims and ambitions. All over the city crowds gathered around these speakers who said they were informing the people of what was really happening and not what the official media reported. But the army remains the key to regaining control of what appears to be now a runaway popular movement in sympathy with the students and their demands.
Chinese intellectuals feel the popularity of the student movement, stoked by emotion over the fate of student hunger strikers on an eight-day fast in Tiananmen Square, can be attributed to nationwide discontent over stalled economic reforms and a leadership that has remained remote and unwilling to concede political openings.
”The students have kindled a spark. Now the fire is burning and it will be hard to put out,” a senior profesor said last week.
Ironically, few Chinese have any idea about democracy. Many, like student leader Wu`er Kaixi see it as a means ”to live the way you want.” Others say it made Western countries rich and they want the same.
The bulk of Chinese complain that economic reforms have enriched mainly the class in power while the rest of the nation, those without guanxi
(connections) have benefited little. The cry for more equal distribution of wealth has been the most popular of student demands.
In an anachronism as puzzling as the standoff between the government and the populace, groups of protesting workers brought out portraits last week of the late chairman Mao Tse-tung and his late premier Chou Enlai.
Asked why the ”Great Helmsman,” much criticized in recent years for his errors, was still their hero, a worker explained: ”Under Mao there was no inflation, no unemployment and we were all equally poor.”
In a climate vibrant with tension and drama, most observers here felt the next hours or days could define the path of China`s future for years to come.
