Book Review: Standoff at Tiananmen

A Comparison of Narratives

Before I say more about Cheng's book, let me make a comparison between CNN coverage and another book, Tell The World by Liu Binyan.

A Chinese dissident has grumbled to me that "leading Chinese dissidents" are always creations of the news media. It's simply whomever is getting the most attention at any given time.

If you look at CNN coverage at the tenth anniversary of June 4, they ran a human-interest retrospective that asked "Where are they now?" about June 4 student leaders. The only problem is that to watch CNN coverage, a newbie would think that only four students led the movement: Wang Dan, Wuer Kaixi, Chai Ling, and Li Lu.

For those who know better, the CNN coverage is cartoon-like in its over simplification. There were dozens of notable student leaders in the overall scene, and hundreds of individual campuses that went to the square. Even if every such delegation had just one leader, it adds up to hundreds of leaders on the scene.

The late Chinese journalist Liu Binyan provides a much better view of the action in his book, Tell The World, a narrative account about Tiananmen Square's movement that was published in English almost immediately after those events in 1989. Liu Binyan was famous as an investigative journalist of high integrity, who reported for the People's Daily in the 1970s and '80s.

The book by Liu Binyan formed a baseline understanding of Tiananmen's events and informed my own views for many years at the China Support Network. That group, CSN, is one that I formed immediately after June 4's massacre for American students to support Chinese democracy. At the time, I was a 22-year-old undergraduate of Arizona State University.

As the first book in the same genre – narratives about Tiananmen Square, Tell The World provides a basis for comparison and a yardstick by which to judge Cheng's new Standoff. Of course, these two views of the action are from 1989 and 2009, respectively. We might expect the later book to include more research and to have the benefit of more hindsight.

And that is exactly what is found in Standoff at Tiananmen. In 2005, when Liu Binyan died, the China Support Network eulogized him with high praise. Liu was an exceptional figure, and heroic to the pro-democracy movement. But, Cheng has released the better book.

Cheng's book does an excellent job of blending myriad source narratives and anecdotes into a cohesive and coherent overall narrative. It's more nuanced than Liu's account, and more credible than Seeds Of Fire, another book with narrative about Tiananmen Square.

To my knowledge, Cheng has produced the best "T-Square" book yet. However, I do not read Chinese – I can only compare those I have seen in English.

Internecine Politics of the Student Leaders

It seems to me that translations between English and Chinese are often inexact. For example, the name of the student association can be translated many ways. When I met Wuer Kaixi in August, 1989, he spoke about re-constituting in exile ASUBU, the Autonomous Students Union of Beijing Universities. In the book by Liu Binyan, it is called the Interim Student Association of Beijing Colleges and Universities (ISABCU). Student leader Lian Shengde calls it the Autonomous Federation of Universities Inside Beijing (AFUIB).

In Eddie Cheng's book, it is called the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation (BSAF). Lest my readers worry, I can assure you that these are four alternate translations for one name. In each case we refer to the same group.

The group is "autonomous" because it sprang up independently of the government. With prompting from Liu Gang behind the scenes, it was announced by Wuer Kaixi on April 21. On April 23, it elected Zhou Yongjun as its first president. Riven by disagreement, the group replaced Zhou with Wuer on April 28. On April 30, it replaced Wuer with Feng Congde. On May 5, it expelled Zhou. On May 6, Feng passed the baton back to Wuer Kaixi. On May 14, Feng returned. On May 15, it expelled Wuer.

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