[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 71 (Thursday, June 4, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5601-S5604]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           NINTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TIANANMEN SQUARE MASSACRE

  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, today represents the ninth anniversary 
of the Tiananmen Square massacre. This is the day that commemorates the 
culmination of the crackdown--very bloody crackdown--that occurred 9 
years ago in Beijing, China.
  I think it would be wrong for us not to take note of that on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate. I think it is incumbent upon all of us, as 
freedom-loving Americans, to not forget the lessons that we continue to 
learn from China.
  I would like to, in the next few minutes, read an excerpt from a book 
entitled ``Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square,'' by 
Orville Schell. This book recounts, among other things, what occurred 
during the 2 months leading up to the Tiananmen Square massacre and the 
events that night. I have taken only a few excerpts from that, but I 
think it will help us to put into perspective the sacrifices that were 
made, the tragedy that occurred, and I think the tragedy of American 
foreign policy which today ignores that it was, in fact, Jiang Zemin, 
mayor of Shanghai at the time, who said that there should not be one 
ounce of forgiveness shown to those student protesters who dared raise 
the voice of dissent, who dared to speak for freedom and democracy in 
China. So I will read from ``Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen 
Square'':
       Although a palpable sense of foreboding hung over the 
     Square, few could bring themselves to believe that the 
     People's Liberation Army might actually harm ``the people.'' 
     Not even under the vindictive Gang of Four had troops opened 
     fire with tens of thousands of demonstrators had 
     spontaneously occupied the Square to mourn the death of Zhou 
     Enlai in 1976. So many ominous-sounding government threats 
     had come to naught since April 15 that most ordinary Chinese 
     were now inclined to view this latest salvo of warnings as 
     more overinflated rhetoric. The triumphs, symbolic and 
     otherwise, of the preceding weeks had given many, especially 
     protesters, an exaggerated sense of their own invincibility.
       But there were some Chinese who understood that when 
     threatened, the Party would ultimately stop at nothing to 
     preserve its grip on power. They understood the old adage 
     ``When scholars confront soldiers, it is impossible to speak 
     with reason.'' Most of these pessimists were from the older 
     generation of educated Chinese who had learned through bitter 
     experience that the Party rarely allowed such challenges to 
     go unconfronted. ``The Day the Soldiers Enter the City, Then 
     the Blood of the People will Flow,'' declared one banner . . 
     .
       Around dusk the Flying Tigers began bringing back reports 
     that soldiers equipped with automatic weapons and backed up 
     by armored vehicles were moving toward the city center from 
     several directions at once. In response, the strengthening of 
     barricades reached fever pitch. By the time the first troops 
     neared key intersections on the city's outskirts, an 
     estimated 2 million people were again in the streets. At 
     first, these citizens' brigades continued to rely on the same 
     defensive techniques that they had used two weeks earlier, 
     and by dark, many unarmed units were again bottled up around 
     the city . . .
       By 10 p.m. the assault from the west was in full swing. As 
     several infantry and armored divisions pushed toward the 
     Military Museum, they soon found their way blocked by a wall 
     of angry citizens and Dare-to-Die squads of workers pledged 
     to defend the students and the Square until death. The 
     juggernaut of military vehicles ground to a halt, allowing 
     government propaganda to cite these instances of hesitation 
     as evidence that the army had exercised a ``high degree of 
     restraint'' while entering the city. Such ``restraint'' did 
     not last long.
       The next volley of gunfire was aimed over the heads of the 
     resisters. The crowd refused to disperse. Finally, an officer 
     in a jeep was reported to have yelled out through a 
     megaphone, ``Charge, you bunch of cowards! Sweep away this 
     trash!'' A volley of concussion grenades was lobbed into the 
     crowd. Only when steel-helmeted soldiers carrying truncheons 
     and riot shields were ordered to charge did those resisting 
     give way.
       It was around 11 p.m. before advancing troops approached 
     Muxidi Bridge near the state guesthouse. By then the order to 
     ``go ahead at any cost'' and to shoot at anyone obstructing 
     the soldiers' path had been given. Before soldiers had even 
     arrived at the giant barricade constructed out of articulated 
     city buses, large earthmoving trucks, commandeered minivans, 
     and tons of urban detritus, the first wounded were being 
     rushed on bicycle carts to hospitals. As troops approached 
     the bridge, someone torched the fuel tank of a bus, turning 
     the barricade into a raging wall of fire. The column had no 
     choice but to halt. With Gallic flair, Pierre Hurel, a French 
     journalist writing for Paris Match, described the scene:
       ``In front of the flaming barricade, facing the soldiers 
     alone, four students with their feet planted wide apart make 
     the heavy air snap with the sound of the waving scarlet 
     banners. In an unbelievable gesture of defiance, they are 
     naked martyrs before a sea of soldiers in brown combat 
     helmets and tense with anger. The silk of their university 
     banners gleams in the fire's light, and behind them a crowd, 
     waiting for the worst, applauds. it is 11:30 p.m. and for the 
     first time tonight, the soldiers have had to pull back.''
       As the convey began pushing forward again a short while 
     later, a noise resembling the sound of popcorn popping was 
     suddenly heard over the dim of the crowd. Out of the smoky 
     darkness, troops armed with AK-47s charged the barricades, 
     shooting as they advanced.
       ``Soldiers were shooting indiscriminately; there were 
     bullets flying everywhere; dead bodies and injured people 
     were lying in the streets,'' reported one anonymous foreign 
     journalist cited in a subsequent Amnesty International 
     report. ``Crowds of residents from the neighboring lanes had 
     left their houses and stood unprotected in the streets. They 
     did not try to hide because they did not seem to realize what 
     was going on. They were in a state of shock and disbelief.''
       All along the Avenue of Eternal Peace, equally ferocious 
     battles broke out as citizens stood their ground with an 
     almost religious fanaticism before advancing troops. 
     Bystanders who ran into surrounding alleyways for safety were 
     chased down and sprayed with automatic-weapons fire. Those 
     who tried to rescue the wounded were shot in cold blood. The 
     slaughter was so merciless that rumors began circulating that 
     the soldiers had been administered some kind of drug as a 
     stimulant.
       By 1 a.m. soldiers had neared the intersection where Xidan 
     crosses the Avenue of Eternal Peace and began lobbying tear-
     gas canisters into the crowds. Moments later several buses 
     serving as barricades burst into flames. Then another order 
     to fire was given. ``Several lines of students and residents 
     instantly fell,'' claimed one BASF eyewitness. ``Dozens were 
     killed, and several hundred were wounded.''
       Yang Jianli, a Ph.D. candidate in mathematics from the 
     University of California at Berkeley who was back in China on 
     a visit, watched in horror as these shock troops advanced, 
     firing their automatic weapons as if they were assaulting a 
     heavily armed enemy position. ``Tanks and truckloads of 
     soldiers armed with machine guns were rolling in, one after 
     another, toward the Square,'' he remembered. ``At the 
     intersection we heard perhaps a thousand people shouting, 
     `Down with Fascism!' . . . [Then] flashes spouted from the 
     muzzles of soldiers' rifles. We ran back a bit and threw 
     ourselves on the pavement. `Did they really fire?' I asked H. 
     `I still can't believe it!' Some people continued to stand 
     up, saying nonchalantly, `Don't be frightened, they're only 
     using rubber bullets.' But before they had finished speaking 
     I heard someone scream, `Look out! There's a cart coming 
     through!' Two men with gunshot wounds were being carried 
     away. . . . Suddenly, there was more gunfire, and we

[[Page S5602]]

     dropped to the ground again, my heart jumping from sheer 
     fright.''
       ``His blue T-shirt was soaked with blood, and his eyes were 
     blood-red,'' recalled Yang of one outraged citizen. . . .
       ``Troops have been firing indiscriminately and still people 
     would not move back,'' BBC News Chief Correspondent Kate Adie 
     reported in a television broadcast after visiting both the 
     western and eastern reaches of the Avenue of Eternal Peace. 
     ``Indeed, it was hard at the time to grasp that this army was 
     launching into an unarmed civilian population as if charging 
     into battle. . . . There was not one voice on the streets 
     that did not express despair and rage. `Tell the world!' they 
     said to us.''

  Since that 1989 tragedy and this famous photo of a lone student who 
stood defiantly in front of the line of tanks, there has been every 
June 4th efforts within China, efforts there at Tiananmen, to remind 
the world of the tragedy that occurred, of those brutal, visible 
oppressions, and forcibly removing a voice of freedom that the world 
has known in generations.
  I continue from Schell's book as he recounts some of the symbolic 
gestures that have been made since that original June 4th, 1989.
  He writes:
  ``Like an uninterred body, June 4th continued to cry out for an 
appropriate and respectable barrier.''
  There are those, if I might just add, who would like to say we are in 
a post-Tiananmen era but somehow that chapter has been closed. The fact 
is the Communist Chinese government in China does not allow that 
chapter to be closed. So Schell refers to it as an uninterred body 
which continued to cry out for appropriate and respectable barrier.

       The yearning that many continued to feel for some sort of 
     commemoration could never be fulfilled by parades or crimson 
     stars fashioned out of potted flowers. But since the 
     government stubbornly refused to acknowledge the tragic 
     significance of what had happened, much less allow for a 
     ceremony at which those who had died could be properly 
     remembered, the Square remained charged with unresolved 
     energy and, like a lodestone, kept drawing defiant 
     demonstrators back into its embrace to engage in solitary 
     acts of guerrilla mourning.
       Such observances were, or course, politically suicidal. As 
     soon as anyone began such a ritual protest, plainclothes 
     policemen materialized as if out of nowhere. Within moments 
     the offenders were surrounded, seized, and dragged away. Only 
     on those rare occasions when foreign journalists had been 
     alerted in advance or happened to be at the Square for other 
     reasons were such fleeting moments of defiance recorded. But 
     then, like shooting stars in the night sky, these usually 
     nameless protesters would disappear.

  He writes:

       On the first anniversary of June 4, a lone figure had 
     walked up to the Monument and nervously fumbled to display a 
     handmade banner; moments later he was seized and taken away. 
     That night [at the university], a young economics student 
     named Li Minqui, who had been active in the outlawed BASF, 
     tried to mark the anniversary by addressing a spontaneous 
     midnight rally on campus where he indignantly referred to 
     China's current leaders as ``wild and savage autocrats'' and 
     called for an elective Government that could supervise the 
     Communist party. Li was not only promptly expelled but 
     arrested, labeled a ``chief instigator of an anti-party 
     conspiracy,'' accused of counterrevolutionary propaganda and 
     incitement,'' and sentenced to 2 years in prison.

  I just think of how many Members of the Senate and how many Members 
of the Congress would be incarcerated if that were the standard. This 
one who dared to lift a voice to say we ought to have free elections 
and called the autocrats ``wild and savage" served 2 years.
  Schell continues to write:

       On the second anniversary of the massacre, a young woman 
     dressed in funeral white appeared in front of the Monument to 
     observe a moment of silence. ``I came to remember,'' she told 
     a South China Morning Post correspondent before drifting away 
     just as suspicious undercover agents began to close in.

  Incidentally, white being the symbolic color of mourning in China, we 
have chosen the white color, white ribbons to commemorate in mourning 
those who lost their lives at Tiananmen Square. So that is what 
happened on the second anniversary.
  And then Schell writes:

       In 1992, on the third anniversary of the massacre, a young 
     worker named Wang Wanxing appeared not far from where a new 
     sign warned visitors that it was illegal to lay memorial 
     wreaths in front of the Monument without prior approval. 
     After unfurling a banner calling on Deng to apologize for the 
     crackdown following the protest, he was seized, dragged away 
     and committed to a mental hospital. In a letter to U.N. 
     Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali smuggled out of China 
     a month later Wang asserted that not only was he being held 
     against his will in Shanghai's Ankang Psychiatric Hospital 
     for the criminally insane, but he was being forced to take 
     psychotropic drugs.
       Computer hackers were also busy that spring waging 
     electronic warfare by introducing rogue viruses into software 
     programs used on government computers. One such virus caused 
     the words ``Remember June 4'' to appear on display terminals 
     while another flashed the slogan ``Bloody June 4'' as soon as 
     computers at certain state enterprises were booted up.
       Despite increased campus surveillance, on May 28, 1991, 
     [university] students managed to hang cloth streamers out of 
     two dorm windows declaring ``We Will Never Forget June 4.'' 
     Leaflets recalling the events of 1989 also appeared in the 
     student canteen.

  An excerpt from the leaflets said this:

       Those were days that woke the heart and moved the spirit. 
     Then the hue and cry became the sound of suffocation in a 
     pool of blood.

  There are those who would say that to call the world's attention to 
the tragedy of Tiananmen Square in 1989 is empty moralizing on the part 
of self-righteous Americans who want to impose our views of freedom and 
liberty upon the rest of the world and other cultures. May I say to 
those who would argue such that liberty and freedom are not American 
values, that it is not empty moralizing to point to a young Chinese 
student who defied the symbols of oppression and onrushing tanks. And I 
would say to those who would say don't talk about Tiananmen Square and 
don't talk about the massacre, we must not forget that these are not 
American values: these are universal human values and human rights. For 
us to sacrifice what this Nation has always stood for on the altar of 
free trade, on the altar of commercial and corporate profits is 
unconscionable.
  Jiang Zemin was quoted on the front page of the People's Daily 3 
weeks after the massacre. This is what he said. He was mayor of 
Shanghai at the time, not President of China. But this is what he said:

       Toward these cruel enemies--

  That is that young man standing in front of the tanks--

     there must not be even one percent of forgiveness. If we go 
     easy on them, we shall commit an error of historic 
     proportions.

  That is the man whom the President is going to meet and greet in 
Beijing in a few short weeks, the one who said that toward these cruel 
enemies we dare not show even one percent of forgiveness. And they 
didn't, true to his word.

  Nine years later, Jiang is President of China and the students whom 
he called the cruel enemies, many remain imprisoned, those who 
survived. And Jiang, true to his word, showed not 1 percent of 
forgiveness. He has never apologized. He has never acknowledged the 
cruel, inhumane, and barbaric response of the Government at Tiananmen 
Square. The Chinese Government has never investigated, they have never 
even investigated this tragic incident; they have only defended the 
crackdown and the killing of hundreds of students as an appropriate 
response to peaceful dissent.
  So this man, Jiang Zemin will be the leader greeting our President, 
this man who declared not 1 percent of forgiveness. And more recently, 
lest you think he may have changed his mind and changed his attitude 
and lest we are under the misimpression that suddenly the Government of 
China has grown compassionate and that, in the words of President 
Clinton, they now are becoming a thriving democracy--lest we think 
that, President Jiang, when asked by Barbara Walters how he looked back 
on the events of 1989, replied, ``It's much ado about nothing.''
  So on this anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, we all need to 
remind the world we will not forget and we will not allow the 
courageous sacrifice of those hundreds of students at Tiananmen Square 
to be demeaned, to be disrespected and to be devalued.
  The Washington Post, in an editorial today entitled ``China: Two 
Views,'' speaks of a view that I would share:

       A strikingly different view from inside China, from someone 
     with pretty fair credentials to judge China's practices, Bao 
     Tong, 65, was Chief of Staff of China's premier and Communist 
     Party chief until he was jailed in 1989.

  Why was he jailed, by the way? He was jailed:

       Because he opposed the crackdown against protesting 
     students in Tiananmen Square.

[[Page S5603]]

      Mr. Bao spent 7 years in prison, three of them 
     incommunicado, showing that China has a ways to go when it 
     comes to rule of law. He now lives under house arrest but 
     recently gave an interview to the Post's Steven Mufson and 
     John Pomfret.
       Mr. Bao challenged the notion that economic strength, in 
     the absence of real democratization, inevitably will make 
     China more benign.

  By the way, let me repeat what he challenged, because it is the very 
thesis espoused by those who say constructive engagement is going to 
bring about change in China. This is the very theory espoused by those 
who say, ``We will just trade sufficiently, we will increase trade and 
do enough increased commerce with China, and everything will be 
better.'' So he challenged the notion that economic strength in the 
absence of real democratization inevitably will lead China to be more 
benign.

       China ``has already gone mad twice in the last 40 years,'' 
     he said, referring to the cultural revolution and the 
     Tiananmen massacre. ``You have to ask yourself a question. 
     What will it do on the international scene? Is it a source of 
     stability or a potential source of instability? When it 
     doesn't have enough power, its attitude will be restrained. 
     But once it develops and becomes strong, what kind of role is 
     it going to play without a complete structural change?''

  That is the question I would pose. For all of the advocates of the 
current administration's policy, I would pose this question raised by 
this very knowledgeable individual, Mr. Bao, who himself has spent 7 
years incarcerated. The question he poses: Once China develops, opens, 
and becomes strong, what kind of role is it going to play without a 
complete structural change?
  What he means by ``complete structural change'' is democratization. 
It is his argument that economic development in China, the embrace of 
free markets, and the embrace of market capitalism will not be 
sufficient to make them benign, to make them a partner in world peace, 
and that that will not happen without a structural change--free 
elections, freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion--
that until those things become realities in China, then we cannot 
expect that there are going to be responsible citizens in the 
international stage of affairs.
  The Post editorial concludes:

       Mr. Clinton should meet with dissidents when he visits 
     Beijing later this month. A sit-down with Bao Tong, if the 
     government would release him from house arrest long enough, 
     might be a useful addition to the president's official 
     schedule.

  And I suggest it certainly would.
  So I want to conclude on this anniversary of an event that should 
never, never, never be forgotten, by making this plea: Mr. President, 
delay your trip to China. There are ongoing investigations; there are 
ongoing hearings. So, please, we are not talking about isolating China. 
It could not happen if we wanted it to. We are not talking about 
breaking off contacts, dialog and communications with China. But we are 
saying, under the current cloud and with all of the questions about the 
web of interrelationships between the Chinese Government, the American 
administration, and corporate America and multinational corporations--
delay this trip.
  Then second, Mr. President, if you must go, if you must go ahead with 
this planned trip, then I plead with you to express the desire of 
millions of Americans by not going and not being received at Tiananmen. 
As this young man took his stand as a symbol of freedom against the 
symbols of oppression, I ask our President, take one small stand by not 
going to Tiananmen Square; not being received, simply saying: Mr. Jiang 
Zemin, I will not be received where these students were slain. I will 
not show disrespect and disdain for the sacrifice that they made by 
being received at a State visit on that location. To be received there 
is to demean and devalue the stand those students took.
  Third, I plead with you, Mr. President, that if you insist on going 
to China, that you should insist on meeting with the families of those 
champions of democracy who were either slain or remain in prison. I ask 
that as our President goes, and if he goes, that he should forcefully 
denounce the repression and the human rights abuses ongoing in China; 
if he goes to Tiananmen Square that his message should be this: Never 
again. And in the spirit of Ronald Reagan at the Berlin Wall, let him 
say, ``This is wrong. Never should it happen again.'' I ask that in 
China he visit with house church leaders, those who, because of their 
conscience and because of their religious convictions, have not 
registered with the Communist Chinese Government and, because they have 
not registered, because they have not signed up and received official 
sanction by the Government, stand in harm's way, stand in jeopardy of 
losing their freedom.
  I ask that our President visit with banned journalists, for there are 
no free newspapers. There are no independent journalists. There are no 
expressions of dissent against the Communist Chinese Government. So, 
Mr. President, meet with those journalists who would like to have a 
newspaper, who would like to be able to write a column, who would like 
to be able to freely express their views of freedom and democracy, but 
are not allowed to because of the current regime. Meet with them. Hear 
their story. Take your stand for freedom.
  And then I ask that before you leave for Beijing, if you must go, 
that you sign the China sanctions package that has already passed the 
House of Representatives by a huge, overwhelming bipartisan majority. 
Some of those provisions have already been added to our State 
Department authorization bill which we will be debating, hopefully, 
next week. Some of those have already been set. But I ask that the 
President sign those and, in so doing, express sincerity in wanting to 
decry the human rights abuses that are going on.

  Let me just conclude. In a Washington Post article, not an editorial 
but a news article today on the Tiananmen anniversary, the article, a 
Michael Laris report, concludes:

       . . . China has not yet turned irrevocably toward a liberal 
     political approach. [That's an understatement.] It maintains 
     a massive state security apparatus, which monitors the 
     private affairs of anybody it deems a threat to the Communist 
     Party's monopoly on political power. The jails hold more than 
     2,000 political prisoners, including 150 or so arrested after 
     the Tiananmen Square protests. Among the 200,000 other people 
     in labor camps, at least some are political offenders.
       [I assume yesterday] Early this evening at the Beijing 
     University bulletin board, which was a center of protest 
     information in 1989, a woman read announcements of lectures 
     on the environment and the Asian financial crisis. ``Many of 
     my friends think those students were foolish,'' she [this 
     student] said. ``I think they were very brave. I wish more 
     people now had that much passion. Some people now have the 
     same passion, but they know not to express it in the same 
     way.''

  For those who believe it is all better now in China, listen to the 
words of this student who says the students in China today have 
learned, passion for freedom they may have, but if they cherish being 
free, if they cherish the right to be a student, if they don't want to 
be incarcerated, they better not express it as these students did 9 
years ago today.
  So to all freedom-loving Americans--not as Republicans and not as 
Democrats--but to all freedom-loving Americans, we say to those Chinese 
who love freedom as well: We will not forget what happened June 4, 
1989.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAMS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagel). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I inquire what is the pending business 
before the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is now considering the tobacco 
bill. The Senator may speak on any subject he wishes.
  Mr. GRAMS. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business 
for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  Mr. GRAMS. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Grams pertaining to the introduction of S. 2130 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. GRAMS. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor, and I suggest 
the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page S5604]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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