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A YEAR has passed since the Chinese government declared war on its young
generation of intellectuals, gunning down defenders of the student-led democracy
movement. When the troops and tanks moved in, leaving at least 1000 people
dead, the worst was feared. The massacre was followed by occupation of universities,
academies and the offices of many work units, including the Beijing Stone
Group, a high-technology company. Mass arrests, show trials resulting in
execution and the force of the propaganda accompanying a new crackdown on
bourgeois liberalisation convinced many that this was the beginning of another
period as repressive as the Cultural Revolution.

Few condone the Chinese government for what has transpired since the
massacre. Yet the worst has not happened. In the Cultural Revolution between
1966 and 1976, intellectuals, including scientists, were persecuted as the
‘stinking ninth category of class enemies’. Most were forced away from their
professions to serve long stints learning from the peasants and workers.
Despite near universal support among this category of people for the democracy
movement – three members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were killed
during the massacre – only those who the authorities discovered were actively
involved or spoke out against the government have faced persecution.

In January, Asia Watch estimated that between 10,000 and 30,000 people
were arrested. The government admitted that 4000 people are under arrest.

Amnesty International’s recently published list named nearly 700 people
who have been detained, including 63 scientists or science students. Four
researchers were from the Wuhan Centre for the Application of High Technology
in Hubei, including the director, who was accused of hiding dissidents in
the centre.

The ‘crimes’ of many were minor. Wang Xuecheng, a trainee fellow at
the Biology, Soil and Desert Institute, Xinjiang, was arrested for ‘spreading
rumours about 4 June after listening to Voice of America and putting up
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The turmoil did result in a hardening attitude towards those in higher
education. The government cut the number of postgraduates enrolled in the
current academic year by 19.4 per cent to 29,000 and undergraduates by 10.8
per cent to 597,000.

The social sciences, regarded as more controversial, have lost more
places than the natural sciences. New students in Beijing have been sent
off for one year’s army training before starting their studies while graduates
are being forced to work in local work units before being recruited as cadres
in the cities.

The government has not, however, condemned intellectuals as a class
and has been at pains to show the world that it still recognises their importance
to China’s development. The official media have praised the year’s main
scientific achievements lavishly. They include the building of a reflecting
telescope 2.16 metres in diameter and a 5-megawatt low-temperature nuclear
reactor, the launch of China’s first commercial satellite and the training
of 1 million rural workers in the Spark Plan to spread improved technology
to the countryside.

The mistakes of the past that robbed China of 10 years of scientific
advances were not repeated. This may be due to the influence of reformists
still in power, such as Li Ruihuan, the minister for propaganda. Hardliners,
led by premier Li Peng, have emphasised the need to strengthen the dictatorship
of the proletariat, the need to learn from ‘revolutionary heroes’ and for
intellectuals to follow the ‘correct’ party line. However, Ruihan and Jiang
Zemin, the Communist Party general secrerary, have stressed that a ‘hundred
flowers should bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend’ – echoing
Mao Tsetung’s famous speech of 1956 – adding that the government should
not look back too much to the past.

The government has justified its softly-softly approach by repeating
that only a ‘tiny minority’ of intellectuals were threats to the system.
Gao Jingde, president of Qinghua University, Beijing, until 1988, said in
the official report in Beijing Review this April: ‘Among China’s intellectuals
only a few stand for bourgeois liberalisation. The majority are firm in
their support of socialism. Therefore, anti-bourgeois liberalisation is
not directed against the masses of intellectuals. After the rebellion was
put down, the policy of respect for knowledge and talented people has continued.’

Contrary to what the propaganda machine spurts out, however, the massacre
has infected China’s students, academics and scientists with a near universal
feeling of disillusionment. Before Tiananmen Square, trust in the Communist
Party’s mandate to rule was close to breaking. During the massacre, it finally
snapped.

Instead of ‘loyal patriotism’, the desire to get out of the country
has become endemic among China’s elite. The brain drain was a problem before
last June, but is much more acute now. ‘I have always thought my roots were
in China,’ said a student speaking in Shanghai. ‘But since June I spend
all my energy planning to go abroad. Most students feel the same.’

Out of the 1983 intake of 300 students to the Guangzhou Medical School,
more than half are now settled in Australia. Because the Australian Medical
Association does not recognise their Chinese qualifications, they are more
likely to work in restaurants than as doctors or nurses. About 250,000 mainland
Chinese study in Australia. Few have any intention of returning home. In
Britain, most Chinese extended their visits for study or research.

Back in China, academic life, particularly in science institutions,
has surperficially returned to normal. But free political discussion is
now out of the question while official political study has become a part
of everyone’s timetable. Only the very daring question the system, but many
deeply resent their loss of freedom of speech and conscience. There is a
general feeling, openly expressed by Professor Qian Xuesen, a physicist
and president of the China Association for Science and Technology, that
such lack of freedom will stunt innovation in the sciences. Qian urged that
academic organisations be allowed to ‘give full play to academic democracy
and provide forums for the expression of new ideas from scientists’.

There were fears that the crackdown on dissent and bourgeois liberalisation
would lead to a break in academic and scientific links between China and
the outside world, particularly because last year’s ‘turmoil’ has been blamed
on the influence of undefined hostile foreign forces. But contact has not
been severed as it was after the Cultural Revolution. This is welcomed by
Wan Runnan, former president of the Stone Group, speaking in Paris two weeks
ago. ‘It is important that foreign scientists continue to work with the
Chinese in order to keep the door open and spread ideas about freedom,’
he said. Wan is now secretary of the Federation for a Democratic China,
a dissidents’ exile group.

Foreign scientists are welcomed, though because of fears for their own
safety and disgust at the brutality of the massacre, fewer have gone to
China, according to the Royal Society. The society also suspended all high-level
contact with science institutions, such as the Natural Science Foundation
under the State Council, as well as its memorandum of understanding with
the Ministry of Geology.

Because of the disruption to the universities, British universities
followed the advice of the British Council to send students of Chinese to
Taiwan instead of the People’s Republic. For the next academic year, some
may return to China. The British Council is continuing its cultural exchange
programme, but is not pursuing its earlier plans to expand in China and
is not arranging high-level academic exchanges.

But the door has remained open to Chinese scientists going out of the
country for study or research, though there are new restrictions. They can
go only if they have worked in China for at least five years after graduation
and if they have a certificate from the polic confirming their political
purity.

International reaction to Tiananmen Square has damaged the government’s
plan to maintain economic and technical relations with foreign businesses.
While banks have resumed lending, government sanctions still take their
toll. The EEC Madrid Agreement to isolate China as an expression of countries’
disapproval of the events of 4 June is still in place. As a result, Britain’s
programme to provide aid and trade remains suspended as part of the freezing
of a soft loan of Pounds sterling 300 million.

The Overseas Development Administration also postponed support for contracts
to supply science and technology consultancy, tendered for by British companies
or institutions, but is now ready to consider new proposals in social and
environmental areas.

The World Bank has not resumed normal lending, but has agreed to fund
two new projects – disaster relief following an earthquake in northern China
and an agricultural project in the extremely poor northeast. High-level
contacts between the Chinese and Japanese governments have resumed.

The European country that has been most active in signing post-Tiananmen
contracts has been France, despite its harbouring of Chinese dissidents
and resulting hostile relationships with Beijing. Aerospatiale and a Singaporean
partner have recently signed a contract to manufacture the new P-120 five-seater
helicopter in France, China and Singapore. Air Liquid International, of
France, has a contract with the Caohejing Hightech Park, Shanghai, to produce
jointly pure gases for making integrated circuits. A French-Dutch banking
consortium has agreed to provide a loan of $20 million (about Pounds sterling
12 million) for industrial equipment in Shanghai. Taiwan has increased its
investment by 66 per cent since last June, concentrating on software development.

In general, however, there has been less commercial interest in China
than before the massacre. The Chinese admit that new foreign investment
has dropped by 25 per cent. The 48 Group, which promotes commercial relations
in Britain, has few takers for its seminars. A policy of retrenchment begun
before Tiananmen Square to curb excessive growth and inflation is only just
beginning to ease. It has exacerbated the bureaucracy that has plagued business
links with China.

The consequences of political pressures, disillusionment and hardships
were summed up by a British visitor to Beijing. ‘What China is going to
lose is innovation and excitement. Uniformity has led to a rather grey science.
People trudge through it rather than become enthused by it, and the brain
drain will make matters worse.’

Meanwhile, former Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov, now professor of physics
at Cornell University, has organised a boycott of scientists attending meetings
in China to run until Fang Lizhi can leave the US embassy. Kurt Gottfried,
professor of physics at Cornell, is one of several hundred in Europe, the
US and Japan to have signed the petition. ‘We scientists form an international
community. We have to protect each other’s basic rights,’ he said.

The Tiananmen massacre was as brutal as any event in China’s communist
history, designed to prevent the sort of revolutions that have been happening
in Eastern Europe. The fact that it was not followed up by a mass reign
of terror does not mean that all is well for Chinese science and scientists.
This week, Beijing, the centre of political malcontent, is a sullen place.

* * *

Leaderless in the search for an alternative

LIU has no personal axe to grind against the government, having not
not suffered any persecution for the interest he took in last year’s democracy
movement. But he is quick to drop his traditional Chinese reserve and speak
honestly about his disappointments. He is an exemplary research fellow from
an engineering institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences who recently
won an award to do research at a British university. He arrived from China
a few weeks ago. His name has been changed in order to protect him.

He remembers the days of the Beijing Spring. Few scientists from his
institute became directly involved, but for several weeks politics was the
only topic of discussion and work stopped for a fortnight.

‘Since the student movement was declared counter-revolutionary we stopped
talking. But inside we still support it and hope that there will be some
change in the political system: more democracy and freedom to speak openly.
These are important for our work as scientists.

We want rights to criticise the government. If it makes mistakes, we
cannot say anything.

‘Very few people still believe in communism but a lot see that we are
different from Western countries. We have a big population and little education.
We are looking for some system in between Marxism and capitalism,’ he said.
But in their search for an alternative the Chinese intellectuals are now
leaderless. They have no Sakharov or Havel. Astrophysicist Fang Lizhi is
regarded by many as a coward for continuing to hide in the American embassy.
Nor do they look to the exile Federation for a Democratic China as providing
future leaders. All they can do, says Liu, is wait for a change in balance
of power within the government that will allow for change in the system.

Liu and his fellow scientists are not convinced by the current facade
of political harmony. ‘Most of us think that when Deng Xiaopeng dies there
could be a violent power struggle or even civil war. If the hardline wins
it could be worse for intellectuals.’

Even before Tiananmen, China’s scientists were facing new frustrations.
‘Money is strictly controlled by the government. Now we can’t do fundamental
research but only that which will earn money.’ Only 20 per cent of staff
in his institute can do fundamental research. Finding funds is too often
based not on fair competition but exploiting good guangxi (connections).

Commercial pressures are further undermining the quality of Chinese
science. Graduates are increasingly reluctant to do postgraduate research
because of the greater rewards they can earn outside their profession. ‘This
year our institute wanted to accept two doctoral students, but only one
applied. A few years ago there would have been big competition. A postdoctoral
salary is not enough to live on. Most people have to find money from other
sources. Now they would rather join companies or go abroad.’