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中國“六四”真相
《中國六四真相》一書中文版由明鏡出版社于2001年4月出版，最近
由“匿名者”搬上网路。本刊特將此書存置此處，以饗廣大讀者。2001年5月26日
“匿名者”的話：我將《六四》一書上載到自由网，希望貴网站可為之開辟個鏈接。我
的目的是幫助國內百万讀者在六四紀念日前讀到此書，我也确信這也是原書的著者的本意。
前言：《中國「六四」真相》的深遠意義
自序: 「六四」感怀(張良)
序曲: 「六四」背景
學潮興起
「四二六」社論
「五四宣言」
絕食
趙紫陽下台
戒嚴
「幕后黑手」
欽定江澤民
部署清場
「六四」慘案
尾聲：中國向何處去 后記
由“匿名者”搬上网路。本刊特將此書存置此處，以饗廣大讀者。2001年5月26日
“匿名者”的話：我將《六四》一書上載到自由网，希望貴网站可為之開辟個鏈接。我
的目的是幫助國內百万讀者在六四紀念日前讀到此書，我也确信這也是原書的著者的本意。
前言：《中國「六四」真相》的深遠意義
自序: 「六四」感怀(張良)
序曲: 「六四」背景
學潮興起
「四二六」社論
「五四宣言」
絕食
趙紫陽下台
戒嚴
「幕后黑手」
欽定江澤民
部署清場
「六四」慘案
尾聲：中國向何處去 后記
1066 pages, Paperback
First published January 9, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 15, 2020
We cannot tolerate turmoil. We will impose martial law again if turmoil appears again. Our purpose is to maintain stability so that we can work on construction, and our logic is simple: with so many people and so few resources, China can accomplish nothing without peace and units in politics and a stable social order. Stability must take precedence over everything.
-Deng Xiaoping, June 2, 1989
Zhang Liang, the name on the front cover, is a pseudonym. These documents, so the editors state, were smuggled out well before 2001 and the Compiler, as he is known, first attempted to publish them in Hong Kong, where books critical of the CCP were often published. (Nowadays, that's even less the case.) But Hong Kong had already returned to mainland administration several years before, and so The Compiler felt that they could not risk publishing them there -- so instead, they turned to two professors - Perry Link, a chaired professor at Princeton, and Andrew Nathan, a specialist in political science and Chinese foreign policy at Columbia.
This is the view from 30,000 feet - the reports, documentation, and meetings were all of the leadership at the very top of the Chinese Communist Party. There is very little about the protestors, what they think, or how they organized here -- although we do learn how many protests there were and how widespread they were; students met up in dozens of cities and not just in Beijing.
At the very top is Deng Xiaoping, who here seems more concerned about the future of the party and China's economic growth. Beneath him are such figures as Zhao Ziyang, formerly the General Secretary of the Communist Party. He appears more conciliatory towards protestors and student groups, but here it looks like he lost his nerve. What made him do this? It's hard to tell here. By contrast, Jiang Zemin, Deng Xiaoping's successor appears to be more of a hardliner, and Li Peng appears to be among the most vigorous in advocating the use of military force. Li Peng, then the Premier, would go on to have a long career at the top and earn intense hatred from dissidents and some foreign observers; he passed away in 2019 and has been eulogized by the Uyghur dissident Wu'erkaixi as a "dead asshole".
Over the past few years, there has been some serious debate over if these documents are real. The Chinese Communist Party, of course, strenuously denies this. On the other hand, some of the dissidents and Tiananmen Square protestors -- one who is mentioned in the book even -- assert they are inaccurate. To their credit, Link and Nathan openly acknowledge this is possible, and with the benefit of their experience in reading party documents and working in Mandarin, have agreed to stake their professional reputations on their publication. Nobody wants to be like Hugh Trevor-Roper, who thought that a set of ersatz diaries of Adolf Hitler were real.
Another possibility lies with the Byzantine nature of the CCP classification system -- as is public knowledge among scholars and writers about the CCP, classified documents can vary based upon their intended recipient and where they sit in the party hierarchy. As a result, contradictions can arise based on who receives the documents and when they were produced.
Finally, there is the possibility that these were a selective release to smear some other figure at the top. But who would do this, and who is the target? That, I admit, I don't know enough to assert anything about.
Leaks from the CCP are few and far between; the last time that anyone would release anything on this volume would be those documents published by the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on human rights abuses and ethnocide against the Uyghur population.
In 2019, a Hong Kong-based publisher released a new volume, "The Last Secret: The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown" [Original Title: 最後的秘密——中共十三屆四中全會「六四」結論文檔 ] containing speeches dating from before and during the crackdown on June 4, 1989. Perhaps the one thing I can say for certain is that this is not the end.
-Deng Xiaoping, June 2, 1989
Zhang Liang, the name on the front cover, is a pseudonym. These documents, so the editors state, were smuggled out well before 2001 and the Compiler, as he is known, first attempted to publish them in Hong Kong, where books critical of the CCP were often published. (Nowadays, that's even less the case.) But Hong Kong had already returned to mainland administration several years before, and so The Compiler felt that they could not risk publishing them there -- so instead, they turned to two professors - Perry Link, a chaired professor at Princeton, and Andrew Nathan, a specialist in political science and Chinese foreign policy at Columbia.
This is the view from 30,000 feet - the reports, documentation, and meetings were all of the leadership at the very top of the Chinese Communist Party. There is very little about the protestors, what they think, or how they organized here -- although we do learn how many protests there were and how widespread they were; students met up in dozens of cities and not just in Beijing.
At the very top is Deng Xiaoping, who here seems more concerned about the future of the party and China's economic growth. Beneath him are such figures as Zhao Ziyang, formerly the General Secretary of the Communist Party. He appears more conciliatory towards protestors and student groups, but here it looks like he lost his nerve. What made him do this? It's hard to tell here. By contrast, Jiang Zemin, Deng Xiaoping's successor appears to be more of a hardliner, and Li Peng appears to be among the most vigorous in advocating the use of military force. Li Peng, then the Premier, would go on to have a long career at the top and earn intense hatred from dissidents and some foreign observers; he passed away in 2019 and has been eulogized by the Uyghur dissident Wu'erkaixi as a "dead asshole".
Over the past few years, there has been some serious debate over if these documents are real. The Chinese Communist Party, of course, strenuously denies this. On the other hand, some of the dissidents and Tiananmen Square protestors -- one who is mentioned in the book even -- assert they are inaccurate. To their credit, Link and Nathan openly acknowledge this is possible, and with the benefit of their experience in reading party documents and working in Mandarin, have agreed to stake their professional reputations on their publication. Nobody wants to be like Hugh Trevor-Roper, who thought that a set of ersatz diaries of Adolf Hitler were real.
Another possibility lies with the Byzantine nature of the CCP classification system -- as is public knowledge among scholars and writers about the CCP, classified documents can vary based upon their intended recipient and where they sit in the party hierarchy. As a result, contradictions can arise based on who receives the documents and when they were produced.
Finally, there is the possibility that these were a selective release to smear some other figure at the top. But who would do this, and who is the target? That, I admit, I don't know enough to assert anything about.
Leaks from the CCP are few and far between; the last time that anyone would release anything on this volume would be those documents published by the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on human rights abuses and ethnocide against the Uyghur population.
In 2019, a Hong Kong-based publisher released a new volume, "The Last Secret: The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown" [Original Title: 最後的秘密——中共十三屆四中全會「六四」結論文檔 ] containing speeches dating from before and during the crackdown on June 4, 1989. Perhaps the one thing I can say for certain is that this is not the end.
August 7, 2012
I think I read this too late. It's a fascinating look at what led up to what I always thought of as a massacre of thousands but which, in reality, could have been less than 1,000 killed. Not that 1,000 is not a massacre but it seemed like such a huge event at the time and that thousands upon thousands had been killed. The inner workings of a closed system was interesting to read about and the closing essay by Orville Schell on the problems regarding the ability to verify the source material is important. Since I have no expertise to judge the authenticity of the material, I rely on the judgements of others which seems to be that the material is genuine. The book gets bogged down in the details at times and I always struggle with Asian names but these are small prices to pay for learning what was possibly going on behind the scenes.
April 13, 2008
This book was recommended to me by a political scientist studying in China and I have to say it knocked my socks off. If even part of it is authentic (and I gather that it may well all be the "genuine article" it provides a unique hour by hour window on the Tiananmen tragedy. Many of the "documents" assembled in this volume read like notes or minutes from actual Central Committee meetings & suggest that the massacre was essentially the result of a complex situation spiralling out of control on all sides rather than the deliberate and calculated repression that many of us in the "west" have tended to believe. Even all these years later, I think this is an incredibly important book for anyone who wants to understand the transitions that modern China is going through.
Read
November 29, 2014But the Party also believes it has learned from Tiananmen that democratization is not an irresistible force. There is a widespread view in the West that where globalization and modernization occur, fundamental changes in the Party-state system ar einevitable, leading to the rise of civil society and some form of democracy. Whether this is right or wrong, the leaders in power in China do not believe it. For them, the lesson of Tiananmen is that at its core, politics is about force. (xxxix)
Some said that the ten years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) constituted a state of anarchy and that the ten years of reform (1978-1988) constituted a state of government with no doctrine; the former was a decade of turmoil, the latter a decade of aimless change. (17)
At 10 P.M. another report said more tha neight hundred students had entered the Square with banners bearing messages such as "Education saves the nation," "Peaceful petitioning," and "Oppose violence."
The 8:35 P.M. report said students at the monument were shouting, "Down with dictatorship," "Demand freedom," and "Down with the police." (39)
Today Wang's [Wang Zhiyong, beaten unconscious by officers on Apr 20] bloody clothes were displayed on the campus of CUPSL, and enraged students called for a strike. (40)
1. [fax on Apr 21] The number of students bringing wreaths to the Square in the daytime hours fell off noticeably; the great majority of people milling in the Square were gawkers. (42)
[Zhao Ziyang at Politburo meeting] Second, we must at all costs avoid any incident of bloodshed, because if such an incident should occur it would give some people the pretext they are lookign for. But we should use legal procedures to punish severely all who engage in beating, smashing, and robbing. (50)
At 12:50 P.M. [Apr 22], three student representatives knelt on the steps to the Great Hall, the one in the middle holding up a large paper containing seven demands. (51)
[Chen Xitong on fax of meeting Apr 23] At Peking Unviersity students are setting up a news center. At Qinghua some students are preparing to set up a broadcast station. This shows that this student movement is a planned, organized turmoil. [You zuzhi, you jihua de dongluan. This is the first occurrence in the documents of the stock phrase that appeared in the April 26 editorial . . .] (53)
The Associated Press reported that Chai Ling [on Apr 23], sokesperson for the newly formed United Students' Association, said the Peking University students had decided to oppose the original plan to end the boycott on May 4 and now suggested that their activities should have no fixed end date. (55)
[report to party central apr 24] The following is from a conversation State Security personnel had with a student who asked to remain anonymous:
The students said there were five reasons for the rise of this student movement: (1) Many students had been determined to pursue a democracy movement for quite some time, and Yaobang's death was only a catalyst. (2) Students these days feel that Marxist-Leninist theory no longer makes sense. (3) Students are extremely negative about corruption and the general social ethos and have no confidence that the problems can be solved. (4) Students are highly pessimistic about their prospects for job assignment. (5) Students feel strong urges to participate and to make themselves heard. . . . (64)
A few of the extrtemely radical students have told their parents that "even if I go down, the movement will go forward." Some students have already prepared for bloodshed. (65)
Before the April 25 evening broadcast of the April 26 editorial, there were reports from around the country that the students were growing tired after ten days of demonstrations and that organizers were seeking ways to keep the moevment alive. But the editorial created an explosive reaction that pushed the student movement to a new high. (76)
[Yang Shangkun at politburo apr 28] People in Hong Kong are also paying close attention to this student movement, and in their minds they are connecting our treatment of the moevment with the retur nfo Hong Kong. Xu Simin, Liao Yaozhu, and other patriotic individuals have been calling publicly for the government to begin dialogue with the students soon and to refrain frmo taking military action against them. The international reaction to our tolerant handling of the April 27 demonstration has been quite favorable. (89)
At 2:30 P.M. [Apr 29] Yuan [Mu], He, and two other government representatives received forty-five students. Yuan took a hard line throughout. There was no serious problem of corruption inside the Party, Yuan said, and Party leaders were reducing expenditures by canceling the annual Beidaihe meeting at the beach and banning the import of expensive cars. He also denied the existence of a censorship system even though the editor-in-chief of the World Economic Herald had just been fired. Demonstrators in Beijing, Yuan claimed, were manipulated by persons behind the scenes who presented a serious threat. He and his colleagues evaded many of the students' questions by changing the subject.
Li Peng and other leaders were pleased with Yuan's performance. Tian Jiyun commented sarcastically that he was an excellent practitioner of shadow boxing. (96)
With Peking University, Qinghua University, People's University, and Beijing Normal University setting the pace, students at forty-five schools were now boycotting class. There were about ninety thousand boycotters, about 70 percent of all college students in the city.
Some said that the ten years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) constituted a state of anarchy and that the ten years of reform (1978-1988) constituted a state of government with no doctrine; the former was a decade of turmoil, the latter a decade of aimless change. (17)
At 10 P.M. another report said more tha neight hundred students had entered the Square with banners bearing messages such as "Education saves the nation," "Peaceful petitioning," and "Oppose violence."
The 8:35 P.M. report said students at the monument were shouting, "Down with dictatorship," "Demand freedom," and "Down with the police." (39)
Today Wang's [Wang Zhiyong, beaten unconscious by officers on Apr 20] bloody clothes were displayed on the campus of CUPSL, and enraged students called for a strike. (40)
1. [fax on Apr 21] The number of students bringing wreaths to the Square in the daytime hours fell off noticeably; the great majority of people milling in the Square were gawkers. (42)
[Zhao Ziyang at Politburo meeting] Second, we must at all costs avoid any incident of bloodshed, because if such an incident should occur it would give some people the pretext they are lookign for. But we should use legal procedures to punish severely all who engage in beating, smashing, and robbing. (50)
At 12:50 P.M. [Apr 22], three student representatives knelt on the steps to the Great Hall, the one in the middle holding up a large paper containing seven demands. (51)
[Chen Xitong on fax of meeting Apr 23] At Peking Unviersity students are setting up a news center. At Qinghua some students are preparing to set up a broadcast station. This shows that this student movement is a planned, organized turmoil. [You zuzhi, you jihua de dongluan. This is the first occurrence in the documents of the stock phrase that appeared in the April 26 editorial . . .] (53)
The Associated Press reported that Chai Ling [on Apr 23], sokesperson for the newly formed United Students' Association, said the Peking University students had decided to oppose the original plan to end the boycott on May 4 and now suggested that their activities should have no fixed end date. (55)
[report to party central apr 24] The following is from a conversation State Security personnel had with a student who asked to remain anonymous:
The students said there were five reasons for the rise of this student movement: (1) Many students had been determined to pursue a democracy movement for quite some time, and Yaobang's death was only a catalyst. (2) Students these days feel that Marxist-Leninist theory no longer makes sense. (3) Students are extremely negative about corruption and the general social ethos and have no confidence that the problems can be solved. (4) Students are highly pessimistic about their prospects for job assignment. (5) Students feel strong urges to participate and to make themselves heard. . . . (64)
A few of the extrtemely radical students have told their parents that "even if I go down, the movement will go forward." Some students have already prepared for bloodshed. (65)
Before the April 25 evening broadcast of the April 26 editorial, there were reports from around the country that the students were growing tired after ten days of demonstrations and that organizers were seeking ways to keep the moevment alive. But the editorial created an explosive reaction that pushed the student movement to a new high. (76)
[Yang Shangkun at politburo apr 28] People in Hong Kong are also paying close attention to this student movement, and in their minds they are connecting our treatment of the moevment with the retur nfo Hong Kong. Xu Simin, Liao Yaozhu, and other patriotic individuals have been calling publicly for the government to begin dialogue with the students soon and to refrain frmo taking military action against them. The international reaction to our tolerant handling of the April 27 demonstration has been quite favorable. (89)
At 2:30 P.M. [Apr 29] Yuan [Mu], He, and two other government representatives received forty-five students. Yuan took a hard line throughout. There was no serious problem of corruption inside the Party, Yuan said, and Party leaders were reducing expenditures by canceling the annual Beidaihe meeting at the beach and banning the import of expensive cars. He also denied the existence of a censorship system even though the editor-in-chief of the World Economic Herald had just been fired. Demonstrators in Beijing, Yuan claimed, were manipulated by persons behind the scenes who presented a serious threat. He and his colleagues evaded many of the students' questions by changing the subject.
Li Peng and other leaders were pleased with Yuan's performance. Tian Jiyun commented sarcastically that he was an excellent practitioner of shadow boxing. (96)
With Peking University, Qinghua University, People's University, and Beijing Normal University setting the pace, students at forty-five schools were now boycotting class. There were about ninety thousand boycotters, about 70 percent of all college students in the city.
June 13, 2019
I never thought I'd be fascinated by official Chinese Communist government documents. But on the 30th anniversary this month of the tragedy at Tiananmem Square in which hundreds, and possible thousands of chinese citizens were killed I decided to read this book which I've had for a while.
These documents show the inability of most leaders to understand the changing times and the drive for freedom which many Chinese people were developing, and the repressive measures which the leaders used to try to quelch those sentiments. It shows you a lot about how those marches and slogans led to the China we see today.
If you want to learn how China is in the 21st century, read what happened in 1989.
These documents show the inability of most leaders to understand the changing times and the drive for freedom which many Chinese people were developing, and the repressive measures which the leaders used to try to quelch those sentiments. It shows you a lot about how those marches and slogans led to the China we see today.
If you want to learn how China is in the 21st century, read what happened in 1989.
Read
September 18, 2021An interesting book that supposedly is a collection of leaked governmental documents leading up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre. While everything in it seems plausible (none of it seemed out of line with what is already known about the event, and the listed facts have been checked), the compiler’s identity remains unknown (for obvious safety reasons), making it impossible to confirm its entirety.
June 21, 2007
The Tiananmen Papers: A Predictable Controversy.
After the end of the cold war marked by the collapse of the Soviets Union, China has been a considerable political power to match the sole superpower, USA, in the fora of international relations. This has made politics and policy making in China a very sellable topics among international relationists, and this was tipped up particularly by the event of the Tiananmen massacre took place in June 1989. Understanding China had been an interesting yet difficult matter, but how many people can have access to Chinese Government’s policy papers or of them by political parties? Well, now almost any body can, thanks to Zhang Liang.
Before the publication of the Tiananmen Papers, many of the international relations academics in the USA used the CIA Research Papers as their “standard sources” in understanding China policy making politics. These “supposed to be confidential” documents are early attempt to understand the decision-making processes of the Chinese leadership, from the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, through the fall of Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang on June 23-24, and assess the impact of the Tiananmen crisis on the concurrent leadership succession struggle within the Communist Party. The research papers estimate the deliberations and intra-Party conflict that produced the martial law order of May 20, the crackdown of June 3-4, and the fall of Zhao, based largely on press reports, but supplemented with other sources not disclosed. But several significant developments, revealed in the book, are worth noting.
In general, The Tiananmen Papers reveals how the most important decisions in China, particularly those surrounding the Tiananmen tragedy, were made not by formal political institutions but by the “eight elders”, an extra-constitutional final court of appeal whose most important voice belonged to Deng Xiaoping. The documents compiled in the book reveal that if left to their own preferences to the Standing Committee of the Politbureau, it would have voted to persist in dialogue with the students instead of declaring martial law.
Considering the development of analysis provides by The Tiananmen Papers compared to other research documents or media analysis regarding the June massacre, it is not an exaggeration when David Vincent of the amazon.co.uk hail this book as “a sensational trove of documents, chronicling events leading up to, and following the violent quashing … and vividly details for the first time what previously had only been surmised.” Its publication is a landmark event not only for the history of China, but for its future as well.
The Tiananmen Papers may alter our perception and change forever our view of how and why the events of June 3-4 took the shape they did. However, this book is a bit “too heavy” for general readers whose reading activities objected in killing time. This book, despite the editors’ efforts to make it readable by adding a narrative context for the documents, remains dry and dense and need total concentration as well as sound knowledge of China to be understood. This book is for those with deep interest in China politics or in human rights.
-o0o-
After the end of the cold war marked by the collapse of the Soviets Union, China has been a considerable political power to match the sole superpower, USA, in the fora of international relations. This has made politics and policy making in China a very sellable topics among international relationists, and this was tipped up particularly by the event of the Tiananmen massacre took place in June 1989. Understanding China had been an interesting yet difficult matter, but how many people can have access to Chinese Government’s policy papers or of them by political parties? Well, now almost any body can, thanks to Zhang Liang.
Before the publication of the Tiananmen Papers, many of the international relations academics in the USA used the CIA Research Papers as their “standard sources” in understanding China policy making politics. These “supposed to be confidential” documents are early attempt to understand the decision-making processes of the Chinese leadership, from the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, through the fall of Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang on June 23-24, and assess the impact of the Tiananmen crisis on the concurrent leadership succession struggle within the Communist Party. The research papers estimate the deliberations and intra-Party conflict that produced the martial law order of May 20, the crackdown of June 3-4, and the fall of Zhao, based largely on press reports, but supplemented with other sources not disclosed. But several significant developments, revealed in the book, are worth noting.
In general, The Tiananmen Papers reveals how the most important decisions in China, particularly those surrounding the Tiananmen tragedy, were made not by formal political institutions but by the “eight elders”, an extra-constitutional final court of appeal whose most important voice belonged to Deng Xiaoping. The documents compiled in the book reveal that if left to their own preferences to the Standing Committee of the Politbureau, it would have voted to persist in dialogue with the students instead of declaring martial law.
Considering the development of analysis provides by The Tiananmen Papers compared to other research documents or media analysis regarding the June massacre, it is not an exaggeration when David Vincent of the amazon.co.uk hail this book as “a sensational trove of documents, chronicling events leading up to, and following the violent quashing … and vividly details for the first time what previously had only been surmised.” Its publication is a landmark event not only for the history of China, but for its future as well.
The Tiananmen Papers may alter our perception and change forever our view of how and why the events of June 3-4 took the shape they did. However, this book is a bit “too heavy” for general readers whose reading activities objected in killing time. This book, despite the editors’ efforts to make it readable by adding a narrative context for the documents, remains dry and dense and need total concentration as well as sound knowledge of China to be understood. This book is for those with deep interest in China politics or in human rights.
-o0o-
Read
August 6, 2011(seemingly reliable) primary sources always make for an interesting read, these internal memos give a unique insider's perspective on dynamics within the chinese government leading up to the tiananmen massacre, and also depict the culmination in an atrocity from the (mostly) reasonable actions of (mostly) reasonable men, a worthwhile read for anyone interested in modern china
March 22, 2011
brilliant window into the inner workings of chinese leadership. the answer why to every question about china's current political climate begins with the tiananmen papers
July 31, 2011
authentication never verified. unbiased accounts of the whole event.
April 8, 2015
Fantastic insider account of Teanamen fiasco. Propulsive, fair and suspenseful! Great job by editors.
June 13, 2023
Intense and eye-opening. Only dropped a star because there's really no way to tell how much of this information is true. It feels true, though, and again, is eye-opening as to the internal workings of the Communist Party in China.
April 14, 2020
Very interesting. Shows how both sides got locked in.
July 30, 2024
六四是一个神秘的存在，不管是在国内还是国外。但是各种渠道都说了解它是学习中国当代社会历史的关键。这本书真假不确定，但学界普遍认为其素材是真实的。对于一个很好奇的读者，我会推荐这本书。但是如果不是很关心六四和中国，这本书的很多细节会太无聊，太具体。
October 5, 2020
I wanted to know the background to the shocking event I saw on TV when I was 12. Comprehensive and put together excellently. It also reveals that not every single member of the politburo of the CCP was Satan. It was a major influence for me when writing my own book, hence the chapter called "Tiananmen" in my forthcoming book, The Trouble With China.
October 15, 2017
This book provides an excellent study on how governments commit evil. The story it tells is a disappointment (dramatically or theatrically) in that there is no climactic scene in which an evil dictator, sitting in the shadows, utters some malice-filled, murderous instruction like "Let them die" or "Teach them a lesson". Life is more complicated than that. The final order to crack down on the protesters came about as a result of complex relationships among various bureaucracies and various governing officials. Had it been up to those nominally in charge, the Politburo Standing Committee, the crack-down may never have occurred.
On the other hand, because calls for freedom were inherently violative of the governing principles of the Communist bureaucracy, one wonders whether the crack-down was nevertheless inevitable -- no matter who had the final word.
That's not to say the it was solely the system which was at fault. Some of the decision-makers were clearly concerned with their own well-being, remembering the dangers they faced during the Cultural Revolution. Ultimately, they will have to accept responsibility.
All-in-all, this book would be excellent for students of political science who wish to see how the CCP truly makes political decisions, before the Hollywood version of the incident comes along and reduces the events down to white and black hats.
(This all assumes that the documents are authentic, which the editors readily admit cannot yet be determined.)
On the other hand, because calls for freedom were inherently violative of the governing principles of the Communist bureaucracy, one wonders whether the crack-down was nevertheless inevitable -- no matter who had the final word.
That's not to say the it was solely the system which was at fault. Some of the decision-makers were clearly concerned with their own well-being, remembering the dangers they faced during the Cultural Revolution. Ultimately, they will have to accept responsibility.
All-in-all, this book would be excellent for students of political science who wish to see how the CCP truly makes political decisions, before the Hollywood version of the incident comes along and reduces the events down to white and black hats.
(This all assumes that the documents are authentic, which the editors readily admit cannot yet be determined.)
August 29, 2015
Great book, gives insights into decision-making and leadership dynamics.
April 1, 2008
A full story of the political tragedy. However the way its written was bit too complicated
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews