Stories from the Ice Age

By Jonathan Mirsky on October 26, 1989

Since the Tiananmen Square killings it has become fashionable within the Chinese leadership to refer to dissident intellectuals as “scum.” That was Mao’s view, too. In 1942, the chairman, his armies besieged by both Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese army, took time off for zheng-feng, or rectification movement, in which he laid down rules for “unclean” Chinese authors. Despite the official repudiation of Mao’s literary views in 1983, his dead hand continues to terrify writers today.

China Witness, 1989

By Jonathan D. Spence on October 12, 1989

In response to: China’s Spring from the June 29, 1989 issue

To the Editors:

The absolute cynicism displayed by the current Chinese leadership as they present their version of this spring’s events in Beijing and other cities offers a special challenge to the historian: that of assembling the factual record before it disappears altogether. Only thus, it seems to me, can we pay meaningful homage to the courage of the pro-democracy demonstrators, both those so callously killed, and those who have survived.

After the Massacres

By Simon Leys on October 12, 1989

A historian of contemporary China who is considering the events of three years ago, of ten years ago, of twenty years ago, must feel dizzy: each time, it is the same story, the plot is identical—one needs only to change the names of a few characters. The grim merry-go-round leads nowhere; it merely spins, ever more squeaky and rickety; the bloody contraption can only crush with increasing brutality a populace thirsting for freedom.