China

By Michael S. Serrill

These days Chinese students like to retell the fable of a prince named She who was fond of dragons. The prince had pictures of the mythical beasts on his walls and carved on the pillars of his house. One day a real dragon heard about the prince's obsession. But when the slithery monster poked its head through the window, Prince She trembled with fear and hid himself. The current Peking regime, say the students, is behaving much like the prince. For months, they say, the authorities encouraged political reform. But when democracy actually poked its head through the window, in the form of student demonstrations, government officials tried to push it away.

That spoof of Peking's reaction to weeks of seething unrest was not far off the mark. Last week in a front-page editorial, the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily denounced the students in the strongest possible terms, saying that their marches for university reform, elections and a free press were an "inevitable outcome" of "the spread of bourgeois liberalization." The editorial almost certainly had the full approval of Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping and the full Central Committee.

By week's end it was clear that the government intended not only to clamp down on new demonstrations but sharply limit future political discussion and purge officials who have gone too far in advocating reform. Rumor had it that at least one official had already been removed: Fang Lizhi, a vice president of the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, who has strongly supported demands for more democracy. The biggest loser, however, may be Politburo Member Hu Qili, a leading advocate of political reform, whose position as a likely successor to Hu Yaobang as Communist Party General Secretary seems to have been badly weakened by recent events.

The month-long student demonstrations reached a dramatic climax early last week when a crowd of several hundred students at Peking University burned about 100 copies of the Peking Daily, the local party organ. Some made makeshift kites out of the newspaper, set them on fire and sailed them out dormitory windows. The students charged that the Daily had given a "distorted" picture of their movement. Three days later some 200 African students, who have complained recently about racism among their hosts, staged a twelve-mile march through the capital's streets. By week's end, though, the tough new government line seemed to have stilled the protests.

The question now: How long will the official chill on dissent last? While the repercussions may be less draconian than in the past, Deng has made it clear that Western-style democratic reform is out of the question. Indeed, some Western China watchers believe the Dengists have been extraordinarily lenient with the demonstrators, in part so that they could use the continuing disorder as an excuse to cut off political discussion.

Others see less calculation behind Peking's moves. "The Deng style of decision making is very easygoing," says Andrew Nathan, a China expert at Columbia University. "To use a metaphor from pool, he takes a shot at the setup and sees where the balls go." Peking may have quieted the restive students for a while. But it is probably only a matter of time before, once again, the dragon of democracy pokes its head through Deng's window.

With reporting by Richard Hornik/Peking