KEEP SHANGHAI STABLE, KEEP THE OVERALL SITUATION STABLE1
MAY 22, 1989
To all the people of Shanghai:
I speak to you directly as your mayor, earnestly hoping to win your wholehearted support.
Shanghai’s society and economy are now in fairly dire straits. If this continues, the consequences will be very serious. Our students hope to promote democracy and crack down on corruption, which are the same goals the Party and government are working hard to achieve. However, recent marches, demonstrations, and sit-ins have brought many public transit lines to a halt; production, daily life, and work have all been seriously affected. There are some very worrisome trends right now. Some students are going to factories and stores to establish links; they are making speeches urging workers and salespeople to go on strike. Rumors are also rampant in society at large; posters written in both large and small characters are appearing all over the streets, along with signs of social chaos. I am extremely worried by these phenomena.
The Shanghai Municipal People’s Government is the government of all the people of the city, and we are responsible for the safety of the lives and property of everyone in it, as well as for social safety. There was a rumor last night that the People’s Liberation Army was about to enter Shanghai and enact martial law. Some students who didn’t understand what was really happening rushed to the banks of the Suzhou Creek and blockaded the bridges along the river’s banks. When we refuted this rumor, the students, recognizing they had been tricked, returned to their schools shortly after 6 a.m. this morning. Rumors like that make everyone jittery and we should be on high alert against them.
Earlier on, in order to maintain social order, our workers, farmers, cadres, public security police, and armed police stayed at their posts night and day, demonstrating their patriotism and sense of ownership. Here, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to all of you! But in the face of such a serious situation, I have no choice but to call upon all our people to do the following.
First, I ask all employees to remain steadfast at their posts and continue with production and construction. Factories are important production sites and outsiders may not enter them without permission. We must urge students not to go to factories to make connections. Shanghai’s working class has a glorious tradition: during the days when Shanghai was being liberated and even during the most chaotic period of the “Great Cultural Revolution,” factories did not halt production, and supplies of coal, water, and power remained normal. We must remain at our posts and earnestly continue with the “Two Increases and Two Decreases”2 campaign.
Second, I ask all of you to resolutely maintain order on public transportation. The Shanghai city government has prepared ample quantities of materials, and supplying them will not be a problem. However, if traffic is blocked and these cannot be transported, our lives will sink into chaos. Coal briquets would not reach retail stores, commodities and non-staple foods would not reach shops and vegetable markets—if this continues, life will be extremely difficult. We are therefore asking our people not to block cars, not to climb on cars, and not to disrupt traffic. Because we love them and care about them, when students are marching, we should urge them to return to their studies. I also hope our people will not surround and watch them. At present, some women are watching while holding children. This is very dangerous—if anything untoward were to happen, the consequences would be unthinkable.
Third, we must protect the security of those work units that are critical to people’s lives, such as coal, power, water, and gas suppliers; we must also protect the security of vital state institutions, such as government agencies, banks, warehouses, news broadcasters, and TV stations. We must not permit attacks on them.
Fourth, we must maintain the city’s appearance and its sanitation. All district and county governments and neighborhood offices must organize sanitation workers to remove all posters with large and small characters that are marring the city’s appearance, and block the channels through which rumors are spread.
Fifth, the public security police and armed police must resolutely maintain social safety and order. We also hope everyone will resolutely support them in their work. Without their hard work, order in Shanghai would deteriorate and bad elements might take the opportunity to harm the lives and property of the people.
People of Shanghai, the work of the Party and government has many shortcomings. You are dissatisfied with this, just as we are. We must solve these problems through democracy and legal institutions. We have both the determination and the confidence to solve these problems. What we need now is stability and order; what we need is the greatest possible unity among all the people of Shanghai rather than social chaos and a decline in production, which would create difficulties in people’s lives.
Therefore Shanghai must not be disrupted. Otherwise, it would take us more than several years to make up for the ensuing consequences, and in the end, the impact on each and every person in Shanghai, including the students, would be bitter. At a critical time like this, we must resolutely do everything the Party Central Committee and the State Council ask us to do, and we must stand with them politically. We must stand firm, make our position clear, stabilize Shanghai, stabilize the overall situation, and shoulder our historic responsibilities together.
Thank you!
1. This is an address Zhu Rongji televised to the people of Shanghai.
2. The “two increases and two decreases” were increasing production and decreasing waste, and increasing revenues and decreasing expenditures.