GET ORGANIZED AND MAINTAIN SHANGHAI’S STABILITY1
JUNE 5, 6, 7, 1989
Let me report on the situation in Shanghai.
June 5, 1989
Things today are about the same as yesterday: roughly 7,000 people are blocking over 120 important traffic intersections, the tires of over 300 buses have been deflated or slashed, over 400 buses that went out early have been blocked, and some people have attacked bus depots. Workers cannot get to work. Only 50–60% of those in the textile and electrical machinery sectors were on the job today. By noon, one-third of the workers at Shanghai Steel Factories No. 3 and No. 1 were in the factories; although the power load was not bad and some machines were turned on, no one was there to operate them, so production was seriously affected. Traffic within the city is completely paralyzed, and postal trucks and crucial transportation vehicles have been blocked. The railroads, too, have been blocked, so it’s been impossible for the train to Harbin to leave the station.
What we have now isn’t martial law, it’s “student law,” though many of the demonstrators aren’t students. A car from the Municipal Party School was overturned; loudspeakers were installed on top of quite a few traffic kiosks and are broadcasting the Voice of America. Foreign consulates-general are all coming to ask if we can guarantee their safety. An American couple staying at the Huating Sheraton urgently needed to go home because one of their fathers had a heart attack, but the airport road was blocked and they were begging me on their knees [for help]. We’ve already asked [Vice Mayor Liu] Zhenyuan to handle arrangements for foreigners to enter and leave.
This morning, several of our [Party] secretaries divided up their work, primarily to organize us to maintain Shanghai’s stability. Huang Ju and [Vice Mayor Gu] Chuanxun will focus on the public transit and finance sectors and move some workers around to help the districts fix traffic problems. [Wu] Bangguo will organize security for government agencies: this morning he held meetings with various sectors, first with the protection agencies, then had people sign up to support the districts in maintaining traffic flow. [Zeng] Qinghong2 will convene a conference of district publicity directors to focus on public opinion and publicity. With panic buying of rice, preserved vegetables, cooking oil, salt, and even coal briquets now beginning, [Vice Mayor Zhuang] Xiaotian and Ni Hongfu will be responsible for the production and supply of non-staple foods. Yang Ti will be in charge of directing security actions.
Since the tunnel between Pudong and Puxi has been blocked, traffic has become a major problem. The main action we need to take at this point is to unclog the traffic intersections. We are already formulating a plan for such a move. According to a report from Xuhui District, over 40 of its intersections are blocked. It plans to use primarily worker patrol teams to organize unblocking there, which will remain on-site afterward to maintain order. After discussing the Xuhui District’s plan, we have agreed to adopt it. All districts should start taking action, mobilize the people, and do so strictly under a unified and coordinated command. We will prepare to have unified action on the morning of the 7th,3 with the exact time to be kept confidential. Police must not use batons.
We will not propose slogans other than these:
—First, “We are against obstructing traffic; we want to be able to live normally and to have food to eat.”
—Second, “We oppose disrupting Shanghai; we want to keep Shanghai stable.”
—Third, “We oppose rioting; we want law and security.”
I’m afraid we won’t be able to remove the roadblocks unless we outnumber the blockers by two or three times. If there is chaotic fighting, it will result in bloodshed. The best time to remove roadblocks is early morning. Riot police and police patrol teams must be sent in to apprehend anyone who slashes tires or damages traffic kiosks. They must be powerful enough to act as a deterrent.
Communist Party members must organize and further maintain stability in Shanghai. The above plans have been reported to Jiang Zemin and have received his approval.
June 6, 1989
Since our meeting yesterday, the work at major intersections and in the various districts has been quite sound and actions have been swift. Our overall assessment is that the situation today is slightly better than it was yesterday, but there are also new trends, three of which are particularly notable.
1. The Clearing of Roadblocks. Last night’s effort in this regard, which lasted until 4 a.m., was a very good and successful trial action. Over 6,500 people cleared roadblocks at over 120 locations—there are still 30-odd remaining. During this time, we organized rush shipments of grain and non-staples. This evening, Director Zhang Junjie of the city’s Office of Finance and Trade made an impressive televised address. Practice has shown that if we organize ourselves, we can stabilize the situation. Of course we also anticipated that because our organized forces are insufficient, we would still be unable to ensure that all transportation routes could be opened. At the instigation of a very small number of people, many new roadblocks were put up this morning, so their number plus those remaining from yesterday comes to 145. In the afternoon the districts again took the initiative and actively cleared roadblocks; by 6 p.m. today there were 93 remaining. Fewer students came out today than yesterday—there were only 500 or more from 9 tertiary institutions. Most of the new roadblocks were put up by loiterers and lowlifes—this is a very important feature. Public transit workers are still working very hard—their work attendance has reached 80%, and most of them went to work on bicycles or on foot.
This morning buses operated on 55 routes, but because of the new roadblocks, only 3 routes were open all the way. The afternoon clearances partly opened another 3. Currently, 75 of the city’s 130 public transit routes are impassable. There are also another 413 blocked buses on the streets, of which 308 have deflated tires. In another trend, students and loiterers are using people and publicly owned vehicles to block bus depots. Six bus depots have been blocked. They are also deliberately damaging repair vehicles. Each depot only has one repair vehicle, which is used to inflate and repair tires.
Public transit companies, along with all districts, must take protective measures, because if the repair vehicles are wrecked, it will be hard to repair buses. Several rail transport intersections are also constantly being blocked. Many loiterers and lowlifes tend to gather in rural areas and at the borders between rural and urban areas. The dregs of society are surfacing now—they think there will be a regime change, they think their time has come. At 1 p.m., over 2,000 people had gathered at Guangxin Road; we cleared the road after 2 p.m. Now we’re organized at the stations and at the airport. Today, over 1,000 people rushed toward the airport from Hongqiao Road. The airport was prepared and had organized to stop them. Its leaders stood in the front row, and the students drew back after hearing this news.
The situation with industrial production today is roughly the same as yesterday. The vast majority of factories have been able to operate and produce, and only a few had to halt or half-halt because raw materials couldn’t get in or products couldn’t be shipped out owing to traffic. In some places, it was even harder for workers to get to work: yesterday they could still ride bicycles, but today even bicycles were kept from passing. The goal is to not let you get to work, with the result that the average attendance at factories was about 60%. Given this serious traffic paralysis, 60% attendance isn’t bad. Stores are still basically open for business, and only a few didn’t open for lack of staff or because they were attacked.
2. Efforts to Reach Out to the People. Our publicity and our work to win the hearts of the people have achieved great results. Our radio and TV broadcasts were very effective today, and the material in the Liberation Daily and Wenhuibao was also very good. The general public applauded our publicity and media. Therefore after looking into this, the secretaries of our Municipal Party Committee feel that the publicity department of the Party Committee and the “three papers and two stations”4 should be commended. This is a fight to win over the people, to win over people’s hearts. It is precisely the time for those on the publicity front to do meritorious deeds for the people of Shanghai and also for the people of the entire country. Keeping Shanghai stable is a means of supporting Beijing and the central authorities. Today, in the name of the “three papers and two stations,” we issued an open letter entitled “If Shanghai Is Not to Descend into Chaos, What Should We Do?” and we are mobilizing all the people in the city to start a great discussion in this regard. We’ve printed many copies of this letter and distributed them to every factory and neighborhood, and we’re asking factories to have every work team study and discuss it. We must tell people the truth. There are rumors everywhere right now, and some people with ulterior motives are using all sorts of ways to attack us.
Some foreign-owned and joint venture companies have spread rumors brought in from outside, and these have been very inflammatory. Some major hotels have also been showing videos: they don’t show scenes of rioters beating People’s Liberation Army soldiers, only scenes of soldiers fighting back, and they’re even organizing people to watch these videos. I’m asking Liu Zhenyuan to take action immediately. If these are Chinese hotels, ask them whether they still have any Party members? What do they mean by showing these videos? If these are joint venture hotels, tell them that if they do this and Shanghai descends into chaos, we won’t be able to guarantee their safety. We’ve received a report from Shanghai Jiaotong University saying that people are going to the U.S. consulate-general to watch videos. We asked the consulate and they said no such thing took place. If you’re going to invite students to watch videos, we won’t be able to guarantee your safety. Our attitude toward rumors should be to think of ways to cut them off at the source, and to tell people not to believe them. They’re a form of psychological warfare, and we’re responding with psychological counterwarfare.
For our colleagues on the publicity front, now is the time to do dynamic work, to win the hearts of the people. Do positive publicity and reporting and ask people not to believe rumors. Internal conflicts within the army, confrontations within the army—all this is rumormongering. There are so many rumors right now—we should disregard all of them, and we shouldn’t ask if such and such a thing happened. A leaflet signed by someone at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences states that in one economist’s opinion China’s economy is in the midst of a serious crisis, that it’s urgently necessary to freeze all deposits, to freeze all forex, and to raise prices significantly. Reporters should interview him and ask: is this in line with economic principles? They want to create panic, to encourage everyone to withdraw their money. This phenomenon is already appearing in Shanghai: there have been a great many withdrawals, and 12 savings banks already can’t come up with the money to pay wages. Some foreign businessmen are joining the action: if you offer them traveler’s checks they refuse to accept them and insist on withdrawing cash and U.S. dollars. That’s why we must refute rumors.
3. Progress in Organizing. Over 6,500 people were organized for our trial action last night. In today’s action, 40,000 were organized, not counting public security police. Among these, Hongkou District has been doing very solid work and has organized 8,000 people.
However, many worrisome things have also occurred today, and this is because we have not yet won over the great majority of people. Yesterday, while we were removing roadblocks, quite a few onlookers were unfriendly. Also, the lowlifes have been brazen. A van from the Yimin Food Factory was looted yesterday, and today in Jing’an District the tires on a cash-transporting vehicle were deflated, so we had to send neighborhood police to protect it. Some people have taken over kiosks and beaten the neighborhood police, which makes those walking on the streets feel insecure. This morning, the entrance to City Hall was surrounded by people swearing at the government. When someone said, “That might not be the case,” which was only fair, he was badly beaten, even lost a tooth. If we still don’t organize and take measures, people won’t dare to speak up, and some will say that what we have now is a “white terror.” We must closely monitor this situation.
The most important task in our next step is to get organized and mobilize the people. There has been great progress since yesterday. I hear that there’s a shortage of manpower at the district level. The district government agencies don’t have many people; the Municipal Party Committee and government have sent some over, but the number is still small. The key is to mobilize the people, to mobilize the workers, starting with the industrial workers. In the previous phase, leaders at all levels in the industrial sector took this work very seriously; otherwise how could so many people have been organized all at once? But some factory directors still haven’t recognized the seriousness of the current problems, and they use a variety of excuses to say they don’t have enough people.
If we cannot organize the people to form a force, if we are unable to have the people unite around us, then life will also become very difficult for our factory directors and Party secretaries. With work attendance at 60%, if we can mobilize 10% to direct traffic, the flow will pick up and work attendance will immediately be able to rise by 20–30%. Shanghai has 5.08 million workers, of whom 2.3 million are industrial workers—10% of that number is 230,000. How can directors simply say that no one is coming to work and let production be affected? The most important thing at hand is to free up traffic. This way, ordinary people will have confidence in the Municipal Party Committee and government and they will dare to speak out.
After this meeting, we will summon the leaders of all bureaus, bureau-level companies, central government enterprises, and major factories to a meeting: I’m asking [Wu] Bangguo and [Gu] Chuanxun to mobilize them. We should learn from the methods used by the national government’s agencies. First, we must organize core militia to protect the factories—“You train an army for a thousand days to use it at one time.” Second, we must organize publicity teams to maintain traffic flow. At the moment, a gang of people is attacking coking plants, gas factories, power plants, and oil depots—they want to strike a lethal blow against the people of Shanghai. We must tell the people the truth. Party secretaries and factory directors must have a sense of crisis, a sense of urgency; they must take further decisive measures and act swiftly.
As I have said before, if there is chaos in a factory, the director and Party secretary will have to answer for it. I also know that some of you are rather critical and think the public security police are too soft. I must explain this. Certain people in our society with ulterior motives hope for chaos, want to create incidents and magnify them so that chaos takes place everywhere. That’s why the Municipal Party Committee agreed that public security police should do their best to avoid direct clashes, that we should mobilize the people and organize ourselves. With so many workers in Shanghai, we are entirely capable of solving the problem by relying on the power of the workers. Of course this doesn’t mean the public security police have no responsibilities—we can’t do without them. This is a time that will test the public security police, and every policeman must be aware that “we are the people’s warriors and must protect the people.” Everyone on all fronts must support the public security police in their work; they should not rebuke them—they will appear when it is time for them to appear. We ask employees to help them obtain evidence, take pictures, and apprehend lawbreakers.
Public transit employees are working very hard and should be strongly commended by our newspapers. Things will get even more difficult if they feel depressed. What the people fear most right now is that troops will be called in, and the enemy is deliberately spreading rumors about this—first they said that tanks have entered the city, then they said the army had already reached Xinzhuang—they’re fomenting a fear of martial law. We must dispel the rumors. The degree of chaos in Shanghai is different from that in Beijing, and we’ve never thought of using troops. Shanghai has 5.08 million workers—what do we need martial law for? I’m placing my hopes on mobilizing the people and organizing. I believe that 99.9% of the people want Shanghai to be stable and that they stand with us, but this will depend on how well we do our work. Of course the army is our most important force for deterrence; it is the foundation of our political power. What I mean is that we should not cause panic among the people. That’s why I’m placing very great hopes in our colleagues in the publicity front. Using the power of the people to maintain law and order in Shanghai will not be a problem. At the same time, we must remember that if the troubles in Beijing aren’t resolved, Shanghai won’t stay calm either, so we must be sufficiently prepared mentally.
Our immediate task is to unblock and open up traffic. All districts have made great efforts and we support their actions. We plan to send in 40,000 people today—that’s still not enough; we must be prepared for traffic to be blocked again tomorrow. We have to organize 200,000 people in order to ensure the free flow of traffic on all routes. Although 40,000 can’t do the entire job, it is enough to achieve the limited goal of transporting essential rations. The industrial bureaus have already deployed 200 vehicles to transport raw materials; as soon as the roadblocks are removed, they will immediately come out and make rush shipments. The finance and trade departments also held a meeting today and announced they will transport all non-staples and grain to retail locations during the several hours that traffic is moving. The biggest problem is at gas stations—the public transit company’s branches have only a half-day’s worth of gas left. Tonight we’re going to send 25 fuel trucks loaded with gas to the filling stations. They will be escorted by fire trucks to prevent any wrongdoers from bombing them. As yet we haven’t yet organized enough force, but once the overwhelming advantage is on our side, we will be able to restrain and deter them.
Some industrial bureaus such as the Bureau of Construction Industries and the Bureau of Urban Administration are relatively powerful: they can think about joining forces across vertical or horizontal jurisdictions5 so that they can be centralized and then assume responsibility for different areas. For example, the Bureau of Urban Administration could be responsible for the tunnels, and large factories like the Jiangnan Shipyard could be responsible for intersections. In cases where it is unclear which districts intersections belong to, the Bureau of Public Security will make clear delineations. We must organize joint defenses and come to each other’s aid. This is today’s general action plan.
Everyone please note: we have received intelligence that some people have prepared sulfuric acid, but don’t know yet if this is true. Others have gasoline. I hope everyone will be on guard, and of course we mustn’t panic. Some have said they hope the tertiary institutions will cooperate. Tonight we plan to have a meeting with the Education and Health Commission, and tomorrow afternoon we’ll discuss matters with tertiary institution Party committee members. Also, parents of Shanghai students should tell them to go back. Publicity work must support this: TV, radio, and newspapers should report on and commend this type of action and establish a positive atmosphere. The people of Shanghai are rising up to maintain traffic flow themselves and to safeguard people’s lives. We should praise those employees and public security police who insist on going to work, and we should forcefully expose the sabotage by the lowlifes. The critical departments—water, power, and gas—must be tightly controlled, and if anyone rushes them, they should be surrounded.
June 7, 1989
Somewhat more people are at today’s meeting—all the bureau heads and directors of the large factories have also come. We had great success yesterday in opening up traffic: 40,000 people signed up and 36,000 actually showed up. Before 7 a.m., the entire lengths of 59 public transit routes were open to traffic, and the situation has improved significantly. We took advantage of this time to make rush shipments.
Yesterday also saw a serious disturbance. Some people burned a train at the Guangxin Road rail juncture—six people were crushed to death and six injured, none of them students. Fire trucks had to be dispatched there, which affected the work of delivering gasoline. After the accident, a group of 30,000 or more people immediately rushed there. Most of them were loiterers and hooligans who chased away the train’s passengers. They smashed all the windows in the carriages and started burning the postal carriage. If the locomotive had caught fire, it would likely have affected the nearby grease factory. The public security commanders at the scene observed that the wind direction isn’t yet affecting the grease factory. Through their efforts, the public security police were able to use fire trucks to extinguish the fire.
Yesterday, police at the scene were beaten and we had considered using riot police, but some people will look for excuses—they’re already spreading rumors. A total of 74 people were arrested in the course of clearing roadblocks—they were all lowlifes who burned one bus and overturned another five or six. We avoided a disaster, but a serious disturbance did take place. It’s both a bad thing and a good thing—it has taught the people that if we don’t stop the troublemakers from destroying things, we won’t be able to lead normal lives. That’s why we convened a meeting of the law enforcement and judiciary agencies this morning. It was confirmed that public trials should be held in cases where destruction was very dangerous and the evidence is indisputable; the people’s anger cannot be assuaged if the perpetrators are not punished.
What action should we take next? Our [Party] secretaries looked into this and feel that we must take fairly large-scale action. We’ve been working on winning over public opinion for three days, and people are now telephoning me to ask why the government still hasn’t taken measures. If we don’t open up the roads in the next few days, Shanghai will run out of grain and we won’t be able to ensure that people can lead normal lives. As things stand, if only a single student steps up, a swarm of loiterers will rush in and might block cars and deflate tires. There aren’t that many students who might stir things up now, only about 400 or 500. The ones who are really making trouble are the loiterers.
Why haven’t we taken action? The problem is that we still haven’t completely won over people’s hearts. Three days ago, some older professors were particularly agitated. Therefore the first step is to win people’s hearts. The Municipal Publicity Department and the “three papers and two stations” have done a great deal. Now we mustn’t listen to rumors. I ask, does Shanghai want great chaos or does it want stability? Some people want to disrupt Shanghai in order to put pressure on Beijing. These three days of working on public opinion have been handled quite well. Shanghai mainly relies on the working class. Yesterday 7,000 or more people took to the streets—we had 36,000, so we outnumbered them. Although there are many loiterers, they aren’t organized. We must mobilize the people and organize them. [Chen] Guodong says the workers can’t be organized in less than three days—here it has already been three days. The workers will say, we’re workers and can protect factories, but why are you asking us to maintain traffic? We must explain clearly why we can’t use police to deal with this, especially when the people still don’t understand the situation. Although we do indeed have the power to use force, we want to avoid making conflicts worse. In fact, by having 10% of the workers maintain traffic, we can increase work attendance by 20–30%. If factories have no raw materials and traffic isn’t moving, how can we produce? The foremost task at hand is stability.
Some might ask, “Why didn’t you rely on us workers sooner? Instead you used to rely on intellectuals.” You can’t put it that way. The revolution can’t do without intellectuals, but workers are the masters, so it won’t do not to rely on them. If we organize 200,000 or more people tomorrow, we’ll be able to ensure the free flow of traffic. Today the president and Party secretary of Shanghai Jiaotong University led a team to clear roadblocks. The newspapers commended them and so did I, but students surrounded them aggressively, and the president was under such pressure that he wanted to resign. Several schools are asking for martial law—this won’t do! We must consider whether or not the people would accept it. We must overcome the force of evil with the force of good.
Students are no longer a very great problem now. There aren’t many of them, and the “staunch ones” who persist in making trouble are even fewer. The papers have identified the Autonomous Federation of Tertiary Institution Students6 by name, and they’re beginning to fragment. Some of the federation leaders have bought tickets to go home. One asked to meet with me: he said that if two conditions are met, they can order all roadblocks to be removed: the first is that there be no martial law; the second, that there be no day of reckoning later. I discussed this with Yang Ti and immediately replied that we’re not preparing to impose martial law. As for the second condition, I told him that provided they pull back from the precipice, we can let bygones be bygones. As for yesterday’s disturbance at the Guangxin Road rail juncture, the students were also unnerved and said it wasn’t their doing.
The students are engaged in “sparrow warfare,”7 so we’ll deal with them using mobile warfare. We’ll organize mobile forces, and wherever they make trouble, we’ll meet them with five times the force. We have cadres who will take the lead in dissuading them and tell the students to leave. The moment they do anything, public security police will arrest them. Besides the districts, the city government will also have mobile forces and armed police on call. We can’t wait any longer—some workers were beaten yesterday; they’re dispirited and the roads haven’t been cleared. I’m going to make a televised address at noon tomorrow. We can’t live if we go on like this, and we absolutely must free up traffic. We’ll start taking action in the afternoon, and after we keep it up for a day or two, the problem will be solved. Today I’m going to announce that what happened yesterday was a riot—this is to intimidate and cow the lowlifes.
Actions of the next two days must be under unified command and combine vertical and horizontal jurisdictions. Tonight’s action will again involve 25,000 people, and traffic will be completely free flowing by tomorrow. The slogans for tomorrow’s action are: keep Shanghai stable, keep the overall situation stable, continue with production, and ensure livelihoods. To achieve these, we must oppose the blocking of traffic and strike at those who disrupt it. We should tell the students to leave and do our best not to injure them.
Ye Qing8 telephoned me to say that Yao Yilin9 heard about Shanghai mobilizing workers to maintain traffic. He said this was a good experience and wants me to summarize it.
1. After June 4, 1989, traffic all over Shanghai was obstructed. Workers were unable to get to work, production declined, and people’s lives were adversely affected. In the face of this grim situation, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee held meetings of Party members and leading cadres from across the city on three consecutive nights beginning on June 5 to examine how to stabilize Shanghai, stabilize the overall situation, continue with production, and safeguard livelihoods. This is the main part of Zhu Rongji’s comments at the third meeting.
2. Zeng Qinghong was then deputy Party secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee.
3. Because of the time needed for preparations, the unified action of worker patrol teams in clearing roadblocks across Shanghai actually took place on the night of June 8, 1989.
4. The “three papers and two stations” were Liberation Daily, Wenhuibao, Xinmin Evening News, Shanghai People’s Radio, and Shanghai TV.
6. The Autonomous Federation of Tertiary Institution Students was an illegal student organization of the time.
7. Translator’s note: “sparrow warfare” is a form of warfare conducted by small, dispersed forces that operate flexibly and attack suddenly.
8. Ye Qing was then a vice chairman of the State Economic Commission.