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What began as another hapless student protest has become a revolution

Even after martial law was declared and the People's Liberation Army began closing in on hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Tienanmen Square, the protesters vowed to continue the struggle. Liu Binyan, a writer in semi-exile at Harvard, reflected both the dismay and the hope of China's new reformers. Bleakly he predicted "a return to fascist dictatorship," but then he added: "Even if they stop this movement, the next will be greater." But how will the new, new China be different? That will depend on who ultimately prevails in the power struggle of rival leaders, how they finally resolve the demands of students, and how they reshape the party and government accordingly.

This much is clear: China for the fifth time in this century is trying to reinvent itself. There is no turning back today, any more than there was in 1911, when Sun Yat-sen overthrew the last Emperor; in 1928, when Chiang Kai-shek won control; in 1949, when Mao Tse-tung's Communists triumphed; or in 1977, when the reformer Deng Xiaoping succeeded the ideologue Mao. Deng's economic reforms have sparked a revolution of rising expectations in China, and those expectations include political participation as well as prosperity. China, which built the world's greatest wall to keep out foreign hordes, cannot keep out Western culture and ideas, borne like a virus on radio waves and jet airplanes and carried home like influenza by students sent abroad to learn engineering and economics.

Night is falling on Deng, a victim in part of his own success. Although he dismantled much of Mao's revolution, Deng is ending up much like Mao: Old, feeble, outstaying his welcome, out of touch with popular feeling, resorting to force instead of political solutions. Both started out committed to the supremacy of the party; both ended up calling in the Army.

There are none like him on the horizon; only lifesize leaders of dubious distinction. Two of them already have been discarded, the late party chief Hu Yaobang and, last week, Hu's successor Zhao Ziyang, who may yet reappear. Each in turn was deemed unworthy by Deng, repeating Mao's pattern of discarding successive successors and confirming that being number two to a charismatic leader is China's hottest seat. The men who would be Deng have fallen into two camps: Pragmatists like Zhao, who are willing to accept some political liberalization as the price of continued economic progress, and hard-liners such as Premier Li Peng, who value order above all else.

There was no doubt who won the first round after a massive outcry for democracy paralyzed much of urban China. As troops finally moved in Friday night, Deng, frail and fading at 84, had once again proved his extraordinary ability to rebound and rule. In his decade of economic reform, he has made an art of taking two steps forward and one back. But his surrogate this time was 60-year-old Li. It was he, speaking for both the government and the party, who rose before television cameras in the Great Hall of the People to announce "tough measures to restore stability" and sound the death knell for the demonstrations. Zhao, 69, was out. China's cabinet, the State Council, controlled by Deng, at first waffled, then accepted, Zhao's resignation after rejecting his appeal for compromise with students.

The crisis at first appeared to heal the differences among leaders that partly fueled the uprising. Party leader Zhao, the reformer, and Premier Li, the conservative, on Thursday joined other officials in a hospital visit to soothe fasting students. It was a failure. One student mustered the strength to lecture them that "the biggest problem is corruption among officials. The top officials should begin by dealing with their own sons." Zhao and Li expressed concern; both assured the demonstrators that their demands would be considered. But afterward, even Zhao, the perceived liberal, cautioned that order must be restored. In later meetings, both returned to form, with Zhao before his resignation praising the demonstrators for "good intentions." Li, warning against anarchy, signaled what would follow. "We must defend our factories," he said bluntly. "We must defend our socialist system. I don't care whether you are happy to hear this. I'm glad to have the opportunity to say it."

Li's ascendance left the strong sense that nothing had been settled beyond the immediate crisis. Even he was careful to express sympathy for the popular revulsion against corruption, though he showed little enthusiasm for political liberalization. In their first reactions, American specialists on China already were speculating about Zhao's eventual return. Some even suggested that he had stepped aside with calculation, letting Li take the heat for unpopular measures to restore stability, but confident that his time would come.

The moment that China's turbulent students launched a new revolution may never be fixed. The spreading demonstrations remained under control for almost a month after the death of the revered party leader Hu on April 15, even through May 4, the 70th anniversary of an upheaval that helped catapult China into the modern world. A turning point came sometime after the May 15 arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev, whose political reforms have made him a hero to young Chinese. The students began flirting with suicide by fasting far past the danger point. Hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, journalists, industrial workers, even a scattering of policemen and soldiers, joined the throng in Tienanmen Square. At least a score of other cities erupted in the most massive movement since the great Cultural Revolution. By the time Gorbachev left on Friday, the beleaguered, humiliated leaders of China held only nominal command of a nation with a shattered vision of the future. The desire not to lose face in front of Gorbachev had rendered them immobile at a critical moment. The summit was eclipsed anyway, and with Gorbachev's departure, the shackles fell. Restoring order leaped to first priority.

A catalog of corruption

The protesters' demands ranged from a simple dialogue between the government and the students to, as one demonstrator put it, "democracy on the American model." The first was easy, the second impossible. Most were somewhere in between, perhaps subject to compromise. Virtually all the demonstrators were united in their revulsion at favoritism for the elite and in their demands that Deng step down.

Official reluctance to confront favoritism is understandable. According to a dissident Chinese Communist official, Deng's son, Deng Pufang, confined to a wheelchair by injuries received during the Cultural Revolution, gets a major part of the income from a tax-free charity that operates 154 enterprises. His elegant lifestyle includes several months a year in Hong Kong. The same official charges that a son of Zhao, Zhao Jao Dajun, gets a cut on all sales by a company that exports weapons and electronic equipment. A son of Li Peng is prominent in a group of privileged progeny who dominate the relatively prosperous economy of Hainan island. A daughter of Deng, this Chinese source says, has acquired large tracts on the island for development and agriculture. China's dissidents resent the raw wealth of the leaders' sons and daughters, but their greater resentment comes from the conviction that it was obtained through kickbacks, protection and the kind of privilege the Communist revolution had promised to wipe out.

Some reforms, such as a free press, occurred almost matter-of-factly during the uprising. Chinese media covered it thoroughly, with some sympathy for the protests, as though they were not more accustomed to rigid government control. Many journalists even joined the demonstrators. But with martial law, censorship reappeared. The regime had admitted hordes of foreign reporters to cover the Gorbachev visit, but vacillated before authorities pulled the plug on unprecedented live television coverage of the birth of a revolution then, ominously, ordered a total news blackout.

Some elements of compromise were waiting to be seized. Kenneth Lieberthal, a University of Michigan specialist just back from China, argues that a combination of political dialogue, an attack on corruption and the addition of youth to the Politburo would ease the transition for the leadership. "I think the students have won, no matter who controls Tienanmen Square in the next phase," he says, and bloodshed would only add to the pressure for longer-term change.

"End rule by old men"

One change certain even before the latest outburst is the retirement soon of Deng. Li and Zhao received little special attention from the demonstrators beyond predictable recognition of their ideological differences. Some of the thousands of slogans on banners were all-embracing. "Where is your heart, government?" one asked. "We have shed tears; blood is next," another warned, with the last word in red. Deng, however, was singled out often. "Deng must go," "End rule by old men," the banners demanded, "85, and confused in the head" -- though Deng's birthday is not until August. Yet Deng, in the end, prevailed.

It is likely his last hurrah. He is a veteran of the Long March with Mao and is a former party leader. Yet he fell victim to the madness of the great Cultural Revolution of 1966-69, as Mao, furious at bureaucratic rigidity and the compromise of his revolution, unleashed millions of young Chinese in a mindless rampage for ideological purity. Deng rebounded from that as he has rebounded time and again. "I could tell you all kinds of things about how our foreign policy is decided," a senior official said recently. "But it would all be untrue. Our policy is in the head of just one man." Deng can be ruthless. He alone made the decision to fire his protege Hu Yaobang as party leader two years ago without consulting the Central Committee. China's political system resembles that of the Soviet Union before Gorbachev's reforms: Power is concentrated in a few hands in the Central Committee and elsewhere at the very top of the Party. Party policy is carried out by government agencies represented on the State Council, with the People's Congress approving decisions after the fact. Even so, virtually every major political figure in China, including Li, is Deng's creation.

The summit with Gorbachev was to have been his final legacy before his retirement on August 1, Army Day, from his one remaining official post, chairman of the Defense Council. By most accounts, Deng already has waited too long. The leading intellectual newspaper, the Guangming Daily, said pointedly that imperial rulers and their officials always start with good intentions before yielding to corruption, and there was no doubt who the target was.

In recent months, however, spiraling inflation and growing unemployment have strengthened the conservatives who insisted on putting economic reform on hold. Whether Deng goes now -- or more likely after a postponement to help restore order -- the post-Deng era already has begun.

He leaves a nation that has adopted many of the good, and bad, features of the West. The disparity between rich and poor is widening. Medical services are expensive. The illiteracy rate remains high, as great as one fifth of the population. But people also now are free to practice rudimentary capitalism to improve their lot and to make more personal choices, from where they live to the clothes they wear. Some members of Gorbachev's delegation last week acknowledged their envy at the consumer goods and food that are stacked on Beijing shelves.

A new authoritarianism?

Zhao had aimed to exploit the Chinese yearning for progress, vaulting his conservative opponents, but failed. In fact, China's conceptions of democracy are varied and often vague. Few dissidents go so far as to challenge one-party rule; there is more talk of power sharing by dissident groups within the party. A theory of "new authoritarianism" is in vogue among many intellectuals, especially party members. It holds that China must find a strong new figure to guide the nation until it is ready for true democracy sometime in the future. The conservative Li might be able to live with that if he endures.

Though the whole world is watching events in China anxiously, the likelihood of a traumatic change in foreign or economic policy is remote. Investors are understandably worried about the turmoil. But the entire Chinese leadership has invested too much in economic expansion, in reconciliation with Moscow, in cooperation with the U.S. and in playing the superpowers off against each other to back away now. For the most part, even the dissenters are content with these policies.

What they are determined to change is domestic politics. Most recognize that liberalization will come slowly, that the day when the People's Congress will be more than a rubber stamp for a small group of party elite is still remote. But they want at least a sign that the leadership is willing to move.

However the succession proceeds, it promises to be difficult. In 1927, Mao Tse-tung declared that: "Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." But at least for a while, in Tienanmen Square, the guns remained silent in the face of an even greater power: Young people willing to sacrifice their lives, and thus China's best hopes for the future, for the idea of freedom, however dimly grasped.