Chengdu Blood Battle: 1989 in Basuria

Preface

After dedicating most of my time and energy to Basuria Association, I have had little opportunity to write articles. Apart from the shift in focus, I believed that everything that needed to be said had been said. As Woren said, “If you truly believe in the principles of Cheng-Zhu philosophy, just put them into practice.” However, recent events have reignited my interest in writing, primarily sparked by the White Paper Revolution in China. Under Xi Jinping’s rule, the people involved in or sympathetic to the White Paper Revolution have likely undergone political enlightenment in a completely different manner compared to my generation (those born in the late 1980s and early 1990s). Our political awakening was a direct result of the democratic movement in East Asia in the late 1980s (commonly referred to as the “June 4th Incident”). The failure and consequences of this wave of democratization directly impacted our parents’ generation and our own. For example, most of us heard about “June 4th” directly from our parents. However, the source of political stimulation for the generation involved in the White Paper Movement may likely come from the internet. Many have mentioned that they learned about the “June 4th Incident” online. The difference in perspectives can easily lead to a completely different understanding of “June 4th” between the two generations. Our perception of the causes and effects, as well as the “good guys” and “bad guys” in our minds, may differ significantly from their imagination of “June 4th.” Due to the lack of a comprehensive narrative system about “June 4th,” whether it is the secretive nature of the Chinese authorities or the fragmented state of overseas democracy movements, there is no substantive communication between individuals. Therefore, I believe it is necessary to reconstruct “June 4th” from my perspective, particularly focusing on the regional and local aspects. My friends can probably tell that my original intention aligns with the one expressed in my previous work, “June 4th, Chengdu, and Basuria.” However, that article still has many areas that need improvement and supplementation in today’s context. Therefore, this article will attempt to provide a more detailed exposition from the perspective of Bauria’s local context.

So, what does it mean to emphasize the perspective of Basuria’s local context? Let me give a simple example. The large scale student protests in Chengdu only started after the massacre in Beijing. Before June 4th, compared to Beijing and other places, the protest voices in Chengdu were relatively weak. It was only after news of the People’s Liberation Army’s massacre of protesting students in Tiananmen Square reached Chengdu that the momentum suddenly increased. China’s armed confrontation against the protesting masses and students, mainly centered in Chengdu, basically began on June 5th. Therefore, from the perspective of Basuria’s local context, it is very strange to refer to this wave of democratization as “June 4th.” Its unfolding and conclusion differ significantly from the protests in Beijing, making it difficult to be regarded as the same movement. Moreover, and more importantly, the democratic struggle in the Basu region at the end of the 1980s can be considered more as part of the people’s struggle against the history of Red China in the region rather than as a part of the “Chinese democratic movement.” This democratization movement, centered around Chengdu, had a strong regional character. It resembled a series of regional conflicts between China and Basuria since the failure of the Basuria Rebellion (Communist Party’s so-called “Southwest Pacification”) in 1950, rather than a fight for “Chinese democracy.” Thus, this article aims to reconstruct the democratization movement from such a regional perspective.

It has been a while since I last wrote, so I may be a bit rusty. I hope readers will understand and forgive any shortcomings.

“Leaders and Heros, You and I”: Gains and Losses during the Period of Basurian Independence

Similar to the protests in ’89, the modern era of Basurian independence, and even the collapse of the Qing Empire, originated from a protest in Chengdu known as the “Chengdu Massacre” on May 9, 1911. The Chuanhan Railway, constructed by the gentry and commoners of Basuria with their own funds, was forcibly reclaimed by the Qing Empire. The leaders of the gentry were arrested by Zhao Erfeng, the Governor-General of Sichuan, in response to their protests. The people demanded the release of the arrested leaders but were brutally suppressed by Zhao Erfeng, leading to the “Chengdu Massacre.” In response, local militia forces in various regions of Basuria rose in rebellion. Xia Zhishi, the leader of the Chongqing Military Government, killed Tian Zhengkui, the commander who fired upon the protestors. Yin Changheng, the leader of the Chengdu Military Government, killed Zhao Erfeng to avenge the sacrificed demonstrators. Subsequently, the Chengyu Military Government and the Chongqing Military Government peacefully merged, leading to the independence of the Basu region and the disintegration of the Qing Empire.

After gaining independence, the people of Basuria experienced the most prosperous, free, and vibrant period in their history since the era of the Song and Ming empires. The phrase “Leaders and Heroes, you and I” from the school song of the Sichuan Higher Education Institute reflects not only the conscious perception of the Basu region as a whole but also a strong desire for self-governance. Therefore, from 1911, when independence was achieved, for over 20 years, autonomy became the consensus among all Basurians. This consensus empowered them to confront powerful foreign aggressors with courage. The Chinese Communist Party twice launched large-scale invasions of Basuria: first in the 1920s through infiltration and subversion, and second in the 1930s with a direct invasion by the Red Army. Both invasion attempts were defeated by the Basurian military and civilians at great cost. However, the shifting international situation and the wave of nation-building ideas from the West introduced a new prerequisite for autonomy, which was the need for a community with a national apparatus. Basurians during the period of independence, failed to timely construct a distinct “Basu nationality” separate from the Chinese nation, Han people, or the concept of “Zhongguo” (China). As a result, they lacked an effective mobilization mechanism and were unable to unite all Basurians at critical moments. Eventually, after Chiang Kai-shek’s entry into Basuria in 1935, they lost their independence. Chiang Kai-shek, as the leader of the “Chinese nation,” held the Basu people hostage and ruthlessly plundered their resources, using Basuria as a colony to support his own war efforts against Japan. After the war, he abandoned the devastated Basurian lands and fled to Taiwan. The exhausted Basu military and civilians were left to face the Chinese Communist Party, who were fully supported by the Soviet Union, alone. Eventually, they could no longer resist and became a colony of Red China starting from 1950.

Blood Battle to the End: Basuria under Red Colonization

The term “Blood Battle to the End” was widely used to describe the Basurian Army during the Sino-Japanese War. However, the high casualty rate of the Basurian Army during the war was not due to the fierce fighting of the Basurian people against the Japanese, but mainly because China used the Basurian Army as human shields and did not provide sufficient weapons and ammunition. Therefore, it is a great irony that China referred to the high casualties of the Basu Army as a “Blood Battle to the End.” However, the term “Blood Battle to the End” accurately describes the resistance of the Basurian people under Red colonization. Starting from the Basurian Rebellion in 1950, the Basurians used every opportunity to resist the colonial rule of Red China. There were two peaks of resistance. The first was during the Cultural Revolution. During this period, local rebels took advantage of the temporary chaos and captured Li Jingquan, the main executor of the Great Famine in Bashu, from Shanghai. They also targeted county committees, municipal committees, and the Sichuan Provincial Committee, which were the institutions of Red colonization. The second peak was in the early 1980s when folk religious groups in various regions of Basuria began to revive. The climax of resistance was the “Da You Guo” movement led by Zeng Yinglong, which openly opposed Deng Xiaoping’s family planning policy. These series of resistance were not coincidental but a consistent and persistent resistance of the Basurians against Red colonization, whether they were labeled as “folk groups,” “rebels,” or against “family planning.” As we will see, the democratic movement in the late 1980s was no exception.

Social Foundation of the Democratic Movement in Basuria in the 1980s:

The Basu region was the last area occupied by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and also served as the final base for the KMT (Kuomintang) counterattack and the origin of the Youth Party. Therefore, unlike most areas captured by the CCP, it was difficult to find local cadres who met the CCP’s requirements. During Deng Xiaoping’s rule in Bashu, a large number of cadres had to be transferred from the “liberated areas” to stabilize the CCP’s grassroots rule in Basuria. Even according to the dogmatic principles of communism, if a cadre like Huang Lian, who came from a poor peasant background, was selected from the local population in Bashu, he would say the following:

“I believe that China’s future lies in promoting democracy, allowing the masses to speak to supervise the leaders, after all, the superior leaders are not around the secretaries every day. I also mentioned that there are problems with personnel arrangements. In times of war, it is right for the party to tell the cadres what to do, but in peacetime, individuals should be allowed to play to their strengths and choose suitable positions for themselves. Personally, I am only suitable for being a teacher and not suitable for propaganda work. I also said that our trade union work is a sham, and it is better for the trade union to be privately run. State-run trade unions are ineffective.” (“Huang Lian Interview Record”)

Therefore, China had to carry out land reform and social movements to eliminate the social base of the warlord regime from the independent era while conducting a larger-scale, more thorough social revolution that affected ordinary people. This first sparked the Basurian Rebellion in 1950, followed by the Great Famine that lasted for more than a decade starting in the mid-1950s. From the perspective of Red China (People’s Republic of China), Mao Zedong’s diplomatic revolution in 1972 provided a valuable breathing space. With the green light from the United States and the “Four Three Program” led by Europe and Japan, the economic deadlock of Red China was first broken. The influx of a large amount of light industry and agricultural technology alleviated poverty in China’s controlled areas, including Basuria. It was not because of Zhao Ziyang nor Deng Xiaoping, but because of the input of Western fertilizers that made Basuria completely broke free from varying degrees of famine that started in 1950. Represented by Deng Xiaoping, orthodox Leninists realized that it had become very difficult to maintain the policy of strict party control after the Cultural Revolution, and they had to make adjustments to the colonial rule model in Basuria. While maintaining the Party’s leadership over core departments and key enterprises, China began:

1.Absorbing the elites who grew up in the slowly recovering society after 1972. Deng Xiaoping sought inspiration from the traditional wisdom of the Chinese Empire and restored the contemporary imperial examination system — the college entrance examination system. From the perspective of Red China/Chinese Empire, the college students of this period were reserve cadres. Although they were not politically reliable, they could undertake some technical work, especially the technical work that urgently needed to align with the West. The descendants of the indigenous elites who had survived in Red China relied on the residual knowledge and abilities to barely sustain their lives. After the college entrance examination was opened, they entered universities based on the historical accumulation brought by their families and their own efforts. They were exposed to Western ideologies such as “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights” and wanted to use the system of Red China to bring about change.

2.Beyond the college entrance examination system, in the gray areas not fully covered by the Party-state system, the appearance of “individual businesses” and other forms of private ownership was allowed. The early explorers of individual businesses and various private economies were mostly marginalized figures from the political movements. Among them were people who had been classified as landlords and rich peasants during the land reform period and their descendants, those who grew up as “rebel factions” during the Cultural Revolution, and some ordinary people who simply opposed the Red colonial rule. They took advantage of the Cultural Revolution to strike against the Red colonial government stationed in Basuria. After the Cultural Revolution, some of them still possessed arms and organizations. They faced further setbacks during the “Strike Hard” campaign in the early 1980s. However, they did not completely disappear and were categorized as “social scum” or “unemployed wanderers.” This included Huang Lian himself. The ceiling that once oppressed them suddenly lifted, and they instantly gained an opportunity to breathe, urgently needing a label to protect their hard-won survival opportunities.

These two groups of people had various grievances and entanglements with Red China. Although they were far from the core of power, they felt they should have power. Therefore, they urgently needed a political label to satisfy their revived political needs, and “democracy” happened to be the best label they could use at that time. It was these two groups of people that constituted the core force of the democratic movement in Basuria in the late 1980s.

And the “provincial capital” Chengdu in Sichuan Province became the best stage. Firstly, the elite college students from the entire Basu region gathered in Chengdu because it had the best universities in Sichuan Province, and it was culturally compatible, so there was no need to study in other places, which was inconvenient in terms of learning Mandarin and adapting to the climate and cuisine. Secondly, individual businesses, various private enterprises, and secret societies and organizations on the Chengdu Plain also gathered in the provincial capital. Thirdly, Chengdu had the highest number of Westerners in the Basu region and had the highest international exposure. The combination of these three factors made Chengdu the center of the democratic movement in Bashu. It is worth adding that this does not mean that other regions of Basuria did not have their own democratic movements. For example, Chongqing and Luzhou had their own protests and demonstrations, but due to limitations in available materials and the inability to access sensitive information, the history of democratic movements in these places may only be fully explored after Basuria restores its independence.

Chengdu: Three Days of Bloody Battle

The democratization movement in Chengdu had significant differences from Beijing and other regions of China right from the beginning. The initial protests mainly focused on slogans that were relatively mild and unrelated to “democracy,” such as anti-corruption and anti-cronyism:
“For instance, a local sociology professor who spoke English well showed me around the luxurious Jinjiang Hotel. He pointed to the women sitting alone in the hotel bar, drinking orange juice, and said that the expenses there were beyond the reach of ordinary Chinese people. These women appeared to be prostitutes. We watched an elderly man approach one of the women, and then they both left the restaurant and disappeared into the elevator. He said that the man was a well-known general, and the public saw such incidents in hotels as a major symbol of government corruption during a period of severe unemployment.” (Andy Levin: Witnessing China’s 1989 Protests, 1,000 Miles From Tiananmen Square. This excerpt is translated from the Chinese version.)

“According to Scott Bellard, an official from the US Consulate General whom I interviewed on June 5th, there was initially no genuine student democracy movement in Chengdu. However, there was significant unrest among young workers and unemployed youth, primarily due to concerns about corruption and unemployment.” (Ibid.)

“But their demands differed from those of the students in Beijing. ‘The most important thing in my impression is that it was never a protest in support of democracy.’ said Paul Goldin, a Chinese intellectual professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a former American student who studied Chinese at Sichuan University. From his perspective, the main goal of the students was to make the system purer from within; they did not want to overthrow the Communist Party but rather hoped the Party would abide by its own promises… It was only after everyone knew that Beijing had erected a statue of the Goddess of Democracy that people began using words like freedom and democracy.” (Louisa Lim: People’s Republic of Amnesia — Chengdu. This excerpt is translated from the Chinese version )

Next, the second characteristic of the Chengdu movement emerged: it grew stronger under constant resistance against the government’s tyranny. In other words, hatred towards the Chinese government, rather than the pursuit of democracy and freedom, was the true driving force behind the Chengdu movement:

“The morning of May 16th was a turning point in the Chengdu protest. Over a thousand police officers clashed with around two hundred students, and the police used batons and belts to beat the students during the clearance process… The violent clearance that night fueled the movement… Nearly hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets after the police action, and as many as 1,700 students participated in a hunger strike protest. Chengdu became a gathering point for protesters, who flocked from all directions, even including a delegation from the remote Aba Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in western China. The students’ hopes and desires were written all over the posters they posted on the walls, such as ‘Better to die than to live without freedom!’ Protests became commonplace, and in some circles, even daily greetings like ‘Have you eaten?’ half-jokingly turned into ‘Have you protested?’” (People’s Republic of Amnesia)

Sichuan Province was once Zhao Ziyang’s territory, and Yang Rudai, the Party Secretary of Sichuan Province at the time, was a student of Zhao Ziyang. Therefore, the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee urgently wanted to portray the Chengdu movement as a movement supporting the Beijing students: “Deputy Party Secretary Gu Jinchi said to the students, ‘We clearly know that your hunger strike movement is in support of the Beijing students…’” (Ibid). The protest activities in Chengdu did have some theoretical connections to the student movement in Beijing, but the social backgrounds of the two places were vastly different, and the reasons for the emergence of the movements were also distinct, as described above. Therefore, the actions of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee seemed more like following the trend, cooperating with Zhao Ziyang and the internal factions of the central party who supported the students, rather than providing an accurate description of the Chengdu movement.

Of course, the biggest difference and connection between Chengdu and Beijing came on June 3rd. While the massacre in Beijing was being planned and carried out, there were only a few protesters left in Chengdu. However, it was only after news of the Beijing massacre spread to Chengdu through the BBC and VOA that the whole city was truly ignited. In other words, the Chengdu movement officially began after the protests in Beijing had ended:

“Within a few hours, amidst the cacophony, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Voice of America (VOA) broadcast news of the Beijing massacre, and thousands of enraged citizens returned to the streets of Chengdu. This wave of mass movement showed firm unity and fearless courage. The protesters on the streets were well aware of the military’s firing on unarmed civilians in Beijing. Thousands of people marched on Chengdu’s main roads, holding mourning wreaths and banners with inscriptions such as ‘We are not afraid of death,’ ‘June 4th massacre, seven thousand dead and injured,’ ‘Down with the authoritarian government!’ When the first wave of demonstrators marched up to the People’s Armed Police forces, the situation became explosive. The crowd’s attack was repelled by the police, and the armed police began beating the protesters with batons. It immediately escalated into a full-scale battle, with protesters using shoes, bricks, fragments from the pavement, and anything they could get their hands on to strike back at the armed police.” (People’s Republic of Amnesia)

“However, the violent repression backed by the government did not intimidate the people of Chengdu. On the contrary, it angered them and made them even more indignant… A group of people found an undercover policeman. ‘The enraged crowd immediately grabbed him and pounced on him like a flock of eagles, stomping him to death before our eyes. This severe lynching deeply shocked me, as it vividly demonstrated the strong resentment people had towards the police.’” (Ibid.)

Thus, a three-day bloody battle unfolded between the people of Chengdu and the Chinese police. Although the memories of many participants differ, and the descriptions from various sides vary greatly, there is one point on which everyone can agree: from the afternoon of June 4th until the evening of June 6th, the targets of Chengdu’s citizens’ attacks were solely the Chinese government and its proxies. Whether it was the city government, the police bureau, the fire department, or state-owned enterprises, they all became targets of Chengdu’s citizens. They faithfully fulfilled their promises of “overthrowing the authoritarian government,” “tyrant! people will not let you go free,” and “blood debts must be repaid with blood.” Despite being at a clear disadvantage in terms of strength, they wrote a tragic song of resistance by shedding their own blood against China’s rule in the land of Basuria:

“By the evening of June 4th, an angry mob set fire to any public property, including buses and police cars. The crowd threw rocks, bricks, and gasoline bottles at the police station near the square and eventually set it on fire. The fire spread to the ‘People’s Department Store,’ which had already been looted and emptied, occupying an entire city block… On the morning of June 5th, Chengdu’s residents woke up to an unbelievable scene. There were many charred and smoking buses on the streets, and the scene was surprisingly quiet. It was only the state’s property that had been attacked, with every piece of glass in government buildings shattered, while nearby private enterprises remained unharmed… The government authorities seemed to have completely lost control. A declassified U.S. cable noted that the number of armed police forces was far fewer than the number of civilians, and they were forced to retreat to the city government building for their own safety. Every time the armed forces attempted to attack, they quickly retreated due to the astonishing number of protesters, occasionally throwing smoke bombs into the crowd.” (People’s Republic of Amnesia)

In other writings, I have referred to the protests in Basuria as “June 5th” instead of “June 4th”, primarily because the most symbolic attack on the government building and the most intense clashes between the citizens and the police in Chengdu occurred on June 5th:

“On the morning of June 5th at around 12:15, I wrote the following:
“The streets were filled with people, and chaos reigned.”
“As I walked along Renmin South Road towards the square, I started to see overturned garbage bins and broken railings on the roadside. About a block away from the statue of Mao Zedong, young people were building crude barricades. Finally, I gathered my courage and passed through the center of the square, where the ground was covered in broken glass and trash.
“I couldn’t see any police, but every few minutes, a loudspeaker would play announcements, with a voice saying, ‘We will come to arrest you in five minutes.’ Another wave of panic erupted, and people started fleeing.”
“Around midnight at 12:15, I turned right on the square and saw burning objects on the road. Two city buses, probably the ones I saw the police drag across the square as barricades around 5 p.m., were burned down to their frames, with the tires still ablaze. A little further, a three-wheeled police motorcycle was also burning. Then I realized that half of the neighborhood I was walking through was on fire.”
“Young people smashed windows, destroyed buildings to express their dissatisfaction with the government. A student from Chengdu Sports University who didn’t participate in looting told me: ‘People are burning buildings because the government is bad. Martial law is a mistake. We don’t like it.’”
“Three fire trucks came from the direction of the square to extinguish the raging fires. But when they stopped, connected the hoses, and aimed at the flames, the crowd surrounded the fire trucks. Within five minutes, they set one of them on fire and flipped another one over! It was unbelievable. The crowd cheered in agreement. Five minutes later, tear gas canisters started exploding, and people fled. The panic didn’t stop as the explosions kept happening and getting closer — four, five, six of them.”
Continuing on, I wrote, “This is an interesting lesson. From the authorities’ perspective, it shows how things ‘got out of control’ and can even ‘prove’ their point that riots are caused by ‘a few thugs’ or ‘a handful of troublemakers.’ The authorities responded with a heavy hand to peaceful protests, which angered the people. Once they started taking a tough stance, they couldn’t back down and could only crack down severely. Angry people started looting and setting fires. The authorities couldn’t let the buildings be burned down like that, so they sent out fire trucks. When people set those on fire too, tear gas was deployed. Once the authorities started making mistakes and persisted, the rest of it naturally happened.” (Andy Levin: Witnessing China’s 1989 Protests, 1,000 Miles From Tiananmen Square)

Chinese source claimed as such:

“On the morning of June 5th at around 9:00, a group of thugs approached the Office Building of the Municipal People’s Congress from the east and south directions, violently smashing most of the windows on the second, third, and fourth floors facing the street. Then, these thugs, wielding steel bars and wooden sticks, broke open the iron gate on the east side, vandalized the cars parked in the courtyard, and set fire to three cars. In the afternoon, some thugs gathered in front of the Office Building of the Municipal People’s Congress, throwing gasoline Molotov cocktails at the building, setting the administrative building on fire. These people also rammed the perimeter wall in an attempt to enter the office area but failed. They shouted insults at the bottom of the office building, saying, ‘People upstairs, come down, we’ll kill all of you…
On June 5th, from afternoon until evening, a group of thugs gathered outside the east wall of the Municipal Government Office compound, shouting loudly towards the rooms where broadcasts were being made: ‘Kill all Communist Party members, kill all the police!’”

“On June 5th, the thugs’ violent acts reached their peak as they swarmed from all directions, attacking and smashing police cars, assaulting armed police, public security officers, and soldiers. From June 5th to the 6th, there were no traffic police officers stationed at any intersections in Chengdu’s urban area, nor did any military or police personnel in uniform appear on the streets. The families of some military and police personnel were threatened, and the thugs shouted, ‘First, attack the police, then attack their families… The thugs also stormed into hospitals of various levels, including the first, second, third, and sixth hospitals, searching for injured armed police soldiers, threatening to ‘beat to death’ anyone they found. Several hundred thugs gathered at each traffic intersection on Shudu Avenue, the First Ring Road, and other places. They smashed any military vehicles, police cars, or private cars they saw and attacked any soldiers or police officers they encountered. They shouted, ‘If you have grievances, take revenge. If you have enemies, fight back. If you have no grudges or enemies, attack the bullies!’” (The Whole Story of the Chengdu Riot)

And the armed struggle has already shifted from students to the masses who have long been oppressed by the police, which the Communist Party’s materials actually make clearer than what Westerners see:

“Stones, bricks, and glass bottles rained down on the People’s East Road Police Station. Thugs wielding knives, steel bars, machetes, wooden sticks, and iron rods screamed at the police station:
“Police, you black xx! Today, we’re going to smash you black xx flat!”
“Black xx police! You’ve messed with us, and now you’ll pay the price. We’re going to start a fire and burn everything down!”
“Song Liangzhi (director of the People’s East Police Station)! If you think you’re right, come out! Everyone from the People’s East (Police Station) and those wearing large round hats (referring to police officers) who are right, come out! We’re going to kill all of you today!”
“The Communist Party is finished! The government is finished! Hit them! Burn them! Charge!”
(Why Did Thugs Burn Down the People’s East Police Station)”

Of course, contrary to what the Chinese sources want to portray, the protesting masses were actually in a situation of limited weapons, equipment, and experience for most of the time. From both Western and Communist Party records, we can see that the protesters’ weapons were very crude, and the most effective ones were Molotov cocktails and high-pressure air guns (only mentioned in the Communist Party’s records, not in Western records). Faced with heavily armed police and soldiers, the protesting masses quickly lost their momentum. According to the Communist Party’s sources, the protesters were divided into many small groups and did not have sufficient support for each other, while the number of armed police deployed at once reached up to 800! On June 6th, Yang Rudai, the Secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee, abandoned some of the students and protesters he had instigated and issued orders to suppress the armed police. The armed police then began to unleash a bloody crackdown on the protesting masses. In the face of armed police who were superior in terms of weapons, equipment, organization, and experience, the protesting citizens could not win solely based on their numerical advantage. They were divided and conquered:

I asked him why, since the people were the majority, they didn’t subdue the police.

“In Chengdu, this is something new. We don’t have the experience of this kind of battle. People are very afraid. But we can’t tolerate it anymore, so we joined in. If the police start shooting at people, they will become braver and go into battle. The director of our medical school/hospital warned us that if we participated in student demonstrations, we would be punished. This is true. They posted notices on bulletin boards.”(Andy Levin: Witnessing China’s 1989 Protests, 1,000 Miles From Tiananmen Square)

During the apprehension of students and protesters, the armed police carried out brutal and inhumane mass murder:

“I returned to the balcony of the room where I had been observing the situation. Shortly after, six trucks carrying people who looked like soldiers entered the compound. They were not carrying guns, but they seemed to have weapons resembling bayonets. They were different from the armed police I had seen in the past two days. One person stood out. He was wearing a different uniform and had a pistol in a holster.
These soldiers jumped out and arrested people one by one. It was utter chaos. Most of the demonstrators, attackers, and onlookers ran away, but about thirty people were arrested, regardless of whether they had vandalized property or were just bystanders. The soldiers didn’t know or care about it.
Over the next three hours, we watched in horror as these soldiers beat and mistreated the arrested individuals. They forced each person to take a step forward with their hands tied behind their backs. They took photos of them, asked them some questions, and then threw them head first onto the concrete parking lot. The sound of their skulls hitting the ground was chilling.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran to the lobby of the hotel, which was shattered with broken glass. I found the leader of the soldiers standing there with other soldiers. I walked up to him and started shouting at him in English, ‘You can’t do this! You’re killing people without any due process.’ I’m not sure exactly what I said, but I don’t speak Mandarin, and he didn’t speak English. Soon, some guards chased me away, and I returned to the balcony, shaking with anger and helplessness.
After they “dealt with” all the newly arrested individuals, the soldiers threw them onto one of the large trucks they had brought, as if they were sacks of potatoes. If those people weren’t dead at that time, the ones underneath were likely to suffocate to death. Just past 3 a.m., they drove the truck away. I don’t know how many of them died.” (Andy Levin: Witnessing China’s 1989 Protests, 1,000 Miles From Tiananmen Square)

“She saw about twenty-five people kneeling in the courtyard, heads down, hands tied behind their backs. They were first pushed to the ground, and then the guards walked around them for over an hour. Finally, the order came. At that moment, ‘a person wearing black pants and a white shirt came forward and used an iron rod to smash their heads.’ The scene was horrific, and she was so frightened that she vomited in the bathroom. A few days later, she escaped from China. Later, she told a newspaper in Northern Europe, ‘They killed each person one by one, while the ones who were still alive kept begging for mercy.’” (People’s Republic of Amnesia)

The fierce three-day street battle ended with Basurians’ defeat.

Bashu after the failure of the democratic movement.

Although many details of the democratic movement still remain unexplained, and some details may never be fully clarified, we can already see from the existing information what the protests were generally about: the democratization movement in Basuria in 1989, centered around Chengdu, was not part of the “Chinese democratic movement,” but rather an attempt by the Basurians to resist the Chinese government and its tyranny. It was similar to the multiple uprisings in Bashu throughout history, especially under the rule of Red China. It was not a “massacre,” but a three-day bloody battle initiated by university students and involving the oppressed masses suppressed by the Red colonial system, against the Chinese government, particularly the Chinese armed police forces. The direct cause of its failure was the inadequate weaponry, military organization, and training of the protesters. However, the fundamental reason was the lack of a truly effective mobilization mechanism. As people noticed at the beginning of the movement, most were not interested in abstract concepts such as “democracy” and “freedom.” What could mobilize them more was the simpler and more direct emotions of “revenge” and “resisting oppression.” Liao Yiwu, in his book “Bullets and Opium,” recorded the story of Lei Fengyun, a pro-democracy activist from Guang’an, Sichuan. Lei’s story best illustrates where the real popular motivation was at that time. Lei was quoted saying, “In our Sichuan, if someone commits atrocious acts that provoke public anger, people often dig up their ancestors’ graves as a means of punishment.” The leaders of the movement at that time failed to seize this opportunity and consequently faced defeat. However, the failure of this movement stimulated a national consciousness in Basuria. Liao Yiwu directly declared, “This empire must disintegrate” as a result. Liu Zhongjing, the author, and many participants in the Basurian independence movement, including myself, supported and joined the movement after realizing the impracticality of the “Chinese democratic movement.” The next chapter of the story needs to be written by ourselves.