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Clear all ClippingsSmuggled Files Reveal Leaders' Tiananmen Split 
      Steven Mufson Washington Post Service Monday, January 8, 2001
WASHINGTON A trove of newly released documents reveals the secret conversations 
of top Chinese leaders as they battled one another over the decision to crush 
the student-led protests around Tiananmen Square that rocked the country during 
the spring of 1989.
.
The documents put human faces and voices to the most controversial event in 
China in the past quarter century and shed light on the decisive role played by 
the late leader Deng Xiaoping and a group of eight retired and semi-retired 
"elders," who wielded ultimate power in the Chinese Communist Party.
.
"We can't be led around by the nose," Mr. Deng said at a leadership meeting at 
his house three weeks before the army crackdown that took hundreds if not 
thousands of lives on June 4, 1989. "We have to be decisive. How can we progress 
if things are in an utter mess?"
.
The documents were spirited out of China by a Chinese official who wants to 
promote political reform. He wants to remain anonymous. The documents were 
translated by two leading American scholars, Andrew Nathan of Columbia 
University and Perry Link of Princeton University, who after extensive 
conversations with the official and independent researchers are convinced of the 
documents' authenticity.
.
The documents confirm that Li Peng, who was prime minister at the time, led the 
internal campaign to crack down on the students, whose appeals for openness and 
broader elections he dismissed in one leadership meeting as "nonsense." They 
show that the party's standing committee was indeed split over whether to 
continue dialogue with the students, with only two of the five committee members 
voting for martial law and one abstaining. And they show Mr. Deng as having 
little sympathy for the demonstrators.
.
"The opposition is not just some students but a bunch of rebels and a lot of 
riffraff," Mr. Deng said at a meeting May 13 at his house in the Zhongnanhai 
leadership compound. At another point, Mr. Deng said: "Anarchy gets worse every 
day. If this continues, we could even end up under house arrest."
.
The documents include minutes of meetings of the Chinese Communist Party's 
Politburo and standing committee, intelligence agency reports and transcripts of 
recordings of phone calls by Mr. Deng and of meetings at Mr. Deng's home. But 
they do not offer new information about how many people died in the massacre; 
the Chinese government number of 218 civilians is widely considered too low.
.
"We get to see the dark side of the moon," said Orville Schell, dean of the 
journalism school at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of 
several books on China. "What's really interesting about it is not some smoking 
gun that makes one leader or another look craven, but we see how the 
decision-making process works."
.
Mr. Schell wrote an afterword for the compilation, which is being published as a 
book titled "The Tiananmen Papers."
.
James Lilley, who was the U.S. ambassador to China in 1989 and is now at the 
American Enterprise Institute, said that the collection "doesn't fundamentally 
alter your view." Mr. Lilley added: "It is like the Pentagon Papers, the 
internal U.S. government history of the war in Vietnam that was leaked to 
newspapers in the early 1970s. You knew about the deceptions, but all of a 
sudden you see what people were saying and it becomes very revealing."
.
The documents confirm that Zhao Ziyang, who was the Communist Party's top 
official as general-secretary at the time, consistently opposed martial law even 
though thousands of students were camped out in the square. At a meeting May 16 
of the standing committee with two of the elders attending, Mr. Zhao said, "I 
thought it might be best simply to skirt the most sensitive issue of whether the 
student movement is turmoil, hoping it would fade away while we gradually turn 
things around using the methods of democracy and law."
.
A day later, Mr. Zhao said, "I'm against imposing martial law in Beijing," 
according to minutes of a May 17 Politburo meeting. "It will only make things 
more complicated and more sharply confrontational."
.
But Mr. Zhao came under sharp criticism from other leaders, especially Mr. Li, 
the prime minister, and some of the elders who argued that a speech by Mr. Zhao 
revived protests after they started to wane in April, the documents show.
.
"I think Comrade Ziyang must bear the main responsibility for the escalation of 
the student movement, as well as for the fact that the situation has gotten so 
hard to control," Mr. Li charged at the Politburo meeting May 17.
.
The next day the eight elders met with four of the standing committee members. 
Mr. Zhao did not attend.
.
"We old comrades are meeting with you today because we feel we have no choice," 
Mr. Deng told the committee. "The standing committee should have come up with a 
plan long ago, but things kept dragging on and even today there's no decision. 
Beijing has been chaotic for more than a month now."
.
One document quoted Wang Zhen, an elder, as saying: "These people are really 
asking for it. They should be nabbed as soon as they pop out again. Give them no 
mercy."
.
On May 19 at 4 a.m., Mr. Zhao and Mr. Li visited Tiananmen Square, and Mr. Zhao 
begged the students to leave before it was too late. Later that morning Mr. Zhao 
requested three days' sick leave. On May 21, Mr. Deng said Mr. Zhao's 
"intransigence has been obvious, and he bears undeniable responsibility."
.
Li Xiannian, an elder, said: "The party now has two headquarters. Zhao Ziyang's 
got his own separate headquarters. We have to get to the bottom of this, have to 
dig out the roots."
.
After further discussion, the elders talked of replacing Mr. Zhao with Jiang 
Zemin, then Shanghai party chief and now president. Six days later, Mr. Deng 
convened the elders and they voted to install Mr. Jiang as general-secretary, a 
decision that theoretically should have been made by the standing committee. The 
elders also reshuffled the rest of the committee, ousting Hu Qili, an ally of 
Mr. Zhao's, and adding others to bring the committee membership up to seven. Mr. 
Zhao remains under loose house arrest.
.
On June 2, just two days before army troops fired on protesters, Li Peng spurred 
the elders' support for a crackdown by telling them that U.S. and Taiwan agents 
had been stirring up the protesters.
.
"Capitalism still wants to beat socialism in the end," Li Xiannian said 
afterward. He said he was revolted by the model erected in Tiananmen Square of 
the Goddess of Liberty, calling it "neither human nor demon."
.
On the day before the crackdown began, Yang Shangkun, an elder, said soldiers 
who were earlier reluctant to confront the protesters were prepared to clear the 
square.
.
Qiao Shi, the intelligence chief who had previously abstained in the martial law 
vote, endorsed an immediate army crackdown. Mr. Deng did not attend this 
meeting, but Mr. Yang brought a message, one document said.
.
"He has asked me to relay two points to everyone," Mr. Yang said. "The first is: 
Solve the problem before dawn tomorrow. He means our martial law troops should 
completely finish their task of clearing the square before sunup. The second is: 
Be reasonable with the students and make sure they see the logic in what we're 
doing."
.
Within hours the shooting began.  

For Related Topics See: 
Asia/Pacific
Front Page

< < Back to Start of Article WASHINGTON A trove of newly released documents 
reveals the secret conversations of top Chinese leaders as they battled one 
another over the decision to crush the student-led protests around Tiananmen 
Square that rocked the country during the spring of 1989.
.
The documents put human faces and voices to the most controversial event in 
China in the past quarter century and shed light on the decisive role played by 
the late leader Deng Xiaoping and a group of eight retired and semi-retired 
"elders," who wielded ultimate power in the Chinese Communist Party.
.
"We can't be led around by the nose," Mr. Deng said at a leadership meeting at 
his house three weeks before the army crackdown that took hundreds if not 
thousands of lives on June 4, 1989. "We have to be decisive. How can we progress 
if things are in an utter mess?"
.
The documents were spirited out of China by a Chinese official who wants to 
promote political reform. He wants to remain anonymous. The documents were 
translated by two leading American scholars, Andrew Nathan of Columbia 
University and Perry Link of Princeton University, who after extensive 
conversations with the official and independent researchers are convinced of the 
documents' authenticity.
.
The documents confirm that Li Peng, who was prime minister at the time, led the 
internal campaign to crack down on the students, whose appeals for openness and 
broader elections he dismissed in one leadership meeting as "nonsense." They 
show that the party's standing committee was indeed split over whether to 
continue dialogue with the students, with only two of the five committee members 
voting for martial law and one abstaining. And they show Mr. Deng as having 
little sympathy for the demonstrators.
.
"The opposition is not just some students but a bunch of rebels and a lot of 
riffraff," Mr. Deng said at a meeting May 13 at his house in the Zhongnanhai 
leadership compound. At another point, Mr. Deng said: "Anarchy gets worse every 
day. If this continues, we could even end up under house arrest."
.
The documents include minutes of meetings of the Chinese Communist Party's 
Politburo and standing committee, intelligence agency reports and transcripts of 
recordings of phone calls by Mr. Deng and of meetings at Mr. Deng's home. But 
they do not offer new information about how many people died in the massacre; 
the Chinese government number of 218 civilians is widely considered too low.
.
"We get to see the dark side of the moon," said Orville Schell, dean of the 
journalism school at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of 
several books on China. "What's really interesting about it is not some smoking 
gun that makes one leader or another look craven, but we see how the 
decision-making process works."
.
Mr. Schell wrote an afterword for the compilation, which is being published as a 
book titled "The Tiananmen Papers."
.
James Lilley, who was the U.S. ambassador to China in 1989 and is now at the 
American Enterprise Institute, said that the collection "doesn't fundamentally 
alter your view." Mr. Lilley added: "It is like the Pentagon Papers, the 
internal U.S. government history of the war in Vietnam that was leaked to 
newspapers in the early 1970s. You knew about the deceptions, but all of a 
sudden you see what people were saying and it becomes very revealing."
.
The documents confirm that Zhao Ziyang, who was the Communist Party's top 
official as general-secretary at the time, consistently opposed martial law even 
though thousands of students were camped out in the square. At a meeting May 16 
of the standing committee with two of the elders attending, Mr. Zhao said, "I 
thought it might be best simply to skirt the most sensitive issue of whether the 
student movement is turmoil, hoping it would fade away while we gradually turn 
things around using the methods of democracy and law."
.
A day later, Mr. Zhao said, "I'm against imposing martial law in Beijing," 
according to minutes of a May 17 Politburo meeting. "It will only make things 
more complicated and more sharply confrontational."
.
But Mr. Zhao came under sharp criticism from other leaders, especially Mr. Li, 
the prime minister, and some of the elders who argued that a speech by Mr. Zhao 
revived protests after they started to wane in April, the documents show.
.
"I think Comrade Ziyang must bear the main responsibility for the escalation of 
the student movement, as well as for the fact that the situation has gotten so 
hard to control," Mr. Li charged at the Politburo meeting May 17.
.
The next day the eight elders met with four of the standing committee members. 
Mr. Zhao did not attend.
.
"We old comrades are meeting with you today because we feel we have no choice," 
Mr. Deng told the committee. "The standing committee should have come up with a 
plan long ago, but things kept dragging on and even today there's no decision. 
Beijing has been chaotic for more than a month now."
.
One document quoted Wang Zhen, an elder, as saying: "These people are really 
asking for it. They should be nabbed as soon as they pop out again. Give them no 
mercy."
.
On May 19 at 4 a.m., Mr. Zhao and Mr. Li visited Tiananmen Square, and Mr. Zhao 
begged the students to leave before it was too late. Later that morning Mr. Zhao 
requested three days' sick leave. On May 21, Mr. Deng said Mr. Zhao's 
"intransigence has been obvious, and he bears undeniable responsibility."
.
Li Xiannian, an elder, said: "The party now has two headquarters. Zhao Ziyang's 
got his own separate headquarters. We have to get to the bottom of this, have to 
dig out the roots."
.
After further discussion, the elders talked of replacing Mr. Zhao with Jiang 
Zemin, then Shanghai party chief and now president. Six days later, Mr. Deng 
convened the elders and they voted to install Mr. Jiang as general-secretary, a 
decision that theoretically should have been made by the standing committee. The 
elders also reshuffled the rest of the committee, ousting Hu Qili, an ally of 
Mr. Zhao's, and adding others to bring the committee membership up to seven. Mr. 
Zhao remains under loose house arrest.
.
On June 2, just two days before army troops fired on protesters, Li Peng spurred 
the elders' support for a crackdown by telling them that U.S. and Taiwan agents 
had been stirring up the protesters.
.
"Capitalism still wants to beat socialism in the end," Li Xiannian said 
afterward. He said he was revolted by the model erected in Tiananmen Square of 
the Goddess of Liberty, calling it "neither human nor demon."
.
On the day before the crackdown began, Yang Shangkun, an elder, said soldiers 
who were earlier reluctant to confront the protesters were prepared to clear the 
square.
.
Qiao Shi, the intelligence chief who had previously abstained in the martial law 
vote, endorsed an immediate army crackdown. Mr. Deng did not attend this 
meeting, but Mr. Yang brought a message, one document said.
.
"He has asked me to relay two points to everyone," Mr. Yang said. "The first is: 
Solve the problem before dawn tomorrow. He means our martial law troops should 
completely finish their task of clearing the square before sunup. The second is: 
Be reasonable with the students and make sure they see the logic in what we're 
doing."
.
Within hours the shooting began. WASHINGTON A trove of newly released documents 
reveals the secret conversations of top Chinese leaders as they battled one 
another over the decision to crush the student-led protests around Tiananmen 
Square that rocked the country during the spring of 1989.
.
The documents put human faces and voices to the most controversial event in 
China in the past quarter century and shed light on the decisive role played by 
the late leader Deng Xiaoping and a group of eight retired and semi-retired 
"elders," who wielded ultimate power in the Chinese Communist Party.
.
"We can't be led around by the nose," Mr. Deng said at a leadership meeting at 
his house three weeks before the army crackdown that took hundreds if not 
thousands of lives on June 4, 1989. "We have to be decisive. How can we progress 
if things are in an utter mess?"
.
The documents were spirited out of China by a Chinese official who wants to 
promote political reform. He wants to remain anonymous. The documents were 
translated by two leading American scholars, Andrew Nathan of Columbia 
University and Perry Link of Princeton University, who after extensive 
conversations with the official and independent researchers are convinced of the 
documents' authenticity.
.
The documents confirm that Li Peng, who was prime minister at the time, led the 
internal campaign to crack down on the students, whose appeals for openness and 
broader elections he dismissed in one leadership meeting as "nonsense." They 
show that the party's standing committee was indeed split over whether to 
continue dialogue with the students, with only two of the five committee members 
voting for martial law and one abstaining. And they show Mr. Deng as having 
little sympathy for the demonstrators.
.
"The opposition is not just some students but a bunch of rebels and a lot of 
riffraff," Mr. Deng said at a meeting May 13 at his house in the Zhongnanhai 
leadership compound. At another point, Mr. Deng said: "Anarchy gets worse every 
day. If this continues, we could even end up under house arrest."
.
The documents include minutes of meetings of the Chinese Communist Party's 
Politburo and standing committee, intelligence agency reports and transcripts of 
recordings of phone calls by Mr. Deng and of meetings at Mr. Deng's home. But 
they do not offer new information about how many people died in the massacre; 
the Chinese government number of 218 civilians is widely considered too low.
.
"We get to see the dark side of the moon," said Orville Schell, dean of the 
journalism school at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of 
several books on China. "What's really interesting about it is not some smoking 
gun that makes one leader or another look craven, but we see how the 
decision-making process works."
.
Mr. Schell wrote an afterword for the compilation, which is being published as a 
book titled "The Tiananmen Papers."
.
James Lilley, who was the U.S. ambassador to China in 1989 and is now at the 
American Enterprise Institute, said that the collection "doesn't fundamentally 
alter your view." Mr. Lilley added: "It is like the Pentagon Papers, the 
internal U.S. government history of the war in Vietnam that was leaked to 
newspapers in the early 1970s. You knew about the deceptions, but all of a 
sudden you see what people were saying and it becomes very revealing."
.
The documents confirm that Zhao Ziyang, who was the Communist Party's top 
official as general-secretary at the time, consistently opposed martial law even 
though thousands of students were camped out in the square. At a meeting May 16 
of the standing committee with two of the elders attending, Mr. Zhao said, "I 
thought it might be best simply to skirt the most sensitive issue of whether the 
student movement is turmoil, hoping it would fade away while we gradually turn 
things around using the methods of democracy and law."
.
A day later, Mr. Zhao said, "I'm against imposing martial law in Beijing," 
according to minutes of a May 17 Politburo meeting. "It will only make things 
more complicated and more sharply confrontational."
.
But Mr. Zhao came under sharp criticism from other leaders, especially Mr. Li, 
the prime minister, and some of the elders who argued that a speech by Mr. Zhao 
revived protests after they started to wane in April, the documents show.
.
"I think Comrade Ziyang must bear the main responsibility for the escalation of 
the student movement, as well as for the fact that the situation has gotten so 
hard to control," Mr. Li charged at the Politburo meeting May 17.
.
The next day the eight elders met with four of the standing committee members. 
Mr. Zhao did not attend.
.
"We old comrades are meeting with you today because we feel we have no choice," 
Mr. Deng told the committee. "The standing committee should have come up with a 
plan long ago, but things kept dragging on and even today there's no decision. 
Beijing has been chaotic for more than a month now."
.
One document quoted Wang Zhen, an elder, as saying: "These people are really 
asking for it. They should be nabbed as soon as they pop out again. Give them no 
mercy."
.
On May 19 at 4 a.m., Mr. Zhao and Mr. Li visited Tiananmen Square, and Mr. Zhao 
begged the students to leave before it was too late. Later that morning Mr. Zhao 
requested three days' sick leave. On May 21, Mr. Deng said Mr. Zhao's 
"intransigence has been obvious, and he bears undeniable responsibility."
.
Li Xiannian, an elder, said: "The party now has two headquarters. Zhao Ziyang's 
got his own separate headquarters. We have to get to the bottom of this, have to 
dig out the roots."
.
After further discussion, the elders talked of replacing Mr. Zhao with Jiang 
Zemin, then Shanghai party chief and now president. Six days later, Mr. Deng 
convened the elders and they voted to install Mr. Jiang as general-secretary, a 
decision that theoretically should have been made by the standing committee. The 
elders also reshuffled the rest of the committee, ousting Hu Qili, an ally of 
Mr. Zhao's, and adding others to bring the committee membership up to seven. Mr. 
Zhao remains under loose house arrest.
.
On June 2, just two days before army troops fired on protesters, Li Peng spurred 
the elders' support for a crackdown by telling them that U.S. and Taiwan agents 
had been stirring up the protesters.
.
"Capitalism still wants to beat socialism in the end," Li Xiannian said 
afterward. He said he was revolted by the model erected in Tiananmen Square of 
the Goddess of Liberty, calling it "neither human nor demon."
.
On the day before the crackdown began, Yang Shangkun, an elder, said soldiers 
who were earlier reluctant to confront the protesters were prepared to clear the 
square.
.
Qiao Shi, the intelligence chief who had previously abstained in the martial law 
vote, endorsed an immediate army crackdown. Mr. Deng did not attend this 
meeting, but Mr. Yang brought a message, one document said.
.
"He has asked me to relay two points to everyone," Mr. Yang said. "The first is: 
Solve the problem before dawn tomorrow. He means our martial law troops should 
completely finish their task of clearing the square before sunup. The second is: 
Be reasonable with the students and make sure they see the logic in what we're 
doing."
.
Within hours the shooting began. WASHINGTON A trove of newly released documents 
reveals the secret conversations of top Chinese leaders as they battled one 
another over the decision to crush the student-led protests around Tiananmen 
Square that rocked the country during the spring of 1989.
.
The documents put human faces and voices to the most controversial event in 
China in the past quarter century and shed light on the decisive role played by 
the late leader Deng Xiaoping and a group of eight retired and semi-retired 
"elders," who wielded ultimate power in the Chinese Communist Party.
.
"We can't be led around by the nose," Mr. Deng said at a leadership meeting at 
his house three weeks before the army crackdown that took hundreds if not 
thousands of lives on June 4, 1989. "We have to be decisive. How can we progress 
if things are in an utter mess?"
.
The documents were spirited out of China by a Chinese official who wants to 
promote political reform. He wants to remain anonymous. The documents were 
translated by two leading American scholars, Andrew Nathan of Columbia 
University and Perry Link of Princeton University, who after extensive 
conversations with the official and independent researchers are convinced of the 
documents' authenticity.
.
The documents confirm that Li Peng, who was prime minister at the time, led the 
internal campaign to crack down on the students, whose appeals for openness and 
broader elections he dismissed in one leadership meeting as "nonsense." They 
show that the party's standing committee was indeed split over whether to 
continue dialogue with the students, with only two of the five committee members 
voting for martial law and one abstaining. And they show Mr. Deng as having 
little sympathy for the demonstrators.
.
"The opposition is not just some students but a bunch of rebels and a lot of 
riffraff," Mr. Deng said at a meeting May 13 at his house in the Zhongnanhai 
leadership compound. At another point, Mr. Deng said: "Anarchy gets worse every 
day. If this continues, we could even end up under house arrest."
.
The documents include minutes of meetings of the Chinese Communist Party's 
Politburo and standing committee, intelligence agency reports and transcripts of 
recordings of phone calls by Mr. Deng and of meetings at Mr. Deng's home. But 
they do not offer new information about how many people died in the massacre; 
the Chinese government number of 218 civilians is widely considered too low.
.
"We get to see the dark side of the moon," said Orville Schell, dean of the 
journalism school at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of 
several books on China. "What's really interesting about it is not some smoking 
gun that makes one leader or another look craven, but we see how the 
decision-making process works."
.
Mr. Schell wrote an afterword for the compilation, which is being published as a 
book titled "The Tiananmen Papers."
.
James Lilley, who was the U.S. ambassador to China in 1989 and is now at the 
American Enterprise Institute, said that the collection "doesn't fundamentally 
alter your view." Mr. Lilley added: "It is like the Pentagon Papers, the 
internal U.S. government history of the war in Vietnam that was leaked to 
newspapers in the early 1970s. You knew about the deceptions, but all of a 
sudden you see what people were saying and it becomes very revealing."
.
The documents confirm that Zhao Ziyang, who was the Communist Party's top 
official as general-secretary at the time, consistently opposed martial law even 
though thousands of students were camped out in the square. At a meeting May 16 
of the standing committee with two of the elders attending, Mr. Zhao said, "I 
thought it might be best simply to skirt the most sensitive issue of whether the 
student movement is turmoil, hoping it would fade away while we gradually turn 
things around using the methods of democracy and law."
.
A day later, Mr. Zhao said, "I'm against imposing martial law in Beijing," 
according to minutes of a May 17 Politburo meeting. "It will only make things 
more complicated and more sharply confrontational."
.
But Mr. Zhao came under sharp criticism from other leaders, especially Mr. Li, 
the prime minister, and some of the elders who argued that a speech by Mr. Zhao 
revived protests after they started to wane in April, the documents show.
.
"I think Comrade Ziyang must bear the main responsibility for the escalation of 
the student movement, as well as for the fact that the situation has gotten so 
hard to control," Mr. Li charged at the Politburo meeting May 17.
.
The next day the eight elders met with four of the standing committee members. 
Mr. Zhao did not attend.
.
"We old comrades are meeting with you today because we feel we have no choice," 
Mr. Deng told the committee. "The standing committee should have come up with a 
plan long ago, but things kept dragging on and even today there's no decision. 
Beijing has been chaotic for more than a month now."
.
One document quoted Wang Zhen, an elder, as saying: "These people are really 
asking for it. They should be nabbed as soon as they pop out again. Give them no 
mercy."
.
On May 19 at 4 a.m., Mr. Zhao and Mr. Li visited Tiananmen Square, and Mr. Zhao 
begged the students to leave before it was too late. Later that morning Mr. Zhao 
requested three days' sick leave. On May 21, Mr. Deng said Mr. Zhao's 
"intransigence has been obvious, and he bears undeniable responsibility."
.
Li Xiannian, an elder, said: "The party now has two headquarters. Zhao Ziyang's 
got his own separate headquarters. We have to get to the bottom of this, have to 
dig out the roots."
.
After further discussion, the elders talked of replacing Mr. Zhao with Jiang 
Zemin, then Shanghai party chief and now president. Six days later, Mr. Deng 
convened the elders and they voted to install Mr. Jiang as general-secretary, a 
decision that theoretically should have been made by the standing committee. The 
elders also reshuffled the rest of the committee, ousting Hu Qili, an ally of 
Mr. Zhao's, and adding others to bring the committee membership up to seven. Mr. 
Zhao remains under loose house arrest.
.
On June 2, just two days before army troops fired on protesters, Li Peng spurred 
the elders' support for a crackdown by telling them that U.S. and Taiwan agents 
had been stirring up the protesters.
.
"Capitalism still wants to beat socialism in the end," Li Xiannian said 
afterward. He said he was revolted by the model erected in Tiananmen Square of 
the Goddess of Liberty, calling it "neither human nor demon."
.
On the day before the crackdown began, Yang Shangkun, an elder, said soldiers 
who were earlier reluctant to confront the protesters were prepared to clear the 
square.
.
Qiao Shi, the intelligence chief who had previously abstained in the martial law 
vote, endorsed an immediate army crackdown. Mr. Deng did not attend this 
meeting, but Mr. Yang brought a message, one document said.
.
"He has asked me to relay two points to everyone," Mr. Yang said. "The first is: 
Solve the problem before dawn tomorrow. He means our martial law troops should 
completely finish their task of clearing the square before sunup. The second is: 
Be reasonable with the students and make sure they see the logic in what we're 
doing."
.
Within hours the shooting began.            

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