China's Students: The Struggle for Democracy, and: The Struggle for Tiananmen: Anatomy of the 1989 Mass Movement, and: Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of 1989: Chinese and American Reflections (review)

76 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 relations between the provincial government and local educational circles—the two being separated by over seventy pages (pp. 65-68, 139-144)? Despite these few criticisms, there is no question that this book will be useful both to those interested in local elites and to those studying education in twentieth-century China. The author has consulted a wide range of sources and places her observations in the context of much of the best scholarship in her field ofresearch. And though I find myself disagreeing with her observations now and then, her analysis is often imaginative and convincing. Brad Geisert Randloph-Macon Woman's College Ruth Cherrington. China's Students: The Strugglefor Democracy London and NewYork: Routledge, 1991. viii, 239 pp. $25.00. Nan Lin. The Strugglefor Tiananmen:Anatomy ofthe1989 MassMovement New York: Praeger, 1992. ix, 199 pp. Roger V. Des Forges, Luo Ning, and Wu Yen-bo, editors. Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of1989: Chinese andAmerican Reflections Albany, NewYork: State University ofNew York Press, 1993. viii, 371 pp. Hardcover $64.50, paperback $21.95. In a departure from the first wave ofbooks that were published immediately after the 1989 Beijing Spring to record what had happened in the subsequent tragedy, the three books introduced here focus on the issue ofwhy the tragedy happened. These books have a common purpose in making an attempt to analyze the event from historical and theoretical perspectives, instead of merely reciting facts. Nevertheless , each work reveals its own individual character in terms of content, style, and argument. With a focus on China's students, Ruth Cherrington attempts to put the 1989 event into the historical context of the tradition of Chinese students, not only in the most recent reform period, but also in the Maoist, republican, and dynastic periods. Following Merle Goldman, Cherrington traces the "habits of the heart" of China's students back to the elitism and high sense ofmorality and social responsibility ofthe Confucian literati. Their appeals to the ruler were more often remonstrance than protest. copyrighti994This tradition was reflected in the May Fourth Movement in 1919, when stuby Universityofdents in Beijing displayed a high degree ofpatriotism and self-sacrifice. During Hawai'i Pressthe 1957 communist "Anti-Rightists Campaign," students suffered repression Reviews 77 along with intellectuals. But the patriotism and high sense ofmorality ofthe students were rejuvenated again during the Cultural Revolution, when they responded to Mao's call to criticize the "bourgeoisie within the party" and to go to the countryside to be educated by the peasants. Student movements during the recent reform period were a constant occurrence , according to Cherrington, who personally witnessed some of the events. The circumstances that triggered student protests were often not ofa political nature—for example, poor living conditions at school. Nevertheless, these almost always led to a discussion ofpolitical issues: the murder ofa graduate student in Beijing by a group of unemployed youths was linked to human rights; the assignment ofjobs was connected to official corruption; and the decline in living conditions at schools led to a decline in the status of intellectuals as a whole. Even the removal ofMao Zedong's statue on campus led to a discussion ofthe issue of democracy, since the students had not been consulted. Largely recalling the story in the first person, Cherrington reveals the complex nature ofthe 1989 democracy movement. Mixed messages were transmitted by the students' endorsement ofthe Internationale, which is the song ofworld communists, the national anthem ofthe People's Republic, and the Goddess of Liberty, which resembled the American Statue ofLiberty. Nevertheless, she refutes the criticism that the students lacked clarity ofpurpose or a definite program of action. She believes that the students should have been left free "to decide for themselves what democracy could mean" (p. 208). While Cherrington's account is largely historical, with a focus on the students , Nan Lin's book tends to be more theoretical. Using the "resource mobilization approach" in sociology, Lin considers "oversimplified and often false" the view that the struggle in Tiananmen Square was a movement led by students for democracy. Defining the event as "a mass movement," Lin first looks for the causes ofthe demonstrations in the...