How China Escaped Shock Therapy: Zhao Ziyang’s Controlled Opposition, the CIA’s Operation Yellowbird, George Soros and Tiananmen Square Part III

By Cynthia Chung

This is the third instalment to the Tiananmen series, for the first and second instalments refer here and here, which are essential reading in order to fully follow this story.

How China Escaped Shock Therapy: Zhao Ziyang’s Controlled Opposition, the CIA’s Operation Yellowbird, George Soros and Tiananmen Square

How China Escaped Shock Therapy: Zhao Ziyang’s Controlled Opposition, the CIA’s Operation Yellowbird, George Soros and Tiananmen Square

The Revenge of the Beijing Technocrats for an ‘Open Society’

The Revenge of the Beijing Technocrats for an ‘Open Society’

You can read the broader series here:

Guanzi 管子: An Introduction of 3000 Years of Chinese Economic Thought

Guanzi 管子: An Introduction of 3000 Years of Chinese Economic Thought

The True Origins of China’s “Social Credit System” Part I

The True Origins of China’s “Social Credit System” Part I

The Role of Goldman Sachs in Engineering Global Financial Crises

The Role of Goldman Sachs in Engineering Global Financial Crises

Series Recap

As already discussed in this Tiananmen series, Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang’s think tank the System Reform Institute (SRI) served as the official Chinese partner, administrator, and political shield of George Soros’ operations in China during the 1980s.

It was Zhao Ziyang with support and backing from the System Reform Institute that was responsible for the introduction of economic policies that unleashed hyperinflation and corruption that reached a peak between the periods of 1986 and 1989 resulting in protests over this crisis, including the Tiananmen Square debacle in June 1989. In both the cases of the 1986 and 1989 student demonstrations, Fang Lizhi was a lead organiser and influencer, as already discussed in the second instalment.

Fang Lizhi had direct ties to the NED, as do his lead student disciples who were involved in the 1989 protests, and was at the top of China’s list as a “black hand” behind the Tiananmen Square debacle. His safe passage out of China was directly facilitated by the CIA along with British and American diplomatic channels. This can be seen as a branch of Operation Yellowbird which will be the focus of the fourth instalment.

During the period of May until mid-June 1986 a Chinese delegation under the leadership of the Program Office (which was formed by pro-shock therapists) along with the System Reform Institute held 111 meetings with George Soros and co. in Hungary and Yugoslavia discussing the matter of China’s economic reform, that is, how to proceed in “opening up” what Soros called a “closed society.”

Wang Xiaoqiang meets George Soros in Hungary, 1986. Wang Xiaoqiang (left, standing) greets George Soros on behalf of the System Reform Institute in the center. Source: Isabella Weber courtesy of Wang Xiaoqiang.

There is no official record of the details discussed in these meetings, only a record that the meetings took place.[1] However, what is clear is its attempt to hijack the Chinese government’s role in deciding its own economic policy, where crucial economic matters were discussed by select Chinese representatives (who happen to all be pro-shock therapy at the end of the day) and representatives of the World Bank and Soros all together in one room thousands of miles away from China’s capital.

Because Soros’ Open Society could not legally operate as a foreign foundation in China without a high-level government sponsor, the SRI agreed to co-found the “Reform and Opening of China” (aka the “China Fund”) in 1986. This included a $1 million endowment to foster “emerging civil society and sponsor research.”

This was accomplished with Bao Tong’s direct political backing, what was effectively a direct backing from Zhao Ziyang. Thus, the Soros “China Fund” had effectively received direct backing to operate in China via the then Premier of China. Bao Tong was Zhao Ziyang’s Policy Secretary throughout his entire career in the 1980s’, from when Zhao was Premier of China, from 1980-1987, to his transition to General Secretary, from 1987-1989.

Bao Tong was also Director of the Drafting Committee for the CCP 13th Party Congresses, known for its strong support of market reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping. Prior to this, he was a committee member and then deputy director of the Chinese State Commission for Economic Reform. During the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he was one of the very few Chinese senior officials to express understanding with the demonstrating students.

Bao Tong was also the writer of Zhao’s speeches and editorials supporting a democratic approach to the student movement.

Thus, Bao Tong can be viewed as Zhao’s most loyal ally and a direct representation of Zhao Ziyang. Bao Tong remained loyal to Zhao throughout his entire life and was responsible for publishing Zhao’s memoirs.

It should also be noted that Adi Ignatius helped to translate and edit Zhao’s memoirs “Prisoner of the State” in English, in cooperation with Bao Tong and his son Bao Pu. Adi’s brother is David Ignatius, a well-known Washington Post writer who wrote the widely cited September 1991 column “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups” which announced the rise of the NED as a vehicle for overt political action. In the piece is included a landmark quote from the NED’s co-founder and former president Allen Weinstein where he told Ignatius “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Referring to the newly created NED.[2]

Adi Ignatius is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society.[3] As we will see the Asia Society is directly connected to the NED.

Other Chinese backers to this union between Soros and Zhao’s think tank the System Reform Institute (SRI) were Li Xianglu, Zhao Ziyang’s former personal secretary, and Zhu Jiaming a member of the SRI,[4] who was also the lead organiser of the South American tour where the SRI studied the cases of Chile and Brazil’s economic “successes” which also happened to coincide with the formation of military dictatorships, and in Chile’s case a direct outcome of shock therapy. This tour was funded and recommended by George Soros and was discussed in the first instalment. Zhu Jiaming was a supporter of shock therapy despite being a member of the SRI.

In 1988 Zhu Jiaming joined China’s International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC) where he worked closely with Li Xianglu where both were directly involved with Soros’ China Fund. Because CITIC overlapped with Chinese intelligence, it appears that this is the link that revealed details of the true nature of the SRI’s relationship with Soros’ China Fund which was effectively a foreign led economic/political coup.

Soros appointed Chen Yizi (director of the SRI) as the Chinese co-chairman of his “China Fund.” Chen Yizi would also receive safe passage out of China through Operation Yellowbird. Chen Yizi was also a direct supporter of shock therapy and publicly expressed his admiration for Pinochet.

Mainstream accounts of this history deny Soros’s implication in the Tiananmen Square debacle, especially Soros’s ties to the CIA. However, as we will see in this paper, Soros does have close overlap and joint ventures with the NED which is a branch of the CIA. Thus, attempts to dismiss China’s accusations of Soros organizing an economic and political coup via Zhao Ziyang’s network as part of a broader CIA operation, as we will see, do not hold water. Rather, there is a great deal of evidence to showcase these accusations as quite accurate.

We will resume the story here and discuss how all of the major players leading up to the Tiananmen Square debacle discussed thus far in this series have direct ties to the NED, CIA, New School, MI6 as well as British and American diplomatic channels. We will also see how these channels, including North American Baptist Churches and the Triads facilitated their safe passage out of China.[5]

Through A Glass Darkly

On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.

By Cynthia Chung

Zhao Ziyang: an Anti-Hero of the People

At the Politburo Standing Committee’s meetings on May 16 and 19, 1988, Zhao Ziyang once again joined Deng Xiaoping’s call for price reform.[6] A comprehensive package was proposed that would entail not only price but also wage and tax reform. ‘Clearly, this was the same logic that had been advocated by the aborted 1986 Program Office plan,’ discussed in the second instalment.[7] Recall, the Program Office was run by pro-package reformers in China, aka shock therapists.

In his 1988 address, Zhao made it clear that to ensure political stability, a new public security law was required that the State Council could invoke in an emergency.

Isabella Weber writes in How China Escaped Shock Therapy:

Zhao argued that Poland’s experience of social uprisings had shown such a law to be necessary (Fang, 2014, 339). Just eleven days before this Standing Committee meeting, on May 5, special troops of the Polish Interior Ministry had cracked down on a major strike wave that was sweeping the country in reaction to falling real incomes. This, in my eyes, erases any doubts about whether Zhao anticipated that inflation would be harmless. He recognized the possibly explosive consequences of rising prices. But in the spring of 1988, he seems to have been prepared to use force, if necessary, to finally make marketization happen.

…The justification for the 1988 price-reform push was rooted in the logic of package reform – even though Wu Jinglian, Liu Guoguang, and other package reformers criticized that it did not include sufficiently strict austerity measures…[8]

Thus, contrary to the mainstream western narrative, that promoted Zhao as a “conscientious objector” and concerned about the students’ safety during the Tiananmen Square debacle, the truth is that Zhao was not only aware that military force was likely needed to push through the price reform package, but he was the one who in fact prepared the very groundwork for a military crackdown against the predictable protests that would ensue from his and Deng’s push for radical price reform in 1988.

It was Zhao’s “new public security law” that had established the apparatus and protocol that culminated in the disorganized mayhem of the June 3-4, 1989 events.

Interestingly, and quite tellingly of how the game is truly played in various formations of controlled opposition in the so-called debate between Zhao’s think tank, the System Reform Institute (SRI), and pro-package reformers (aka shock therapists) on how China should economically reform – during this tense period of the 1988 radical price reform led by Zhao Ziyang, the SRI meets with the Mont Pelerin Society in 1988.

On June 12, 1988, leading members of the SRI Chen Yizi and Wang Xiaoqiang left for West Germany once again around the matter of China’s price reform.[9] Just like in 1986 when the SRI met a delegation organised by George Soros, they now met with a delegation in West Germany to discuss the matter of China’s “opening up.” Among this delegation was Herbert Giersch, the then-president of ‘the global neoliberal thought collective the Mont Pelerin Society and of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.’[10]

‘Giersch counted among his credentials relating to the West German postwar economic reconstruction that he had received his PhD under Alfred Müller-Armack’s supervision. Müller-Armack is considered to be one of the intellectual fathers of the ordoliberal idea of a social market economy.’[11]

In 1933, Alfred Müller-Armack published a book with some praise of Nazism entitled Ideas of the State and Economy Order in the New Reich. He worked as an advisor to the Nazi regime and the German army and contributed to discussions about the post-war economic order.

Müller-Armack was also a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, founded by Friedrich Hayek in 1947.[12]

After the war, he joined the Christian Democratic Union and he coined the phrase “Social Market Economy” in his book Economic Steering and Market Economy, written in 1946 and published in 1947.

Recall what I wrote in the first instalment to this Tiananmen series:

One could say that this is the true intention of shock therapy – political instability that opens the doors to a foreign led corporate regime change with a great deal of similarity to Mussolini’s Corporatism.

The Story of How Trotskyism Gave Birth to the Frankenstein Child NeoConservatism in its mission for Permanent Warfare

The Story of How Trotskyism Gave Birth to the Frankenstein Child NeoConservatism in its mission for Permanent Warfare

Mussolini’s Corporatism had spawned out of Sorel’s National Socialism. In fact, Neo-Conservatism in the United States finds its origins in this as well, as I discuss in the above cited paper. It is for this reason that there was a great deal of support within the American financier class for Italian fascism. It is important here to remember not to get too caught up in “isms,” but rather to look more at the specifics in economic policy, for as we can see in just this short paragraph we find the words “corporatism”, “neo-conservatism” and “national socialism” jumbled together along with “fascism.” I encourage readers to read the above paper which is Chapter 13 of my book “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set” for a detailed explanation of this history.

[My Book is Out] The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set: The Birth of International Fascism and Anglo-American Foreign Policy

[My Book is Out] The Empire on which the Black Sun Never Set: The Birth of International Fascism and Anglo-American Foreign Policy

I bring this up here to showcase that there is a great deal of similarity to what Milton Friedman and the World Bank were proposing in their “shock therapy” to China, to that of Mussolini’s Corporatism and I don’t think this was a coincidence. I will add further clarity on the similarities when I discuss Pinochet’s Chile and Brazil’s military dictatorship later on in this series. These case studies were in fact used as role models by pro-shock therapy reformers within China who happened to also be working closely with George Soros. Part of this grouping around Soros were also lead instigators of the Tiananmen Square debacle who received safe passage out of China under the protection of the CIA via Operation Yellowbird.

It is also worthy to note that these military dictatorships within several South American countries, all coinciding with each other, and to which Soros funded a field study by the SRI, has since been acknowledged as part of Operation Condor, a branch of Operation Gladio.[13] For those familiar with my book on this subject, they will be aware of the fact that Operation Gladio was a union between western intelligence and “former” Nazis, as well as NATO directly, with several “former” Nazis holding high positions, most notably Adolf Heusinger who served as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. For more on this refer here.

Dear NATO...

Dear NATO…

The SRI is thus implicated numerous times with groupings that are not only in support of radical economic and political reform but proponents of military dictatorships to enforce these radical reforms against the wishes of the people.

So much for the western narrative promoting Zhao and his think tank as conscientious objectors and freedom fighters in the cause for western democracy values in China…

Despite Zhao being moved from his position as Premier of China to General Secretary and thus no longer in charge of economic reform since November 1987, where Li Peng is supposed to have replaced Zhao in this role. Zhao nonetheless continues to be centrally placed in high-level discussions on economic matters, something that could not have occurred without Deng’s support. In October 1988, Zhao meets with Milton Friedman to discuss the matter of China’s price reform, along with pro-package reformers (aka shock therapists) Wu Jinglian and Zhou Xiaochuan.[14]

Premier Zhao Ziyang shaking hands with Milton Friedman in October 1988. Also featured are prominent pro-package reformers Wu Jinglian (left) and Zhou Xiaochuan (right) in the back and Rose Friedman in red. Courtesy of Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California.

Not surprisingly, Friedman issues a call for shock therapy that China’s package reformers had advocated. ‘Limit the money supply by printing less money, and then liberalize prices, he told Zhao, adding that liberalizing prices would help bring inflation under control (Friedman, 1990; Zhao, 2016c, 514-515)’[15]

Isabella Weber writes:

The window of opportunity for a foreign tailwind from either direction had closed. Zhao remained General Secretary for the time being but lost his influence on economic policy, which was now in the hands of Li Peng and Yao Yilin, Chen Yun and Li Xiannian regained their influence. Not pushing ahead with reform but bringing the economy back under control was the order of the day.

The director of the Price Bureau, Cheng Zhiping, stressed that in late 1988 lessons of the 1940s and of the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward were key to regaining control over the economy. According to Cheng (2006, 119), the stabilization effort was guided by Chen Yun’s assertion that the degree of the government’s control over the market is decided by its control over the most essential goods on the market. Applying a logic that is strikingly similar to the Guanzi’s light-heavy principles of price stabilization, Cheng argues that the key was to focus the price work on the important, or “heavy”, points.

In the 1940s price stabilization, the “two whites and one black” referring to rice, cotton, and coal, were the most essential goods for feeding and clothing the people and for industry. In the 1960s, the list of prices had been refined reflecting China’s more diversified economy, to include 198 essential goods. The 1988 price stabilization effort now targeted the prices of 383 goods. These goods were identified, based on survey work, as critical to people’s livelihoods and agricultural and industrial production.

The prices of these goods were stabilized through a concerted effort: production was expanded to increase their supply; the commerce system was enhanced to overcome bottlenecks in circulation; the price control system was used to reimpose the overall plan, credit expansion, and investments (Cheng, 2006, 119-121). These measures were complemented with another 1940s anti-inflationary tactic. Government bonds indexed to a set of essential commodity prices were issued to re-create trust in monetary assets.[16]

The Chinese state re-established control over the core of the economy. Inflation was overcome in about a year’s time [see graph below], but the political consequences of the 1988 aborted push for radical reform and the subsequent drastic reversal in course deepened the social and political tensions that had built up in the second half of the 1980s, creating an explosive situation.

Guanzi 管子: An Introduction of 3000 Years of Chinese Economic Thought

Guanzi 管子: An Introduction of 3000 Years of Chinese Economic Thought

The Tiananmen Square protests begin April 15, 1989 and reached a peak on June 3-4, 1989. As we can see from the above graph, the policies of Chen Yun resolve the crisis of hyperinflation in about one year’s time, however, during the tail end of this hyperinflation period is when the Tiananmen Square protests begin. As we can see less than one month after the events of June 3-4 the crisis of hyperinflation is largely resolved. If one wished to utilize the crisis of hyperinflation to instigate political instability it was clear with Chen Yun’s corrective policies in place, the window of opportunity would be narrow. As we will see there was a great deal of manipulation of both the student and worker protests during this period to ensure that a violent confrontation occur at all costs before this window closed. However, this did ultimately fail in the case of instigating violence against the students what would have been the ultimate sin committed by the Chinese government. Despite the fact that no student was actually harmed within the Square, rather they were safely evacuated, mainstream news nonetheless painted the most outrageous stories of tanks mowing down sleeping students and others being bludgeoned and shot to death creating an imagery of rivers of blood flowing in the Square. As we will see, this was an entirely fabricated story that is now acknowledged by western mainstream news itself.

Weber continues:

The runaway inflation of 1988 undermined the trust in money-market relations for many urban residents and added to the anxieties unleashed by an increasing commodification of life.

On the other hand, those who benefited from the growing profit opportunities and mushrooming markets felt threatened by the tightening of control. This formed the background for the broad and diverse social movement of 1989…

In 1988, Zhao urged that a public security law was necessary to push ahead with reform. In 1989, Zhao tried to transcend the same logic of state repression that eventually led to his downfall and imprisonment. The young economists Zhao had nourished were openly loyal with the protesters. They were aware that the troops were on their way to Tiananmen Square and that martial law would soon be imposed. They sensed that a disaster was about to happen.

After all, did they not engineer it to play out that very way?

…spill blood like a river through Tiananmen Square, to awaken the people

The situation has become so dangerous. The students asked me what we were going to do next. I wanted to tell them that we were expecting bloodshed, that it would take a massacre, which would spill blood like a river through Tiananmen Square, to awaken the people. But how could I tell them this? How could I tell them that their lives would have to be sacrificed in order to win?

– Interview with Chai Ling (a lead student dissident in Tiananmen Square) by journalist Philip Cunningham on May 28, 1989, footage featured in the documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace.[17]

For those who have taken the time to scratch the surface but a little on the events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square will soon find out about the infamous Chai Ling, one of the lead student dissidents.

Chai Ling was named Commander-in-Chief of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters Command, another student Li Lu her “deputy”. She was also elected as the Commander-in-Chief of the Hunger Strike Committee. As we will see there were other lead students around this network, many were disciples of Fang Lizhi. However, only Chai Ling’s name has gone down in infamy, a great deal due to the interview she did with journalist Philip Cunningham in Beijing, on May 28, 1989, just five days before violence ensued, and for her particular comment cited above. Li Lu, her “deputy,” does not appear to have suffered any tarnishing of his name and has gone on to have a very successful career which overlaps with Alibaba’s Joseph Tsai, as we will see in this paper.

Philip Cunningham taking notes at the Square. He has conducted research in newspaper offices and television studios across China as a Knight Journalism Fellow and later as Fulbright Fellow and Abe Fellow.

Footage from this interview that is included in the documentary The Gate to Heavenly Peace[18] includes:

Chai Ling: All along I’ve kept it to myself, because being Chinese I felt I shouldn’t bad-mouth the Chinese. But I can’t help thinking sometimes – and I might as well say it – you, the Chinese, you are not worth my struggle! You are not worth my sacrifice!

…What we actually are hoping for is bloodshed, the moment when the government is ready to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united. But how can I explain any of this to my fellow students?

…

Cunningham: “Are you going to stay in the Square yourself?

Chai Ling: “No.”

Cunningham: “Why?”

Chai Ling: “Because my situation is different. My name is on the government’s blacklist. I’m not going to be destroyed by this government. I want to live. Anyway, that’s how I feel about it. I don’t know if people will say I’m selfish. I believe that people have to continue the work I have started. A democracy movement can’t succeed with only one person. I hope you don’t report what I’ve just said for the time being, okay?”[19]

Both Chai Ling and Li Lu were among several lead student dissidents who were given safe passage via Operation Yellowbird.

In an article published by the Financial Times, which promotes the western narrative that these student dissidents only wanted western democracy values, they included an interesting quote from Chai Ling in an interview she did from her home in the United States, where she stated, “Back then a journalist asked us if we wanted democracy…We really didn’t know what that was, we just thought it was very good so we set up our own fledgling democracy there in the Square.”

Does that sound like someone with a plan or someone who is following a set out plan for them?

When you take the time to listen to or read Chai Ling’s interviews with western press, which there are many, it is clear that Chai Ling doesn’t understand the degree that she was manipulated in the entire orchestration of her finding herself in the position of “Commander-in-Chief” of the Square. Chai Ling has all the hallmarks of someone who is not in fact running the show but is rather a puppet that was being told what her mandate was to be from day to day.

After watching the footage from the documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace, though I will have a disclaimer on this documentary production later, it is evident that Chai Ling liked the spotlight and probably felt like a starlet during the whirlwind seven-week period in the Square. There was also a great deal of physical and mental stress for all students but especially those that stayed in the Square for the majority of the seven-week period. This combined with periods of students fasting for several days as part of an on-and-off-hunger-strike only worked to further increase the mental and physical stress on the students. Note that fasting hinders your ability to think critically, judge accordingly and increases emotional instability.

Chai Ling would be the mouthpiece for those holding the strings. Near the last weeks of the protests in the Square Chai Ling was the only student that was granted “permission” to use the megaphone. The students had no choice but for Chai Ling to represent their voice, their wishes, their mission. Chai Ling and her husband Feng Congde (a Fang Lizhi disciple as we will see) would attempt to give off a “democratic” veneer by putting votes to the students. Basically, students would yell “yay” or “nay” on matters that Chai Ling and Feng Congde decided to bring forward. They would then judge which group “won” the vote. It gave them a great deal of freedom to decide the fate of the students to put it mildly.

Chai Ling with sole rights to use the megaphone in the Square.

Many student groups became frustrated with this situation and tried to challenge Chai Ling and Feng Congde’s mini dictatorship of the Square, but she was protected by an entourage of students that were directly connected to Fang Lizhi as we will see.

When the matter of leaving the Square was put to a vote, which occurred several times throughout the weeks, it was thought by many that both Chai Ling and Feng Congde were extremely biased in remaining in the Square and favored this despite growing support by the students to leave the Square. It did not help the matter that new students from other parts of China would arrive in the Square throughout the seven-week period and of course cheered to stay. Many students who wanted to leave did not feel comfortable doing so against the vote.

Students rest in the litter of Tiananmen Square as their strike for government reform enters its third week. (Jeff Widener / Associated Press) Source: Los Angeles Times.
Chai Ling faints from physical exhaustion.

As the weeks progressed, an increasingly worn out and emotionally volatile Chai Ling transitioned from her earlier image of a sweet, innocent but fearless fighter for democratic ideals to frequent breakdowns crying and expressing her disappointment, calling the students cowards who were not willing to go the full distance, who were not truly ready to fight at all costs, who were not ready to die in this final square off with the Chinese government.

Recall from the second instalment that the student protests of 1986 and 1989 were largely instigated and organised by Fang Lizhi and his student followers. However, most students who were participating in these protests were over economic and corruption issues that were worsening due to Zhao Ziyang’s economic policies. In other words, the majority of students participating in these protests had no idea who Fang Lizhi was, at least at the onset. However, as the protests progressed in the case of 1989, it was clear that Fang Lizhi’s student disciples were utilized to organise students in the Square to his “vision,” which included a very loud promotion of Zhao Ziyang and rather ironically, his economic polices.

Suffice to say, the issues the students originally set out to protest over did not warrant the emotionally distraught, one could say hysterical words, of Chai Ling who was pushing for students to be willing to die rather than leave the Square voluntarily. She was effectively pushing for the inevitable – some form of confrontation with the Chinese police/ military.

On May 24, 1989, Chai Ling led the formation of a crowd in the annunciation of the following oath on the Tiananmen Square:

“I swear I will protect the republic and Tiananmen Square with my young life. Heads can roll, blood can flow, but the people’s Square can never be lost! We are willing to fight to the last person.”[20]

Following this oath, Wang Dan announced the formation of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters.[21]

From left to right: Chai Ling, Wu’er Kaixi and Wang Dan. These were the three most prominent public leaders of the student dissidents. As we will see, Wu’er Kaixi and Wang Dan are not only connected to Fang Lizhi and the direct promotion of Zhao Ziyang’s economic policies but the NED as well. All three were among the lead student dissidents smuggled out through Operation Yellowbird.
From left to right: Chai Ling, Wang Dan, Chai Ling’s husband Feng Congde holding the microphone and Chai Ling’s “deputy” Li Lu. Feng Congde is another disciple of Fang Lizhi who promoted Zhao Ziyang’s economic policies. All four were among the student dissidents smuggled out via Operation Yellowbird.

From her interview with Philip Cunningham, it is also clear that Chai Ling was very aware that that was her given mandate, to get the students’ blood to be spilled in the Square such that there would be a river of blood. Only a massacre, as Chai Ling states, could bring about the success of the protests, only then could they “win.”

From the viewpoint of Chai Ling, when she speaks in the plural, always stating “we” and never “I,” this could be construed as her understanding the situation as the selected student leaders of the movement. That these leaders were too special to die in the Square. It was up to the “ordinary” students to die so that they could live and continue to lead the cause from their cushy set-ups in the West. Chai Ling alludes to this in her interview with Cunningham.

In the interview she also directly states how she is not willing to die but hopes that others can take her place:

“But I will not be there to protect the square because I’m different from the others: my name is on the blacklist. I don’t want to die.”

It is clear that she has already been offered safe passage out of China before doing this interview and likely was also told about the all-expenses paid enrollment to Princeton she would be rewarded with for her heroic efforts to promote “western democracy.” In fact, the majority of lead student dissidents smuggled out of China through Operation Yellowbird received free enrollment at prestigious universities including Princeton, Harvard, and even Oxford. Clearly there were big plans for these youths.

No doubt, Chai Ling was not the only one who was receiving these whispers in the ear days before violence ensued June 3 – 4, 1989.

Think about the implications of all of this. If these lead student dissidents had already been promised safe passage with western protection, and were given instruction to encourage a violent confrontation that would spill students’ blood in the Square such that a river flowed – what does this say about the entire so-called democracy movement they represented and continue to represent in exile?[22]

An idea, that according to Chai Ling, came from a western journalist who gave to them the nice sounding word “democracy.”

Thus clearly, it would not be the students winning in this scenario, it would be the network around Zhao Ziyang. Again, as we will see numerous lead student dissidents who were followers of Fang Lizhi are on record directly promoting Zhao Ziyang as a hero of democracy, as well as his economic policies more directly. And as we will see, it just so happens the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is found at the very center of all of this.

This pro-Zhao Ziyang stance promoted to the students who were being organised by Fang Lizhi circles, and who were also infuriated by the dismissal of Hu Yaobang,[23] were led to believe that there was a grouping within the Chinese government that was attacking pro-democracy voices in the government. Much of this blame fell squarely on the head of Li Peng.

Recall from the second instalment that it was Li Peng that replaced Zhao Ziyang as Premier of China and thus head of economic policy for all of China. Li Peng was from the group that supported Chen Yun’s economic policies and were opposed to the pro-package reformers and Zhao Ziyang.

Zhao Ziyang’s removal from this position was seen as a demotion in his own eyes, removing him from a project he had been working on for a decade. And for those pro-package reformers that were present at the same George Soros meetings as Zhao’s System Reform Institute in Eastern Europe, it was understood that with Li Peng as Premier, everything they had been working to bring about in economic reform was at risk of becoming undone.

Despite Zhao being the actual person responsible for the economic and corruption woes in China, the student leaders in the Square shielded Zhao and went for the attack against Li Peng, painting him a terrible villain and dictator of the people.

When a delegation of students were finally accepted to meet with the Chinese government to discuss what they wanted from these protests, these student leaders were largely made up of Fang Lizhi disciples. One, in particular, made the headlines when he rudely interrupted Li Peng and went on an asinine rant that did not cover any actual specifics.

To the left Premier of China Li Peng. To the right Wu’er Kaixi, in hospital clothes and equipped with an actual oxygen tube that he sucked on like it was a hookah, lecturing Li Peng. This confrontation was broadcasted nationally and internationally, elevating Kaixi to international recognition, including a feature on the cover of Time magazine, and positioning him as a symbol of the student movement’s defiance

But it did not matter what Wu’er Kaixi actually said. They got what they came for. An opportunity to be on Chinese state television and international news sticking it to Li Peng and blaming him for everything that was happening in China. Despite clearly having no understanding whatsoever on matters of the economy, the sheer scandal of the whole thing is what blew up.

By Li Peng subjected to the asinine comments of Wu’er Kaixi to an international audience, even though it was the latter who was speaking nonsense, it was Li Peng who was made to look like a small man. One wonders who could have pushed for this set up to occur, a situation that was completely unprecedented in China. There were only two men who had a position higher than Li Peng, and that was Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang.

Recall from the second instalment that it was Liu Xiaobo who was responsible for filling the Square back up with thousands of people, when it had largely emptied, only days before June 3 – 4, 1989. Xiaobo also happens to be directly connected to the NED as we will see.

Known as the “Four Gentlemen of Tiananmen Square” who launched a 72-hour hunger strike in Tiananmen Square days before the events of June 3-4, 1989. From left to right: Zhou Duo, Hou Dejian, Gao Xin, and Liu Xiaobo. Three are considered radical intellectuals, with Liu Xiaobo as the leader. The other member is Hou Dejian who was a famous Taiwanese singer/songwriter at the time. All three of the radical intellectuals had a hatred of the Chinese traditional culture, and in the case of Liu Xiaobo this was discussed in the second instalment. Liu Xiaobo who was a mentor of Wu’er Kaixi, as we will see and advised him throughout the seven-week period, is also connected to the NED. Knowing Liu Xiaobo’s radical viewpoint and hatred for the Chinese traditional matrix, it is not a stretch to think he was favourable to the spilling of blood in the Square so there could be a “win.” The regathering of a crowd that is encouraged to fast days before the events of June 3-4 1989 are suspect, to the point that even Liu Xiaobo acknowledges this in the documentary “The Gate of Heavenly Peace.” Hou Dejian appears to have been an honest person that was used by this group of intellectuals. It was Hou Dejian’s singing that ultimately brought the crowds back to the Square, once the crowds were gathered the intellectuals gave their radical speeches. It was Hou Dejian who appears to be the one truly responsible for the peaceful evacuation of the Square. Everything was being worked towards there being a violent confrontation between the students and China’s military. The students were also being encouraged to fight and die in the Square. It was Hou Dejian, who was entirely unaware of this plot behind the scenes, that sought for the peaceful evacuation of the Square. It was Hou Dejian who immediately afterwards contradicted the claims of Chai Ling, Wu’er Kaixi and others that a massacre had taken place, stating that no one died and everyone was peacefully evacuated from the square. Because Hou Dejian was a famous singer, if Liu Xiaobo and/or Feng Congde (Chai Ling and Wu’er Kaixi had long left the Square during these last hours where a violent confrontation was expected) if Liu and/or Feng were to have insisted on remaining in the Square, Hou Dejian’s testimony that they willingly sacrificed these students’ lives would have been a major black spot on the “purity” of the so-called democracy movement and its leaders. Liu Xiaobo is an extreme radical and was possibly willing to die in this altercation as a martyr. Because of Hou Dejian’s actions, likely the lives of the students were saved.

Clearly there was a great deal of work behind the scenes to bring violence upon the students in the Square. To spill their blood such that a river would flow, for only then would “they” win.

Years later, Chai Ling wrote that her remarkable prediction of a coming violent crackdown which would lead to a Tiananmen Square massacre was something she had heard from Li Lu, not her own forecast. She attributes the premonition of the “Tiananmen Square massacre” to Li Lu in her book A Heart for Freedom.[24] The relevance of Li Lu will be discussed later in this paper.

After the events of June 3 – 4, 1989, Chai Ling was among the loudest voices that claimed that she had personally witnessed a massacre in Tiananmen Square. Another loud voice claiming they had directly witnessed a massacre was Wu’er Kaixi. Who did they blame for this terrible slaughter of innocent students who wanted only western democracy? Li Peng.

But there never was a massacre in Tiananmen Square…

Myth vs Reality: The CIA and MI6 as Narrative Spin-Doctors

The myth that became larger than reality, the massacre of students at Tiananmen Square has largely one man to thank for its success, then British Ambassador to China (1988-1991), Alan Donald.

In a secret diplomatic cable sent to London on June 5, 1989, Donald reported a minimum estimate of 10,000 civilian deaths. According to the declassified documents released by the UK National Archives, his information came from someone who “was passing on information given him by a close friend who is currently a member of the State Council.”[25]

Donald chose to keep this person’s name anonymous despite this being a secret diplomatic cable. For those who have read the second instalment, the pattern should be quite clear at this point. All the evidence that is being used by westerners in the Tiananmen case is entirely unverifiable.

It gives a great deal of liberty if one were interested in fabricating narratives.

Sir Alan Donald’s account differs widely from China’s official statement of 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel. Note these deaths that China is recognising were in the broader areas of Beijing and involved the worker protests that were occurring simultaneously to the student protest which remained camped in the Square for several weeks.

The CIA was no better, it promoted estimates ranging from hundreds to several thousand deaths backing western journalist reports who were not even on the scene but in their hotel rooms during the events of June 3 – 4, 1989.[26]

In American intelligence briefings, now declassified, their estimated deaths ranged between 180 and 500 in some reports to 500 – 2,600 in other reports which they claimed occurred in the Square itself.[27]

Hosted on the NSA Archives, the George Washington University’s National Security Archive has a report titled “Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History” and is a collection of American intelligence reports. In one section it states:

The Secretary of State’s intelligence summary for the following morning (Document 13) reports that “deaths from the military assault on Tiananmen Square range from 180 to 500; thousands more have been injured.” It also describes how “thousands of civilians stood their ground or swarmed around military vehicles. APCs [armoured personnel carrier] were set on fire, and demonstrators besieged troops with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails.”

Again, to clarify here, violence did occur in the broader Beijing area involving the worker protests. However, this intelligence report is claiming it occurred within the Square itself. The difference is a large one, since the Square was the area of student protests. There was no military confrontation with the student protestors. However, what is interesting about the above intelligence report is that not only do we have an estimated death toll that is much closer to the official Chinese statement but an admission that the Chinese military was in fact being attacked including armoured vehicles set on fire via Molotov cocktails. Other reports included in this collection of intelligence briefings also acknowledged that a Chinese soldier had been beaten to death.

On June 3, mysterious thugs, triggered a fight in Mu Xi Di, in the west of the city, attacking army buses with petrol bombs and setting them alight, burning the occupants to death. The perpetrators were never found.[28]

Soldiers who managed to escape the burning buses were beaten to death. Other military men arrived and chaotic fighting broke out.

An image of several incinerated armoured personnel carriers. Many soldiers were burned alive in these vehicles.

This was five kilometers away from Tiananmen Square.

The initial attack on the Chinese military in the broader Beijing area I do not think was organic but likely orchestrated. And lead members such as Han Dongfang of the workers’ protest now work for Radio Free Asia. A known CIA outlet.

If there were indeed agent provocateurs that instigated the violence you can appreciate that it would put the Chinese military in a difficult spot. Obviously, some form of reaction would be required. And any reaction, such as shots at someone seen throwing a Molotov cocktail, or individuals beating a soldier to death, could easily be spread amongst onlookers and those who later joined the fray as hearsay that the military was attacking civilians blindly and recklessly.

This clearly triggered a number of others to join in such that it took a life of its own – which is a predictable outcome. This was again meant to push China’s hand to crackdown horrifically on the people – which it never did.

It is well known that even the most calm and collected soldiers are tested when you have members of a crowd setting your fellow soldiers on fire or beating them to death. You are most definitely going to get some level of chaos in these situations.

As already mentioned, Zhao Ziyang had set up a new public security law that foresaw that force would need to be used against the opposition of the price reform. What is clear for the handling of the violence that ensued in the broader regions of Beijing on June 3rd, 1989, was that the military was instructed at some point to transfer from anti-riot means (rubber bullets, tear gas etc.) to lethal force.[29]

It was Deng Xiaoping as Paramount Leader that had the direct authority over China’s military. He was also the Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) giving him the ultimate command over the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). It was Deng Xiaoping who had given the direct command to transition from anti-riot means to lethal force.

Deng Xiaoping was in the most informed and powerful position over China’s military and was aware of Zhao Ziyang’s new public security law. If there was already a suspicion that violence would ensue, why were the Chinese soldiers not adequately trained in anti-riot tactics, and why were they told to switch to lethal force when the situation could have been contained through anti-riot tactics with proper training and equipment? There was at least seven-weeks to prepare for this situation.

Recall Chai Ling’s words, only when there is a massacre will we “win.”

Strangely, Li Peng is once again blamed for the use of force by the Chinese military (since it fell under his mandate to declare martial law, which he did on May 20, 1989) despite Deng Xiaoping being the actual Chairman of the Central Military Commission and China’s Paramount Leader. It was not Li Peng who was in the position to order a transition from anti-riot tactics to the use of lethal force, that fell under the prerogative of Deng Xiaoping. Yang ShangKun, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission and President of the People’s Republic of China was directly responsible for executing Deng’s directives and mobilizing China’s military on June 3-4, 1989.

General Chi Haotian was the PLA Chief of the General Staff who oversaw the operational planning, logistics and coordination of the actions of the military on June 3-4, 1989. Zhou Yibing and Liu Zhenhua functioned as Commander and Political Commissar of the Beijing Military Region respectively. They were tasked with boots-on-the-ground management of the martial law forces.

All of these men, Chi Haotian, Zhou Yibing, Liu Zhenhua received their orders directly from the Central Military Commission, to which Deng Xiaoping was the Chairman of, and Yang Shangkun the Vice Chairman.

It was not Li Peng who signed off on the use of lethal force, he supported the presence of the military to ensure stability and as a deterrence to actual violence. Any leader of a country would not be so naïve as to think that tens of thousands of people gathering around the center of Beijing from all parts of China, as well as an influx of foreigners, camping out for weeks straight did not pose a risk for some form of violence or chaos to ensue. That fights and altercations can occur amongst the protestors themselves. Or bad apples trying to instigate violence to draw a mob reaction.

China’s PLA (People’s Liberation Army) alongside protestors in Tiananmen Square coexisting peacefully for weeks. Notice that these soldiers are entirely unarmed.
China’s PLA stationed around the Square. According to footage from the documentary ‘The Gate to Heavenly Peace’ many people who approached the soldiers were pleading for them to “side” with the protestors, the most radical understanding of this would have meant that the military itself turn against its own government. Since that was what was ultimately being called for, that Li Peng step down as Premier of China. People would come up to the soldiers crying “Why are you doing this? You are supposed to protect the people not be against them!” However, the soldiers were not against the people, they were there to ensure that things didn’t break down into chaos. This put the soldiers in an emotionally difficult position, and such acts from the people painted them as against the people when they were in fact there to protect the people. Westerners should be aware that the People’s Liberation Army was much loved by the people until the events of June 3-4, 1989, when the military was wrongfully blamed for the slaughter of innocents. As we will see no such thing happened, not in the Square and not in the broader regions of Beijing.

However, the lead student dissidents along with western press spun the most outrageous fiction of monstrous acts committed on the innocent and that Li Peng was directly to blame for it all – earning him the nickname in the west that followed him to his deathbed, the “Butcher of Beijing.”

Below Li Peng’s picture BBC writes “Li Peng was known as the ‘Butcher of Beijing’ for his role in the Tiananmen crackdown.”

Though the Chinese military could have contained the situation better if they had been properly trained in anti-riot tactics and had not been ordered to transition to lethal force, the number of civilian deaths, who were not peaceful protestors but were in fact actively attacking the military, is still relatively speaking low.

This is not to claim that all civilian casualties are justified. As I have already stated, the situation could have been contained through anti-riot means. However, in situations of chaos, if a civilian were to approach a scene where active fighting is occurring, you can understand how this is a foolish move and if they are hit by a bullet, that is not equivalent to the Chinese military “slaughtering innocents.” The truth of the matter was that these scenes turned into urban warfare zones. Individuals who attacked the Chinese military with Molotov cocktails put those at risk around them to be fired upon. If there were paid instigators in the crowd, this would be their very goal. As we will see in the fourth instalment, there were Chinese police officers that were also included in being smuggled out through Operation Yellowbird immediately after the events of June 3-4, 1989. Suffice to say, there is much reason to suspect that there were numerous paid operatives that fueled the violence of June 3-4, 1989.

That being said, the number of casualties is clearly much lower than what was hoped for amongst certain circles who were gunning for a “massacre,” for only then could “they” win. Despite efforts from certain corridors to, as I see it, set-up the Chinese military in a confrontation with civilians – despite orders to transition to lethal force, the PLA soldiers themselves greatly resisted the use of violence amidst their fellow soldiers being burned alive and beaten to death on the streets. The fact is that the Chinese military conducted themselves with incredible restraint during peak levels of chaos to avoid a bloodbath.

If anyone were to look at the footage available,[30] we see numerous army buses and tanks with civilians standing on top of them after having lit them on fire. We also see footage of the civilians who were armed with machine guns they had taken from the Chinese military. Thus, to say that civilians were unarmed is entirely false. There are numerous photos and footage showcasing civilians armed with Molotov cocktails and machine guns.[31]

An anti-government protester in Beijing holds a rifle in a bus window. Pro-democracy protesters had been occupying Tiananmen Square for weeks; hundreds would die that night and the following morning in clashes with Chinese troops. (Jeff Widener / Associated Press) Source: Los Angeles Times.
PLA soldier burned alive and hung on display.
The charred remains of Cui Guozheng, a soldier of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who was burned alive on June 3-4, 1989. His body was set on fire and hung from a pedestrian overpass bridge in Beijing.

Thus, even though accounts today have largely corrected themselves and acknowledge now that there was no massacre in the Square they continue to claim that there was a massacre in the broader regions of Beijing against innocent, unarmed civilians including women and children. This is not true.

Declassified reports by American intelligence at the time were promoting the idea that a massacre in the Square did in fact happen. It also should be noted that among these intelligence briefings which varied greatly in their accounts, the most dramatic ones always relied on western journalist reports. Many of these journalists acknowledged that they had reported on these events from their hotel rooms at the Beijing Hotel which became a hub for western, mostly American, journalists during the Tiananmen Square protests. These journalists advertised their reporting as “live from the Beijing hotel.” However, it embarrassingly came out afterwards, that you cannot see Tiananmen Square from the Beijing Hotel. Clearly there was an already agreed upon line of reporting for the events that occurred on June 3 -4, 1989.

British-born Australian diplomat Gregory Clark[32] wrote in an article published by International Business Times, “Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We’re ‘Remembering’ are British Lies”:

“June 4, 2014 will for many mark the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. What it should actually mark is the anniversary of one of the more spectacular UK black information operations – almost on a par with the mythical Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night.”

Among the protestors was the famous Taiwanese singer Hou Dejian who was in the Square until it was evacuated by the Chinese military. He stated in the documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace: “Some people said that 200 died in the Square and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say that I did not see any of that. I myself was in the Square until 6:30 in the morning.”

WASHINGTON POST: Jay Mathews, who was Washington Post’s Beijing Bureau Chief in 1989 wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review: “As far as can be determined from the available evidence, NO ONE DIED that night in Tiananmen Square.”

CBS News: Richard Roth wrote: “We saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had occurred in [Tiananmen Square.]”

BBC News: James Miles wrote “I was one of the foreign journalists who witnessed the events that night. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square.”

NEW YORK TIMES: In June 13, 1989, NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof – who was in Beijing at that time – wrote, “State television has even shown film of students marching peacefully away from the [Tiananmen] square shortly after dawn as proof that they [protesters] were not slaughtered.”

In that article, he also debunked an unidentified student protester who had claimed in a sensational article that Chinese soldiers with machine guns simply mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square. I would not be surprised if that unidentified student was either Chai Ling or Wu’er Kaixi who later had to acknowledge that they were not in the Square on June 3 – 4, 1989, likely because they were in the process of being smuggled out through Operation Yellowbird.

REUTERS: Graham Earnshaw was in the Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3. He didn’t leave the square until the morning of June 4th. He wrote in his memoir that the military came, negotiated with the students and made everyone (including himself) leave peacefully; and that nobody died in the square.

Even the notorious tank man footage is a lie where western press deliberately withheld the complete footage, included below, and showcases that the man who stood in front of the tank was never mowed down but rather that the military showed maximum restraint and allowed for this man to walk on the tank and even attempt to enter inside with no one coming towards him to interfere in these actions. He continues to block the tanks until actual civilians intervene and literally have to pull him off of the street because he was making a fool of himself. Yet western press showed just the beginning of this footage and made insinuations that he had in fact been mowed over by these tanks, rather than the embarrassing scene that actually took place.

However, it wasn’t western journalists who were calling the shots on these decisions. The fictional story of a Tiananmen Square massacre was directly distributed by the US, UK and Australian diplomats. This was considered the most official and authoritative source you could hope for as a journalist. This is likely why so many thought they could simply report from their hotel rooms.

The first story to blow up with sensational headlines throughout the world after the events of June 3 -4, 1989, was directly off of the British Ambassador Alan Donald’s dubious report of 10,000 civilians killed. It is clear that it was from this report that the US and especially Australian embassies followed suit. Tales of students in the Square massacred with machine guns, their bodies pushed into piles with bulldozers and then incinerated by troops with flamethrowers were parroted all over western media.

This gruesome horror story, supported by no evidence at all, is now viewed by eastern and western historians as entirely fictional, but the story was only corrected two decades later. Despite certain journalists reporting that no massacre had occurred, the overall stance from all the major news outlets was in support that a massacre did occur and included a barrage of reports stating so. Such that today, possibly the majority of western people still believe that a massacre occurred.

The initial gruesome story was followed by another bizarre report, this time sent out by the Australian Embassy, delivering similar information in sometimes the exact same words to the British diplomatic cable. A textual comparison shows that the Australian embassy repeated much of what was contained in the British cable, at times with the exact same words.[33]

“When all those who had not managed to get away were either dead or wounded, foot soldiers went through the square bayoneting or shooting anybody who was still alive,” said the concocted Australian report.

On June 9, 1989, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke gave one of the most memorable speeches concerning the events at Tiananmen Square at a memorial service held for the victims just five days later.

While journalists and even intelligence briefings could not get their facts straight as to what exactly happened June 3 – 4, 1989, Hawke gave a graphic description of details that no one else had reported anywhere in the world. As we will see, the contents of his speech largely overlap with that of Alan Donald’s secret cable.

ABC News writes:

He [Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke] described Chinese soldiers rushing into Tiananmen Square, firing their guns indiscriminately, running over civilians with tanks, squashing bodies into “pulp”, and incinerating the remains with flamethrowers.

It brought the prime minister to tears at one point and the moment shaped the perception of the event for many Australians who heard his speech.

…When Mr. Hawke approached the podium at a special memorial…he carried two documents.

The first was his prepared remarks… In the space between the sixth and seventh paragraphs of the speech, Hawke had drawn an asterisk. He intended at that point to depart from his prepared remarks, and divert to his second document.

Hawke reached this point, paused briefly and put his speech aside. “Let me read an extract from a report to us,” he said.

On June 7, a confidential diplomatic cable had been transmitted from the Australian embassy in Beijing, describing the latest intelligence on what had happened on the day the army moved in on student protestors who had occupied Tiananmen Square.

… He [Hawke] read nearly verbatim from pages 2 and 3 of the document.[34]

“At Tiananmen, the troops who’d first arrived attempted to drive the people away, to separate the students from the ordinary citizens. A last warning was given, and the students prepared to leave,” he said.

“They had expected to be given an hour but within five minutes the anti-personnel carriers of the 27th entered the square, firing their machine guns as they came.

“When all those who had not managed to get away were either dead or wounded, foot soldiers went through the square bayoneting or shooting anybody who was still alive.

“They had orders that nobody in the square be spared, and children and young girls were slaughtered, anti-personnel carriers and tanks then ran backwards and forwards over the bodies of the slain until they were reduced to pulp, after which, bulldozers moved in to push the remains into piles which were then incinerated by troops with flamethrowers.”

At that point, his voice cracking and with tears in his eyes, he returned to his prepared remarks.

In the Beijing [Australian] embassy, word reached the diplomatic staff that their cable had been read, verbatim, on television, by the prime minister.

That included professor Richard Rigby, who at the time worked as political counselor at the embassy and is now at the China Institute of Australian National University. “That was a surprise [and] I’m speaking diplomatically,” he said.

At the top of the cable, there had been a disclaimer of sorts. “There can be little doubt that the overall picture is correct, even if certain details may eventually prove to be inaccurate,” he had written.

It quickly emerged that many of the details, which had been read out by Mr Hawke were incorrect.

“Within a few days, certainly within a week, it was clear that the information about what happened in the square itself was incorrect,” Professor Rigby said.

…there is doubt about what precisely happened inside the square and whether that was the scene of most of the killing. It was the description of that specific scene that Professor Rigby said was retracted.

…A number of cables were transmitted from the embassy in the following days and weeks, retracting details of the original cable.

Where had the information in the first cable come from?

While the Australian cable Bob Hawke was reading from has never before been made public, a cable sent at the same time to London and Hong Kong from British ambassador Sir Alan Donald was declassified in 2017.

The British cable and Australian cable are strikingly similar. They present similar information about the massacre in similar order.[35]

… after being presented with new information about the event, he came to a realisation that some of the details were incorrect. Although, he did not voice any regrets.

“The point about that was, when he wept, the sight of him crying for them had a great emotional effect on the Australian Chinese community, and many Chinese in China.” [said his wife and biographer].

“For them, it was a very extraordinary experience, to see a white man crying for them.”[36]

You can see how much concern there is for the truth here vs something that is good for PR. Hawke had no regrets because he felt he had touched so many people. But he touched them with an emotional performance that was in reaction to something that was entirely fictitious. Apparently, this does not matter. The fact that people were touched with their emotions is what matters and that obviously the big bad Chinese government are not in touch with their emotions, they would never cry on camera so beautifully as did Mr. Hawke, and thus somehow that makes it all ok? To spread the most monstrous lies that women and children and students were mowed over by tanks and bludgeoned to death and their bodies then lit on fire by flamethrowers?

This fabricated story was somehow allowed to spread like wildfire when there existed actual footage of students peacefully filing out through a southern gate of the Square.[37] Recall, there were in fact western journalists present in the Square until the last moment when students were peacefully evacuated the morning of June 4, 1989, including journalist Graham Earnshaw. There was absolutely no reason why the western embassies or press should have reported what they did in their imaginative gruesome accounts. Solid evidence of what occurred in the Square had always existed in the form of numerous pieces of footage taken by members of the western press itself. But this information was consciously suppressed.

This story of 10,000 killed in Tiananmen was repeated all over by major western press agencies for many years. The false tale not only continued to circulate but had extra details added, sometimes years afterwards. The “Encyclopedia of the World”, published by Houghton Mifflin Co, in 2001, tells the children of the world, in shocked capital letters, a version of the tale even more extreme than the psyops version: “June 3-4: PLA TROOPS ENTERED TIANANMEN SQUARE DURING THE NIGHT AND FIRED DIRECTLY INTO THE SLEEPING CROWD.”

Alan Donald remained the British Ambassador to China until 1991. A year later he became a Director of China Fund Inc. (1992-2003), apparently no relation to George Soros’ operation.[38] Overlapping this time period he also became the Director of HSBC China Fund Ltd (1994-2004).[39]

He was also the Director of the Fleming Far Eastern Investment Trust (1991-1997) and continued on as its Director after it was rebranded the J.P. Morgan Fleming Asian Investment Trust Ltd. (1997-2001).

He also became the President of the China Association from 2003-2008. Founded in 1889 with the original title British China Association as an organ of western imperialism, economic exploitation and gunboat diplomacy in East Asia. Its membership comprised the very trading houses, colonial officials, and politicians who built their wealth on unequal treaties enforced against the Qing Dynasty.[40]

This included the opium trade.[41] The driving force behind the British China Association was the powerful “China Houses” most notably Jardine, Matheson & Co. and Swire & Sons.

It should not be surprising that the British China Association has a close relationship to British intelligence. The most notable case being Sir Horace Seymour, who appears to have an uncanny similarity to Alan Donald’s own career…

Suffice to say, something tells me that Alan Donald was not neutral in what course China was to take in its economic reform…

Leaders of a Democracy Movement in Exile with Aid from the NED/CIA

The seed for what would form the core leadership amongst the student dissidents of Tiananmen Square started about one year earlier in what were called campus “Democracy Salons,” beginning the spring of 1988.[42] These “Democracy Salons” were spear-headed by Liu Gang. Liu Gang was an undergraduate student from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei where he directly met Fang Lizhi, the university’s vice president at the time, who was actively lecturing on political reform and liberty.

Liu Gang later enrolled at the Peking University as a physics graduate student. Bringing Fang Lizhi’s ideas with him he launched the “Democracy Salons”. For those who are not aware Peking is another word for Beijing, the capital of China. It was imperative that Fang Lizhi gain influence in Beijing and this was the channel used.

In addition, Fang Lizhi’s wife, Li Shuxian, was a physics professor at Peking University and was elected as a local people’s representative for the Haidian District (the university hub of Beijing). This academic and political overlap created a direct pipeline for student activists to interact with Fang and his wife Li.

Soon after its launch, Wang Dan a freshman history major at Peking University expanded and regularly hosted the campus “Democracy Salons,” that were hosted outside during the years 1988 and 1989, inviting intellectuals to discuss political reform and human rights. Recall, Wang Dan is one of the core members of the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters. However, it was Fang Lizhi who was recognised as their spiritual and intellectual mentor and was invited regularly to express his political ideas.

In the case of Liu Gang and Wang Dan, Fang Lizhi was a close mentor of theirs who offered them private advice. This relationship continued up until the last days of the Tiananmen Square protests, during the seven-week period. Members of this “Democracy Salon” appeared to naturally transition into the core leadership of the 1989 pro-democracy student movement where Wang Dan in particular was in the spotlight as one of the top leading students shaping the events of the student protests.

Another prominent student leader that was a member of these Democracy Salons was Feng Congde, the husband of Chai Ling, and her compatriot throughout her role as “supreme commander” of the Square. And it just so happens Feng Congde was another leading member of the Democracy Salons.

In fact, the “Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters” where Chai Ling was named Commander-in-Chief, consisted of six other key members in this organization: Li Lu (the primary “deputy”), Feng Congde, Zhang Boli, Wang Dan and Wang Chaohua, who were all supposedly elected deputy commanders with Guo Haifeng as the secretary-general.[43] We will hear more about the role of Li Lu later in this paper and the role of Zhang Boli in the fourth instalment.

So what are the numerous NED, which is a branch of the CIA,[44] connections in all of this?

The Journal of Democracy is a quarterly academic journal that was founded in 1990 and published by John Hopkins University Press, that focuses on the study of democracy, democratic regimes, and pro-democracy movements worldwide.

However, what is often left out is that it is also an openly admitted National Endowment for Democracy (NED) publication.

Apparently in 2026 the Journal of Democracy has separated from the NED (likely bad PR) and has formed a new core partnership with Stanford University. However, this does not erase the fact that the NED established this journal and controlled its mandate for the past 36 years officially until 2026. Note that this NED journal was established less than one year after the Tiananmen Square protests.

Notable contributors to the Journal of Democracy are Fang Lizhi, Wang Dan and Wu’er Kaixi among other student leaders involved with the Tiananmen Square events of 1989.

In a particularly useful essay by Wang Dan titled “30 Years After Tiananmen: The Meaning of June 4th” he outlines some very telling points of what he understood to be the prerogative mandate of the students at the time to which he continues to trumpet in the name of “democracy” to this very day.

Wang Dan writes:

Discussing the question “What if the 1989 democracy movement had succeeded” therefore means considering what might have happened had the government affirmed the student movement as patriotic and embarked upon a dialogue with its members. In my view, such a turn of events would have had three main near-term effects:

1) A successful democracy movement would have fortified the reformist faction within the CCP, represented by Zhao Ziyang (who became general secretary following Hu’s ouster and was himself pushed out by the end of June 1989). It is common knowledge that Zhao was the senior CCP leader most inclined toward market-oriented economic reforms, and also the most open-minded of the Party’s top officials. If he had acquired greater policy-making authority, he would surely have used it to push for more extensive marketization. Hints of this trajectory could be seen in the bankruptcy law initially implemented in 1988. In other words, a successful democracy movement would not have plunged China into chaos, but rather would have lent new momentum to the economic-reform process.

2) [discusses freedom of press which can be read in the full article cited above.]

3) Success for the democracy movement would have set a precedent for dialogue between China’s government and its society. In fact, the 1987 political report of the CCP’s Thirteenth National Congress, drafted under the leadership of Bao Tong (a Zhao associate who was jailed shortly before the Tiananmen Square crackdown), established consultation and dialogue with the public as the focus of the Party’s reform plans. When the students called for dialogue, they were effectively echoing this demand for political reform.

So, not so subtle of a support for Zhao Ziyang.

Wang Dan is involved in many other organisations, one of them being the “Chinese Constitution Reform Association,” founded in 2002 and officially established in 2005. Its famous members include Fang Lizhi and former advisor of Zhao Ziyang, Yan Jiaqi. Its purpose is to push constitutional reform in People’s Republic of China by political activities.

And it just so happens that it is also linked to the NED.

Wang Dan also founded and is the Director of Dialogue China, which is closely connected to the NED.

The Federation for a Democratic China (FDC) was founded on September 22, 1989 in Paris France (many student dissidents were openly accepted in France and offered sanctuary from the Chinese government after the Tiananmen protests). It was established by over 150 exiled Chinese pro-democracy activists, intellectual and student leaders in opposition to the Chinese government.

The FDC is also directly connected to the NED.

As already mentioned, Fang Lizhi also wrote for the Journal of Democracy. In addition, the NED has frequently recognised and cited Fang’s legacy as a cornerstone of the Chinese democratic movement, with former NED President Carl Gershman having publicly praised Fang Lizhi aligning his impact with other historic figures like Andrei Sakharov.[45] [46]

Fang Lizhi also served as co-chairman of the board for Human Rights in China (HRIC), a New York based non-governmental organization that has historically received funding and institutional support from the NED to advocate “civil liberties.”[47]

And as already mentioned in the second instalment, the CIA along with British and American diplomatic channels actively intervened to protect Fang Lizhi and offer him not only asylum but safe passage out of China. This will be discussed further in the fourth instalment.

Wu’er Kaixi is another prominent contributor to the Journal of Democracy. He has also done international talks promoting Fang Lizhi as the leader of their democracy movement.[48] And again, former NED president Carl Gershman has recognized and honored Wu’er Kaixi for his role at Tiananmen Square. Wu’er Kaixi has spoken and participated in events co-sponsored by or hosted with the NED, such as public presentations in Washington DC.[49] Some of these talks have included him promoting the claim that the Chinese government is committing a genocide against the Uyghurs, a Chinese ethnic minority group. This is once again false and is a smear-campaign that is entirely run by the NED.[50]

Wu’er Kaixi also serves as the Honorary Chairman of Campaign for Uyghurs, a prominent Washington-based advocacy organization which has strong backing and funding from the NED.

On that note readers should be aware that the East Turkestan Independence Movement is also organised and funded by the NED.

It should also be noted that the NED has an extremely strong presence in Taiwan’s affairs. For more on this refer to my paper here under the sub-section “The Sunflower Movement: Taiwan’s Color Revolution.”

Liu Xiaobo, the man responsible for the initiative to refill the Square days before the events of June 3 -4, 1989 as already discussed in the second instalment, is also connected to the NED. He became the president of a magazine titled Democratic China starting in the mid-1990s. This journal was primarily funded by the NED.

In a letter to Liao Yiwu, a famous songwriter, Liu Xiaobo writes praising Fang Lizhi and Zhao Ziyang:

“One cannot count on the collective conscience of the masses but only on the great individual conscience to consolidate the weak masses. In particular, our nation needs this righteous giant; the appeal of a role model is infinite; a symbol can rouse an abundance of moral resources. For example, Fang Lizhi’s ability to walk out of the U.S. Embassy, or Zhao Ziyang’s ability to actively resist after stepping down, or so-and-so refusing to go abroad. A very important reason for the silence and amnesia after June Fourth is that we did not have a righteous giant who stepped forward.”[51]

This letter is archived by the Human Rights in China, which as just mentioned, has as its primary funder the NED and whose co-chairman was Fang Lizhi.

Wu’er Kaixi has repeatedly and explicitly confirmed Liu Xiaobo’s mentorship through his own writings, retrospective interviews, and documented historical accounts from 1989. Following Liu Xiaobo’s death in state custody, Wu’er Kaixi wrote a tribute titled Murdered but Undefeated, in which he stated:

“Liu Xiaobo was my mentor… Over the course of a month, in early 1989, Liu Xiaobo taught me to be a student leader.”

In an interview with Guernica Magazine in 2010, [52]when Liu received the Nobel Peace Prize, Wu’er Kaixi noted:

“Liu, a lecturer at Beijing Normal University, where I was a student, was my advisor during the Tiananmen protests. I met with him every day and listened to his advice from almost the moment he rushed back from the United States to be with us.”

Wu’er Kaixi also co-founded the Friends of Liu Xiaobo advocacy group, frequently identifying himself as Liu’s “protege” in international press interviews and congressional testimonies.

But the NED not only gave this democracy movement in exile a boost after the events of 1989. They were on the ground in 1988, when a Chinese language journal called The Chinese Intellectual opened an office in Beijing to publish a quarterly magazine of essays for distribution in major cities of China.[53]

This will be a longer story and will be told in the fourth instalment which will focus on the actions of the CIA in Beijing leading up to the events of June 3-4, 1989 and afterwards. This fourth instalment will also discuss how Gene Sharp was on the ground in Beijing during this period directly tied to the NED. Col. Robert Helvey was also in China overlapping with this period who was an expert in the expanding field of US military psychological warfare. His specialty was the use of students and youth in general in escalating street protests into full-scale regime change. Again, this will be discussed in the fourth instalment.

It should also be noted that included in the various footage within the documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace is a mention of certain protest groupings referring to themselves as the “Flying Tigers.”

The Flying Tigers were the First American Volunteer Group (AVG; of the Republic of China Air Force, nicknamed the Flying Tigers) and were formed to help oppose the Japanese invasion of China. Operating in 1941–1942, it was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC), and was commanded by then-Brigadier General Claire Lee Chennault.

General Chennault is connected to the Golden Triangle opium trade and worked alongside Chiang Kai-shek. For more on this story refer to my papers here and here.

CIA, NATO and the Great Heroin Coup: How Miami Became the Center of International Fascism and the Murder of President Kennedy

CIA, NATO and the Great Heroin Coup: How Miami Became the Center of International Fascism and the Murder of President Kennedy

Why the People’s Republic of China Is Not Responsible for America’s Drug Problem

Why the People’s Republic of China Is Not Responsible for America’s Drug Problem

Lastly, we have George Soros’ Open Society which has walked closely together on the same path as the NED.

Zhao’s Crocodile Tears for the People

On May 19th, 1989, the day after Gorbachev ended his visit to China and when the world’s eyes were on Beijing, Zhao Ziyang went to Tiananmen Square in the early morning to address the hunger-striking students.

Zhao Ziyang and his Soros-tied aide Chen Yizi (in black) speaking to crowds at Tiananmen Square.

In his speech to the students he says:

“Students, we came too late. Sorry students. Whatever you say and criticize about us is deserved. My purpose here now is not to ask for your forgiveness…I know, you are doing this [hunger strike] in the hope that the Party and the government will give a most satisfactory answer for what you are asking for. I feel, our channel for dialogue is open, and some problems need to be resolved through a process…You are not like us, we are already old, and do not matter.”

In this short speech Zhao Ziyang pleads with the students to end their hunger-strike but he makes admissions to the students that encourage them to think that their criticism of the government (namely at this point Li Peng) is entirely justified. Zhao Ziyang states “whatever you say and criticize about us is deserved.”

By Zhao Ziyang being the highest-ranking member of the government to speak to the students, this was seen as a symbol of Zhao Ziyang being the most genuinely committed to democratic ideals. And other senior members of the government who supported or came to speak to the students were from Zhao’s inner circle, including Yan Mingfu and Yan Jaiqi (who we will hear more about shortly). That Zhao came to speak to the mob and petted them, saying everything they think and feel is entirely correct was obviously going to please the mob. But ironically, the man responsible for the economic and corruption crisis was Zhao Ziyang! And the students leading the charge for this democracy movement to end corruption were directly calling for Zhao Ziyang’s economic policies that had brought in the crisis of corruption and economic woes! It was a brilliant PR stunt for those who are fans of crocodile tears which there is no shortage of, especially in the “freedom” loving west.

Cry for the camera, and people automatically think you must be a decent compassionate person. Never mind the actual policies that such a man is advocating for, or the fact that it was Zhao Ziyang who set up the new public security law in the first place.

Chen Yizi, the head of Zhao’s think tank the System Reform Institute, became heavily involved with the Tiananmen protests early on.

Isabella Weber writes:[54]

Still, on May 19, the young economists who had risen to influence under Zhao decided to make their own statement. These economists were based at the System Reform Institute, the Agriculture Research Center at the Development Research institute and the International Office of CITIC and were organized in the Beijing Youth Association – the “three institutes and one association”. In the name of their organizations, they endorsed the social movement as the most brilliant chapter in China’s history of democratic movements and thus responded to the protesters’ demand for the state to recognize the legitimacy of their movement.

CITIC as already mentioned had Zhao’s players working from inside and had direct ties to Soros’ China Fund. However, it also had members of Chinese intelligence which as already mentioned, appears to be where China has obtained its evidence that Soros was indeed working with Zhao Ziyang for a regime change in China.

This is treated as a “set-up” against Soros by fans of the Open Society, however, the truth of the matter was that they were caught with their pants down. Nobody pressured or entrapped Soros to commit the actions he did in China in conjunction with Zhao Ziyang’s network.

Recall earlier that it was mentioned that Adi Ignatius worked on the translation and editing of the English version of Zhao’s memoirs Prisoner of the State. And that Adi Ignatius is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Asia Society.

For those who are not already aware, the Council on Foreign Relations is the offspring of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the leading think tank for the British Crown.

The Asia Society was founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller as an institution to promote mutual understanding between the U.S. and Asia. It also works closely with the NED.

Recall David Ignatius’ interview with the NED co-architect Allen Weinstein who stated “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Referring to the newly created NED.

It is looking like there is a quite a bit of unabashed NED support for Zhao Ziyang. Or should we just call it out for what it is, direct CIA support for Zhao.

Yan Mingfu was the most outspoken senior official of the government that spoke to the students. He was a key political ally of Zhao Ziyang during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Mingfu served as the head of the United Front Work Department under Zhao Ziyang making him part of Zhao’s inner circle of reformist officials. In May, 1989, Zhao tasked Yan Mingfu to act as an intermediary to negotiate with hunger-striking students in the Square.[55] As part of a dramatic PR stunt, Yan Mingfu offers himself as a “hostage” to the students to put pressure on the government to heed the students’ demands, which just so happened to be in favour of Zhao Ziyang. Yan Mingfu was the lead reformist minister.

Yan Mingfu offers himself as a hostage for students to end hunger strike.

Wu Guoguang is another prominent member of the inner circle of Zhao Ziyang and became known as “the first pen” of Zhao’s group under Bao Tong.[56] This came about during the period of spring 1987 with the removal of Hu Yaobang as General Secretary. Wu Guoguang wrote speeches for Zhao during this period who attempted to keep the reform momentum going. After gaining the support from Deng Xiaoping, Zhao delivered a speech on May 13, 1987, which was celebrated by its effects of revitalizing his economic reforms. Wu was the major drafter of this speech known as the “May 13 speech.”[57]

Interestingly, Wu Guoguang left China February 1989 just prior to the rise of the protests attending Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow (1989-1990). This was most fortuitous since after the events of the Tiananmen protests, Wu Guoguang was found deeply implicated in Zhao’s inner circle and could not return to China where he would certainly be arrested.

Remaining in the U.S. he was appointed a Luce Fellow (1990-1991) working directly under the supervision of Professor Andrew J. Nathan. The Luce Fellowship is named after Henry Luce, owner of Time, Life and Fortune magazines and a know CIA conduit. Andrew J. Nathan is an American political scientist and sinologist and continues to teach at Columbia University as a professor of political science at the age of 83, totaling 55 years. He specializes in Chinese politics, foreign policy, human rights and political culture.

He is also a co-chair on the board of Human Rights in China, as already mentioned Fang Lizhi until his passing was co-chair of this organization that has close ties to the NED. Most interestingly, Andrew J. Nathan was a former board member of the NED, as well as Freedom House.

He is also a long-standing contributor to the Foreign Affairs magazine, which is owned by the Council on Foreign Relations.

And if this were not enough, Andrew J. Nathan is also the co-author to The Tiananmen Papers (2001). Recall from the second instalment that another co-author to this publication that sells itself as a redacted version of officially leaked Chinese documents is Perry Link. The man who personally escorted Fang Lizhi and his wife to the American embassy in Beijing and ensured that they would receive sanctuary. Another notable figure that ensured that Fang Lizhi and his wife would be protected by the United States against attempts from the Chinese government to arrest them, was James Liley, the US Ambassador at the time, who just happened to have been a legendary CIA agent who had spent the last 30 years working for the agency in Asian affairs, primarily in China.

As for Wu Guoguang he is today a Senior Research Scholar for Stanford University. (Recall the Journal of Democracy was transitioned from NED to Stanford in the year 2026). Involved in Stanford’s economy policy research on China and U.S.-China economic, trade and business relations. He also serves as a Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Center for China Analysis (CCA) of the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI).

The Asia Society Policy Institute receives grants from the NED for its research.

Another prominent member of Zhao’s inner circle was Yan Jiaqi. In 1985, Yan Jiaqi was appointed as the inaugural director of the Institute of Political Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). This role involved leading research on governance structures, including analyses of separation of powers and institutional modernization, which fed into broader advisory inputs for central leadership.

Yan subsequently joined a task force on political reform convened under Premier Zhao Ziyang and was his informal advisor, where he provided expertise on restructuring party-state relations. Between 1986 and 1987, he contributed to the Political Reform Office attached to Zhao’s apparatus.

In 1986, prior to Hu’s fall, Yan was invited to join a high-level task force on political reform led by Zhao, then Premier, where he contributed ideas aimed at decentralizing power, reducing the party’s dominance over state administration, and introducing elements of intra-party democracy to prevent authoritarian concentration. As Zhao’s political advisor through the late 1980s, Yan drafted proposals for systemic changes, including advisory bodies to check executive authority, reflecting Zhao’s vision for “socialist democracy” as outlined in key speeches. These collaborations positioned Yan at the nexus of official reform efforts.

Yan became directly involved in the student protests until late May and early June, advocating for dialogue amid martial law declarations on May 20. On the night of June 3, he appeared in Tiananmen Square for the inauguration of the protesters’ “Democracy University,” a makeshift educational initiative led by student Zhang Boli, and accepted appointment as its honorary president.

Yan Jaiqi, along with Chen Yizi, were among Zhao’s acolytes that were smuggled out of China via Operation Yellowbird. Yan received sanctuary in Paris, France and began appearing on French television alongside Wu’er Kaixi, publicly calling for global rallies and commemorations on September 12 to mark 100 days since the June 4 “massacre,” framing these as steps toward sustained international pressure for democracy in China.

In the ensuing months, Yan focused on building an organized exile opposition network, leveraging Paris as a hub for Chinese dissidents. In September 1989, he participated in an inaugural congress of overseas Chinese exiles in Paris, where he was elected president of the newly formed Federation for a Democratic China (FDC). As already mentioned, the FDC is an NED conduit.

Yan Jaiqi also served as the first chairman of the Democratic China Front, which is again directly connected to the NED.

Yan Jiaqi was elected as the FDC’s first chairman at its inaugural congress, leveraging his prior role as a reform advisor to Zhao Ziyang and his prominence in the 1989 protests to rally support. Key co-founders included Chen Yizi, Liu Binyan, Su Shaozhi, Su Xiaokang, Wan Runnan, Wu’er Kaixi, and Cai Chongguo.

The FDC rapidly expanded into countries including the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, and the UK in order to “expose” the Chinese government as a “dictatorship” and put international pressure that it “democratize.”

The Relevance of the New School Economics And Toffler’s Futurists of Beijing

Another interesting connection to the pro-Zhao “democracy” movement that developed during the Tiananmen Square protests is the New School connection.

Recall that so far in this series the New School has already been mentioned in conjunction with Alvin Toffler and Isabella Weber. Recall that Zhao Ziyang was very much influenced by Alvin Toffler. And that Isabella Weber ultimately takes a pro-Zhao Ziyang stance in her book “How China Escaped Shock Therapy.”

Recall Alvin Toffler founded Toffler Associates, a management consulting company, and was a faculty member of the New School for Social Research, a visiting faculty member of Cornell University, and a White House correspondent.[2] The McKinsey Foundation (from the notorious McKinsey & Co. discussed in Part I of this series) gave him their Book Award for Contributions to Management Literature.

Isabella Weber was mentored by Peter Nolan and acknowledges in her book that her overall outlook on economic policy originates from the “New School Economics.”

Another New School connection is the documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace, which again ultimately takes on a pro-Zhao Ziyang stance. The documentary was produced by the Long Bow Group which receives its distribution, presentation, and public media advocacy from the Center for Asian Media (CAAM). CAAM was an initiative started by Loni Ding as part of a broader Berkeley initative from a 1980 Berkely Conference which laid out a mandate for Asian Pacific Producers in Public Broadcasting, focusing on civil rights and media diversity.[58] This 1980 Conference was organized primarily by Loni Ding.[59]

Loni Ding, besides teaching film at Berkeley, was a visiting faculty member at Cornell University and was also a visiting faculty member of the New School for Social Research in New York City.

The documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.[60] The Low Bow Group, which produced the documentary, receives funding from the NEH, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). CAAM, responsible for the distribution and media of the documentary, is funded by the John D. Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation and the Asian American Foundation (TAAF). (The relevance of TAAF will become clear shortly.)

Both Wu Guoguang and Yan Mingfu (who worked directly for Zhao in his economic reform) featured prominently in the documentary The Gate to Heavenly Peace, with Wu Guoguang being one of the main interviewees. Another, main interviewee was Han Dongfang, a leader of the worker’s protest that now works for Radio Free Asia (a known CIA conduit), as already mentioned.

Though these connections to New School may appear rather weak, it becomes a lot more interesting when we begin to look at the case of Li Lu, Chai Ling’s “deputy.”

Li Lu’s grandfather was Zhu Qixian (also spelled Zhu Qi Xan) who studied at Columbia University and earned a PhD. In the 1930s Zhu Qixian traveled to New York to pursue a higher education. He attended Columbia University, eventually earning a doctorate from the Columbia Teachers College. During his time at Columbia, he studied closely under the influential American philosopher and educator John Dewey, whose theories on progressive education and functional democracy deeply shaped Zhu’s worldview.[61]

Zhu Qixian then returned to China to “foster democracy and support education.”

The reader should be aware that John Dewey is the founder of the New School. New School has several branches including on economics. The fact that the greater majority of “intellectual” work on the subject of China’s economic reform and Chinese democracy movements in exile are found promoted in the west under either the NED umbrella or New School is no small matter.

I know this paper is getting long but I would like to share with you an entertaining “dialogue” I had with Google AI that gave me a strange loop around on the subject of New School which at first denied that there was any branch of economic theory promoted by Dewey’s New School.

So that was a long-winded way to showcase that John Dewey’s New School is in fact a promoter of heterodox economics.

For the further relevance of Dewey see my paper here.

The Story of How Trotskyism Gave Birth to the Frankenstein Child NeoConservatism in its mission for Permanent Warfare

The Story of How Trotskyism Gave Birth to the Frankenstein Child NeoConservatism in its mission for Permanent Warfare

Interestingly, Wang Dan has also help launch the New School for Democracy in Taipei, Taiwan and is a board member. Although there is the claim that this school has absolutely no relationship to Dewey’s New School or the teaching of heterodox economics, both New Schools are nonetheless very much compatible with the NED outlook.

Make of that what you will.

Li Lu is actually the most successful, by a large margin, of all the other student dissidents who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests. Li Lu also stated that he witnessed tanks drive over tents full of sleeping protesters, killing hundreds of unarmed students.[62]

Recall that Chai Ling wrote that her remarkable prediction of a coming violent crackdown which would lead to a Tiananmen Square massacre was something she had heard from Li Lu, not her own forecast. She attributes the premonition of the “Tiananmen Square massacre” to Li Lu in her book A Heart for Freedom.[63]

The fact that Li Lu’s grandfather was a direct John Dewey acolyte who returned to China to spread the Dewey Gospel is no small matter.

Li Lu would also study at Columbia University. He was one of the first in Columbia’s history to receive three degrees simultaneously: a BA in economics, an MBA, and a JD in 1996.

Li Lu served as a trustee of Columbia University from 2017 to 2024 and currently serves as a trustee of California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 2025, Li Lu donated $15 million to Columbia Law School’s new library and it was named The Li Lu Law Library.

Li Lu met Warren Buffett’s long-time business partner, Charlie Munger at a dinner party in Los Angeles in the late 2000s after starting his own successful hedge fund, Himalaya Capital in 1997. Munger was deeply impressed by Li’s investment intellect and invested a large portion of his family’s personal wealth into Himalay Capital. Munger has stated that Li is the only outside manager he has ever invested with and has described him as the “Chinese Warren Buffett.”

In 2007, Himalaya moved its office to Pasadena, California to be closer to Munger. In 2010, Li was granted re-entry into China as part of a trip to accompany Bill Gates, Buffett and Munger’s visit to BYD Company to invest in it. Afterwards Li made subsequent trips to China, visiting companies and delivering lectures on value investing at universities.

It should be noted that over half of the lead student dissidents who were smuggled out of China via Operation Yellowbird found jobs that were aligned with Alvin Toffler’s futurism (outlined in the second instalment), namely in investment banking and telecommunications. It just so happened that the CIA and Goldman Sachs were also very interested in these areas as well and were heavily involved in the building up of these frameworks in China during the era of Jiang Zemin. This will be discussed further in a future instalment.

Another interesting fact about Li Lu is that he is the co-founder to The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). Recall that Loni Ding’s CAAM is also funded by this foundation. Another notable co-founding member that holds a large relevance to our story is Joseph Tsai from Alibaba.

Othe notable names are Joseph Bae who worked for Goldman Sachs and Jerry Yang the co-founder of Yahoo.

And it is always a good sign when Condoleezza Rice is on the advisory board….

Also notice the involvement of the World Bank Group, the notorious McKinsey & Co. from Part I of this series, and a strong presence of CNN media. Image is a selection of members from the advisory board and not the complete list.

And who is a founding corporate partner to TAAF? Goldmans Sachs.

And so we come full circle in a strange way from Tiananmen Square to Joseph Tsai and Goldman Sachs through Li Lu. Coincidence? I will leave that up to you the reader to decide.

The fourth instalment which should be published within a week’s time is titled “Operation Yellowbird: MI6, CIA, North American Baptist Churches and the Triads Unite.”

Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and author of the books “The Shaping of a World Religion” & “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set,” consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page Through A Glass Darkly.

Also make sure to watch our RTF and CP films and documentaries here.

Through A Glass Darkly

On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.

By Cynthia Chung

Footnotes:

[1] Isabella Weber, How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate. (2021)

[2] For more on this story refer to the links below and search for the words NED and Ignatius. https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/sleepwalking-into-fascism-why-cianatos?utm_source=publication-search and https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-enemy-within-a-story-of-the-purge-d2f?utm_source=publication-search

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Ignatius

[4] https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/how-china-escaped-shock-therapy-zhao

[5] This story will be told in the fourth instalment.

[6] Isabella Weber, How China Escaped Shock Therapy pg. 249.

[7] Isabella Weber, How China Escaped Shock Therapy pg. 249.

[8] Weber, pg. 249-250

[9] Weber, pg. 250

[10] Weber, pg. 251

[11] Weber, pg. 251

[12] Though it is often overlooked today, “corporatist fascist economics” did not make its first appearance in Italy as is commonly believed, but rather in Austria after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1919. At this time, von Hayek worked as the aid to Ludwig von Mises (another Mont Pelerin founding member) who then served as chief economic advisor to Austria’s new government, under the direct control of the Bank of England’s new governor Montagu Norman and the League of Nations’ Arthur Salter (head of the League’s Supreme Economic Council). Under Mises’ direction, the post-war Austrian government-imposed cuts to services, government spending, and wages leading to mass starvation and poverty. These acts would serve as a template for what Italians and Germans would soon face.

[13] For more on Operation Gladio refer to my paper “Operation Gladio: How NATO Conducted a Secret War Against European Citizens and Their Democratically Elected Governments” as well as my book “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set” which goes through a detailed account of this history and its broader implications.

[14] The roles of Wu Jinglian and Zhou Xiaochuan are discussed in detail within this series here: https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/how-china-escaped-shock-therapy-zhao

[15] Weber, pg. 254-255

[16] Astute readers will note that this tactic was a direct Chinese adoption of the American System of Productive Credit as developed in the late 18th century by America’s first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and revived by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, and again by Franklin Roosevelt during his 1933-1945 administration. In all three cases, the growth of the real economy accelerated with public works, industrial capital investments and increased productive powers of labor while the speculative/inflationary aspects of the economy were heavily reduced. Credit tied to specific national priorities and great projects ensured that the money circulation and state bonds were tied to real value instead of volatile speculation.

[17] You can read part of the statement of Chai Ling from this interview here: https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_chailing.htm

[18] Documentary “The Gate to Heavenly Peace” can be seen in full here:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/1Gtt2JxmQtg?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/o0lgc4fWkWI?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

[19] There is a slight difference in translation from the Columbia website included in footnote 15, which has also cut out lines that Chai Ling says in the interview with Cuningham shown in the documentary, however, both translations still showcase that Chai Ling views that only through bloodshed will the movement be successful.

[20] Chai Ling, A Heart for Freedom, 160.

[21] Renhua Wu, Major Events, Tiananmen 1989. Renhua Wu, 2011.

[22] The way I see the infamous Chai Ling interview was that she was set up to take the full brunt of responsibility if questions were raised about the responsibility of the lead student dissidents’ role in this. Chai Ling was the most public face in pushing the students to remain in the Square and be ready and willing to die. If any fallback occurred, it was ensured that Chai Ling would be thrown under the bus, which is what happened. Note that all the other lead student dissidents, such as Wu’er Kaixi and Wang Dan, have publicly claimed that they wanted to leave the Square to avoid a violent clash. That they remained “peaceful” in their intentions the entire time and distanced themselves from Chai Ling, despite the fact that they were directly involved in setting up the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters and supported the oath encouraging students to be ready to die. We also see in this paper, Feng Congde and Liu Xiaobo who were present in the Square until it was evacuated taking credit for arranging a peaceful evacuation of the students despite their actions to in fact work up a larger crowd in the Square days before the events of June 3-4, 1989. All of these players were working towards the same goal, a violent confrontation between the students and China’s military, however, all of them immediately stepped back and left Chai Ling front and center to be the sole person held responsible for this agenda and to suffer the ire of the people.

[23] The story of Hu Yaobang was discussed in detail in the Second Instalment of the Tiananmen series.

[24] “A Heart for Freedom” by Chai Ling, 2011, Tyndale House, page 165.

[25] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516

[26] There was a large group of foreign (mostly US) journalists reporting “live from the Beijing hotel” and describing the view through their windows of all the gunfire, the deaths, the piles of student bodies. Unfortunately, and as other foreign reporters pointed out later, Tiananmen Square cannot be seen from the Beijing Hotel.

Those live reports were fabricated by journalists who apparently believed something was happening, lacked the courage to go and see for themselves, and who told their editors the most likely events according to their convictions and imaginations.

[27] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/index.html

[28] https://fridayeveryday.com/new-docs-reveal-what-really-happened-in-beijing-1989/

[29] Prior to June 3, the military operation lacked riot control experience and operated under directives from Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice-Chairman Yang Shangkun that explicitly prohibited troops from using deadly force, even if their lives were threatened by crowds. However, after multiple failed non-lethal attempts to enter the city due to massive civilian blockades, top authorities pivoted to a hardline stance. Around 2:50 p.m. on June 3, CMC Chairman Deng Xiaoping informed military leadership that troops were authorized to use “all possible methods” to meet their objectives, effectively sanctioning the use of deadly force.

[30] The documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace contains a great deal of footage showcasing this.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/1Gtt2JxmQtg?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/o0lgc4fWkWI?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

[31] Again, refer to the above documentary for this material.

[32] Gregory Clark’s report on Tiananmen in 1989 is well worth reading https://gregoryclark.net/thejapantimes/jt2007/the-tianamen-square-massacre-myth-expanded-version/

[33] You can read a comparison of the two texts, the British and Australian Embassy reports here under the subsection “Where had the information in the first cable come from?” : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-03/bob-hawke-tiananman-classified-cable/100184916

[34] Ibid

[35] You can read a comparison of the two texts, the British and Australian Embassy reports here under the subsection “Where had the information in the first cable come from?” : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-03/bob-hawke-tiananman-classified-cable/100184916

[36] https://web.archive.org/web/20261011041530/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-03/bob-hawke-tiananman-classified-cable/100184916

[37] The documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace.

[38] https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2003/0512/504/f106.pdf

[39] https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2003/0512/504/f106.pdf

[40] For more on this story refer to my paper here: https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-real-global-agenda-pushing-for?utm_source=publication-search

[41] Recall from the First Part to this broader series the involvement of opium banks in today’s economic war with China: https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-true-origins-of-chinas-social?utm_source=publication-search

[42] https://chinachange.org/2017/10/25/twenty-eight-years-after-an-interview-with-wang-dan/

[43] Renhua Wu, Major Events, Tiananmen 1989. Renhua Wu, 2011.

[44] For more on the NED as a branch of the CIA see my writings here https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-enemy-within-a-story-of-the-purge-d2f?utm_source=publication-search and here https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-real-global-agenda-pushing-for?utm_source=publication-search and here https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/sleepwalking-into-fascism-why-cianatos?utm_source=publication-search and search the word “NED.”

[45] https://www.ned.org/national-endowment-for-democracy-deplores-chinese-government-treatment-of-liu-xiaobo/

[46] Interestingly, Sakharov has an uncanny mirror image career to that of Fang Lizhi who was also a physicist that was involved in the atomic bomb program along with activism for “western democracy.” Wikipedia writes: Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet physicist and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world.

Although he spent his career in physics in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, overseeing the development of thermonuclear weapons, Sakharov also did fundamental work in understanding particle physics, magnetism, and physical cosmology. Sakharov is mostly known for his political activism for individual freedom, human rights, civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union, for which he was deemed a dissident and faced persecution from the Soviet establishment. Recall from this series that Russia was also pressured to adopt shock therapy, that was eventually brought into Russia via Gorbachev as Perestroika. China on the other hand was resisting the adoption of shock therapy.

[47] https://www.ned.org/protecting-at-risk-democracy-activists-ned-approach/

[48] In a famous October 1989 speech at Brandeis University Wu’er Kaixi provided a famous, nuanced breakdown of his generation’s influences. He explained to Western academics that while Fang Lizhi’s writings provided the necessary intellectual foundation and vocabulary for democracy, cultural figures like rock icon Cui Jian provided the raw emotional energy that actually pushed students into the streets. This firsthand testimony confirmed that Fang was viewed as the movement’s primary academic architect.

[49] https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/authors/wuer-kaixi/

[50] I suggest people watch Brian Berletic’s work on this from The New Atlas, where he has made numerous videos on the role of the NED in this, including this useful video here:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Qt9G0p0dqYU?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

[51] Letter from Liu Xiaobo to Liao Yiwu. Human Rights in China. Archived from the original on 20 October 2017. Retrieved 13 July 2017

[52] https://www.guernicamag.com/wuer_kaixi_a_prize_for_all_chi/

[53] Details are contained in the National Endowment for Democracy annual reports, 1984 to 1989. The magazine was originally aimed at PRC students outside China, but by 1988 was reported in an NED document as having “developed a significant circulation and distribution network in China”.

[54] Weber, pg. 257

[55] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3226395/yan-mingfu-chinese-communist-party-negotiator-tiananmen-square-protesters-1989-dies-aged-92

[56] 朱, 剑红 (24 August 1989). “野笔——吴国光印象”. 《中国青年》

[57] Toy, Mary-Anne (31 March 2006). “Who is Wen Jiabao?”. The Age.

[58] https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/stephen-gong-caam-retirement-19954974.php

[59] https://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/asian-american-studies-collection/loni-ding-archives

[60] http://tsquare.tv/film/transcript_open.php

[61] https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/03/nyregion/detour-journey-democracy-survivor-beijing-massacre-arms-himself-with-economics.html

[62] Li, Lu (1990). Moving the Mountain. London: Macmillan. pp. 200–201.

[63] “A Heart for Freedom” by Chai Ling, 2011, Tyndale House, page 165.

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