A Gentler China: A special report; 4 Years after Tiananmen, The Hard Line Is Cracking
By : Khadija Mukhtar
Published: June 3, 1994

BEIJING, May 29— nearly four years have passed since the Communist hard-liners sent tanks to Tiananmen Square, filling the morgues with the broken bodies of young fighters for democracy and casting a repressive nightfall across the country. Now a dawn of sorts has gradually broken across China. While thousands of "counterrevolutionaries" remain behind bars, often subject to beatings and humiliation, on the whole the repression seems to be easing. China is in some respects putting the hard-line era behind it and returning to the way it was before the Tiananmen crackdown. In Hiding for Years

One young scholar wanted by the police for his role in the democracy movement spent several years in hiding, trying desperately to flee the country. Last year he decided that escape was impossible, so he returned to Beijing and sorrowfully turned himself in to the police. "Frankly," a police official told him dismissively, before sending him home again, "we don't want you anymore." Fear has diminished, though certainly not vanished. Cultural restrictions have relaxed, allowing newspapers and magazines to write about issues like pollution and homosexuality. Thousands of political prisoners arrested after Tiananmen have been released, and most are allowed to leave China. Political study classes are out, and talk radio is in.
One human face of these changes is Wang Dan, the slight, earnest 24-year-old who was the leader of the Tiananmen student movement. Captured a month after the crackdown as he tried to flee the country, Mr. Wang was released from prison in February and today seems not at all intimidated by the experience. 'A Contradiction' Mr. Wang now sports a beeper and hopes to get a cellular telephone this summer, apparently through the largesse of friends. Instead of giving him the cold shoulder when he was released, as used to be the case with political prisoners, Mr. Wang's friends have treated him as a hero. "The economy is looser than it was back in 1989, but politics are still tightly controlled," Mr. Wang said, as he compared life today with life before the crackdown. "That's a contradiction: a liberalized economy and a rigid political system. It's a recipe for upheavals." As Mr. Wang suggests, political life -- though easing -- remains more tightly regulated than it was back in the giddy spring of 1989. The Day the Movement Ended
That was when millions of Chinese took to the streets to protest corruption and inflation and to demand a more democratic system. The movement ended on June 4, 1989, when Chinese Army troops turned their machine guns on the protesters in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds and wounding thousands. These days, for all the dilution of cultural and social controls, China can still be a pretty awful place for those who challenge the Communist Party. Thousands of Chinese remain in prison solely because of their peaceful expression of political or religious beliefs. Prisoners Torture Continues But Word Gets Out
Wei Jing sheng, one of the most eloquent essayists on democracy that China has ever produced, is in the final year of his 15-year prison sentence. Chen Lantos, a 30-year-old marine biologist, is serving an 18-year prison sentence for making a pro-democracy speech and blocking traffic during the Tiananmen movement.

A 31-year-old physicist named Liu Gang, serving a six-year sentence for joining in the pro-democracy movement, recently smuggled a letter out of prison. In it, he wrote that each time he has told visiting family members about being mistreated, he has been punished with further beatings. According to the letter and an account from a family member published by human rights groups, the torture has already left Mr. Liu with a prolapsed anus, psoriasis and swellings all over his face. His hair reportedly is turning white.
"This is the dictatorship of the proletariat, the meat grinder," a prison commander, Wang Shijun, told Mr. Liu during one of the torture sessions, according to the smuggled letter. "If you refuse to bow your head, we'll grind you slowly to death." In China, beatings and even killings of dissidents are nothing new. In one sense, the news is not that people like Mr. Liu are being mistreated, but that the word is getting out. Less Chance of Intimidation
What has changed is that China is becoming an increasingly porous society. The Communist Party appears to be losing its ability to either inspire or terrify people into submission.