Days of Joy and Anguish in China

December 1989

By Paul Szto

NEW YORK—The dates of October 1 and May 4 are important for China. They are also important for me. I was born on October 1, 1924 in a small village in the south of China not far from Hong Kong where my family moved when I was very young. Twenty-five years later, on October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded.

On May 4, 1919, five years before I was born, a major student movement stirred China with a demonstration at the Tiananmen calling for the modernization of the country through science and democracy. It changed the course of Chinese history. Seventy years later, leading up to May 4th this year, expectations were running high that something new would happen during the celebration of the May 4th movement.

That is one of the reasons why I decided to return to China during April and May this year for my sixth visit since 1980. What a surprise I had! What joy, what anguish.

When I was a child in Hong Kong, I attended Christian schools, by the grace of God, up through high school. During those years, however, I did not come to know the Lord Jesus Christ personally. During my last year of high school, in the fall of 1941, the Japanese invaded Hong Kong right after Pearl Harbor. I returned quickly to my hometown in China without finishing high school. Then in 1942, 1 had the opportunity to begin study in one of the best colleges in China. From a Christian student group there, and from reading the Bible, I came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

After graduating from college in 1946, 1 became active in the Christian student movement and visited colleges in many parts of the country. As a result of that work, I was able to attend a World Conference of Christian Youth in Oslo in 1947 followed by a brief time of study at Oxford and Cambridge.

I then decided to go to the United States to obtain a thorough theological education in order to prepare for work with college students back in China. But before I could finish my studies, the Chinese Communists took over the mainland and on my 25th birthday established the People's Republic of China. So in 1949, I was among 5,000 Chinese students stranded in the U.S., and my work for the next four decades focused on them.

Forty years later, following this year's June 4 massacre in Peking, about 50,000 Chinese students became stranded in the U.S. I feel very close to them and understand their perplexity about the future. It reminds me so much of what I experienced back in 1949.

What happened?

On April 15 this year, Hu Yaobang died. Hu had been ousted from his position as leader of the Communist Party in 1987 because his political liberalization efforts seemed to threaten the system. Chinese students who sensed Hu's sympathy with them began somewhat spontaneously to arrive in Tiananmen Square to mourn his death and to use the occasion to call for more freedom of thought and speech.

This kind of demonstration was not new; many had occurred in recent years. Back in 1976, for example, students came to Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of the highly regarded leader Zhou Enlai. In 1986 a major pro-democracy movement among students spread to many large cities and to all the major universities.

But this year the movement kept growing so that by April 22, over 200,000 students had arrived, defying a ban against their demonstration. The tension mounted. Deng Xiaoping, still the dominant political leader behind the scenes, was caught in a bind. Back in 1976, when Deng was prime minister, he was held responsible for the major student demonstration in Tiananmen Square. As a result he was ousted and did not regain power until after Mao Zedong's death. Now, he and other more conservative leaders feared the student movement and decided to suppress it.

The students, however, kept coming. The growing demonstration inspired campaigns in other cities. They would not stop. Mikhail Gorbachev, already scheduled to visit, arrived on May 15, attracting more and more foreign media. During his visit, the Soviet leader probably gave more encouragement to the students than to the government. The confrontation escalated.

The governing leaders began to call in the army from other parts of China. The students began hunger strikes. The demonstration grew in size, attracting support from circles beyond the university students. The whole world watched on TV. On May 20, the government declared martial law. Then the students built their statue of liberty.

Suddenly, on the first weekend in June the troops entered the Square in force. The June 4 massacre is now history.

Of all the things one might say about the events surrounding Tiananmen Square in 1989, I want to stress one thing in particular. Seventy years ago when the May 4th movement arose, very few Christians paid attention to what the students did. But this time, Christians throughout the world, and perhaps especially in North America, gathered together to pray for China and to seek to discern the will of God in all of this. That gives me hope.

[These remarks have been excerpted from a longer paper produced from an interview with Paul Szto taped by his daughter Mary who is an attorney in New York City.]