7:30 pm HKT Oct 22, 2014
People take photos during a vigil held to mark the 24th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square, in front of a backdrop of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City (back), in Hong Kong, on June 4, 2013. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
One of the two activists identified as the “black hands” behind China’s 1989 democracy protests died of cancer on Tuesday, in a reminder of how little the Communist Party has budged in its tolerance of political dissent over the past quarter century.
Chen Ziming, 62 years old, died from pancreatic cancer Tuesday afternoon in Beijing, according to close friends.
“Famous Chinese dissident, so-called June 4th black hand and my mentor Chen Ziming finally succumbed to cancer,” Wang Dan, one of the leaders of the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, wrote on his Facebook page. “His death is a massive loss for the Chinese opposition movement, and for the country.”
Mr. Chen and fellow activist Wang Juntao were accused by the government of being the masterminds behind the 1989 protests. In 1991, both were sentenced to 13 years in prison, in a trial authorities used to bolster the official line that the protests had been the work of a handful of conspirators rather than a movement with mass appeal.
A biochemist by training, Mr. Chen was already an established political figure by the time of the Tiananmen Square protests. He helped run Beijing Spring, a short-lived but celebrated pro-reform journal shuttered following the 1979 Democracy Wall movement, and was the manager of Economic Weekly, an influential magazine that had received a stamp of approval from Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang in early 1989.
In 1986, along with Mr. Wang, he also co-founded the Beijing Social and Economic Sciences Research Institute, a think tank that advocated political and economic reform.
“He was incredibly influential, in the academic world as well as in government and public circles,” said Chen Min, a liberal writer and political commentator better known by his penname, Xiao Shu.
It was that influence and organizational ability that led to Mr. Chen’s harsh treatment in the aftermath of the deadly June 4, 1989, crackdown in Beijing. Historian Merle Goldman told The Wall Street Journal at the time of their trial that Messrs. Chen and Wang were “a real pair of political operators” who represented “a new revolutionary class in China.” Elsewhere, Ms. Goldman described the two as examples of a “new type of intellectual activist” that the party found particularly frightening.
That same dynamic has played out in China in the two decades since: While the Communist Party is occasionally willing to tolerate outspoken critics, it has been aggressive in going after those who perceived as setting up rival political organizations. That includes members of New Citizens Movement, a moderate civic group that has recently been decimated by detentions and arrests.
Mr. Chen, who had suffered from heart and liver problems, was released from prison on medical parole in 1994. At the time, the U.S. had been lobbying for his release and was debating whether or not to renew China’s Most-Favored Nation trading status.
Unlike many other prominent figures associated with the 1989 protests, Mr. Chen chose to stay in China after his release, despite being diagnosed with cancer after leaving prison. He was thrown back in prison in 1995 after staging a 24-hour hunger strike to mark the anniversary of the June 4 crackdown, and was released again the next year, just ahead of a visit to Beijing by then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
Mr. Wang, who was also released on medical parole in 1994, left to live in exile the U.S.
“When you leave your homeland, you have only a limited understanding of what’s happening there, you lose a sense of place,” said Chen Min, who became friends with Chen Ziming after he was released from prison (the two are not related). “I can understand why he stayed.”
Authorities allowed Chen Ziming to continue much of his work after his release from prison. In 2007, he was granted permission to travel to Hong Kong to research political reform. He also frequently wrote and spoke to foreign media about Chinese politics.
