In 1976, Mao Zedong died, and with him drew to a close an era of great upheaval that shook Chinese society from top to bottom. As the flames of the Cultural Revolution faded, a new China began to emerge with new hopes for the future and the far more moderate Deng Xiaoping set about turning over a new page in the country’s history. Deng ushered in a far more open China that would loosen the many shakels of the state allowing investment and businesses to open - and with new economic ideas, came new political ones.
When we consider the Chinese Democracy Movement, most will likely look at the infamous 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, or the recent A4 protests. However, these have roots in those hopeful days of 1978 and the activists who envisioned a better future in the post-Mao era.
The Li Yi Zhe Manifesto
The Democracy Movement of 1978 and 1979 was a significant event in the early years of Deng’s China, but it came as a continuation of earlier events. It was November 1974, and the people of downtown Guangzhou were met with a remarkable site. Blazened along a street was a 20,000-character ‘Dazibao’ or Big Character Poster. That in of itself wasn’t anything new - such posters were commonplace throughout China. What surprised them though was its contents. “On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System” as it was rather unassumingly titled, attacked the very fabric of the CCP by denouncing the state as run by a ruling elite who controlled the means of production to the detriment of the workers. This was a shocking indictment of the system that had dominated Chinese lives for the last quarter of a century, and those responsible were supposed to be its most loyal.
A trio of former Red Guards named Li Zhengtian, Chen Yiyang, and Wang Xizhe were behind this stunning rebuke, and this wasn’t their first ‘rebellion’. Each of the three came from the ultra-left wing of the Red Guards, the strongest adherents to Marxism. They saw the future in self-administered collectives such as that of the 1871 Paris commune, and to them, the central state had become a new repressive class to be abolished as per Marxist doctrine and the realisation of genuine revolution. Despite remaining loyal to Mao, in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution’s ferocious beginnings, with these groups slipping out of control, they were swiftly crushed with arrests and imprisonment. Li was one of many caught in the crackdown, and only released in 1972 when he went on to work at the Guangzhou Fine Arts Institute.
His misgivings had however seemingly been undampened by his time behind bars because it was now he drafted his manifesto and circulated it among other former Red Guards to seek input. Li, along with Chen and Wang, in December 1973 sent a second draft of their now joint manifesto to the Guangdong Provincial Committee and the Centre in Beijing. It appears that despite events six years earlier, the group maintained faith in the Party listening to them. This was true of the Provincial Committee at least as they drew the attention of the Guangdong Party Head Zhao Ziyang and the Guangzhou Military Region Commander Xu Shiyou, who were both allies of then exiled Deng Xiaoping and themselves also moderates.
The Li Zi Zhe manifesto sought to address many of the injustices of 1967 which they primarily blamed Lin Biao who they denounced as leading the suppression of the Red Guards and so denying them the revolution they advocated. Even though Lin had since deceased, the trio wrote that the suppression campaign led by Lin was a rehearsal of social fascism and the construction of the ‘Lin Biao System’ of officials who had become the new privileged class who controlled the means of production, deriding them as ‘Capitalist Roaders’ - a common slur during the Cultural Revolution.
They demanded democracy, human rights, and a socialist legal system, although the first two demands were not strictly the same as those in the West. To the Li Zi Zhe group, this meant the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat and the overthrow of the perceived feudalism of the Lin Biao System. The manifesto still reflected the views of many radical 1967 Red Guards who wanted Communism taken to its utopian ideal, so it is curious as to why Zhao and Xu, both not radical leftists, would be interested in the manifesto - it all came down to CCP infighting.
Although they principally blamed Lin Biao, the denunciation of a Lin Biao System was seen as also attacking the central faction of the party, led by the Gang of Four; Jiang Qing (Mao’s fourth wife), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen. It was this sect of the Party that had ousted Deng and an attack on them was seen as beneficial by Zhao and Xu. Whilst Li Zi Zhe wanted to expose the repression campaign inflicted on them and be vindicated of their ‘crimes’, the allies of Deng saw it as an opportunity to manoeuvre against the opposing clique. Zhao appointed Li as an inspector of social problems in April 1974 who formed a group to investigate the events of 1967. This must have seemed like a great victory for the Li Zi Zhe group and their fellow radicals. This was their chance at redress and it had the backing of the leading cadres of the region.
Probably buoyed by this support, later in the year they created their Dazibao on the Guangzhou city street. Soon they attracted the attention of the Centre, and this would put an abrupt end to their cause. Vice Premier Li Xiannian, although not associated with the Gang of Four, denounced the group as ‘reactionary through and through … vicious and malicious to the extreme’. This must have spooked Zhao and Xu who immediately distanced themselves from the group sensing that the time wasn’t right to move against the Gang of Four. The three were abandoned to their fate when they were arrested and required to partake in struggle sessions, not being fully rehabilitated until February 1979.
The Tiananmen Incident of 1976
The Li Zi Zhe Manifesto may have been quashed for now, but it wasn’t too long before rumblings of dissent re-emerged. During the 1976 Qing Ming festival, during which the Chinese paid homage to their ancestors, increasing numbers of people gathered in Tiananmen Square to commemorate the greatly admired late Premier Zhou Enlai. Mourners laid wreaths around the Monument of People’s Heroes, put up posters, and wrote poems to show their thanks and admiration.
For many, Zhou was seen as a moderate hand who may have countered many of Mao’s most radical impulses. In admiring him, it didn’t take a great leap to include criticisms of those who opposed him with many of the posters and poems containing veiled attacks on the fanatical Gang of Four, and even Mao himself, albeit indirectly. Likely coming as a surprise to the party leadership, on the night of April 4th, the authorities moved in and removed the offending items. When the crowds reconvened the following morning, violent confrontations erupted against the police as they came to find the square emptied, with those arrested labelled counter-revolutionaries - a damning blow to anyone’s standing at the time.
Although brief, this incident became known as the April 5th Movement, in a nod to the 1919 May Fourth Movement, a defining moment in early republican China. A few days later on the 8th, the party newspaper Renmin Ribao declared:
Early April, a handful of class enemies under the guise of commemorating the late Premier Zhou Enlai during the Qing Ming Festival, engineered an organised, premeditated, and planned counter-revolutionary political incident.
The article continued to decry the movement as being conducted by ‘bad elements’ and ‘hooligans’, denouncing their attacks on the central leadership with their ‘decadent and reactionary language’. Interestingly, the newspaper highlighted that some of the writings contained criticisms of the feudal society of Qin Shihuang, in reference to the 1967 repression campaign, and included “What we want is genuine Marxism-Leninism…we fear not shedding our blood and laying down our lives'“.
This helps demonstrate that at least an element of the April 5th Movement had parallels with the ultra-left factions of the Red Guards and the demands of the Li Zi Zhe trio. Also, since these writings also attacked the Gang of Four, moderate factions had also likely taken part and this will not be the only time these seemingly distinct groups will come together. This event exposed an underlying trend amongst China’s youth that they had tired of the authoritarianism of the past and sought liberalisation, whether along Marxist-Leninist lines or by genuine democracy as recognised in the West. This was a paradigm shift in public discourse and would only be the opening salvo of the Democracy Movement.
The party leadership, still centred on the Gang of Four and Mao, saw the Tiananmen incident as the work of Deng Xiaoping and so removed him from all his posts, although he retained his party membership. Under the proposal of Mao, Hua Guofeng became the First Vice-Chairman and Premier of the State Council. Albeit still the centre of power, this hollow victory significantly weakened the gang’s grip on the party, as seen when it was members of the establishment left, natural allies of the Gang, were the ones to arrest them in October of that year. The arrested demonstrators were vindicated in 1978 when it was seen by the party that the primary aim of them was the Gang of Four, not Mao. But, it is worth noting that such vindication only took place once the balance of power within the party leadership had altered.
1978
In the two years since the 1976 Tiananmen Incident, the political landscape had altered remarkably. The notorious Gang of Four had fallen, the country saw a start to the post-Mao era, and with it an opportunity to rekindle the demands made by the recently vindicated demonstrators. Their writings were by in large freely circulated and in March some began to be seen posted on a wall at the Xidan Crossing in Beijing, in time becoming a major focal point of the Democracy Movement.
Although the major leaders of the old establishment left had been disposed of, for many the job was far from done, and posters at Xidan soon found a new target. This time it was the turn of Wu De, the Mayor of Beijing, for his role in the 1976 crackdown. Wu’s Gong An Ju security forces were denounced as a fascist force in a publication called China’s Youth - the official journal of the Communist Youth League - on September 20th, its first edition in 12 years. However, interestingly the article in addition called the Maoist cult a ‘religious superstition’ and that Mao Zedong Thought was ‘ideologically absurd’, showing that political discourse had dramatically shifted as such criticisms would have been unthinkable merely a few years prior, at least not without great risk to the authors.
The China Youth article was only the start because by October 11th events had escalated when Wu De was dismissed from his posts to be replaced by Lin Hujia who cleared the 1976 demonstrators and released hundreds of political prisoners. The released prisoners were met with great jubilation and hailed as heroes of the people. The Tiananmen Incident, at the time derided as being caused by bad elements and hooligans, was relabelled as a ‘revolutionary event’ and the change in fortunes for those involved was night and day. The worker playwright Zong Fuxian even wrote a play called When All Sounds Are Hushed, and the poems once seen as blasphemous by the Party, featured as a title page in Premier Hua Guofeng’s own calligraphy.
Evidently, opening the floodgates was endorsed by the party leadership who may have seen it as a way to not only appease the masses but to also wash away the infamous legacy of the Gang of Four. An example of the leadership’s willingness to allow this dissent can be demonstrated when Wang Dongxing - the Director of the Central Committee’s General Office - attempted to stop the China Youth article but was overridden by Deng Xiaoping who was once again back in the fold.
The release of the demonstrators coincided with a major expansion of the wall posters which now began to appear not only on the wall at Xidan - now known as the Democracy Wall - but at Wang Fujing Street and in Tiananmen Square itself. The ‘Beijing Spring’ was not only confined to the capital as similar poster walls appeared all over China and became seen to be the Second April Fifth Movement.
Not all posters though sung from the same hymn sheet and could be mostly categorised into three distinct types. The first type criticised Mao and other major players in the Cultural Revolution, seen as being responsible for the political persecution during that time, resulting in deep-rooted resentment. But this type of wall poster diminished when following the Third Plenary Session in December, some of the leaders disgraced in Mao’s purges were rehabilitated including Peng Zhen, Bo Yibo, and Yang Shangkun, with Peng Dehuai and Tao Zhu posthumously. And when Deng publically defended Mao, this type all but disappeared. However, the movement would become split over the legacy of Mao.
The second type of poster aired the grievances of the numerous victims of the Cultural Revolution and its ten years of persecution. One told the story of a father who reported his rebellious son to the authorities who subsequently arrested the son, brutally tortured, and ultimately executed him. Many others recounted incidences of starvation, especially in rural communities.
The third type though was the basis of the Democracy Movement in that they called for democratic reforms, a socialist legal system, and human rights in a repeat of the demands in 1976. This time, however, they often went further in calling for the freedom to travel, modernisation of lifestyles, and the necessity to learn from other countries. For many years the CCP had gone to great lengths to insulate the masses from much of the outside world. So much so that in the 1980s when female hygiene products were first sold in the country, the government had to run an education campaign to teach young girls and women as to their proper use. Despite the self-imposed isolationism of the past, these types of posters sometimes referenced US President Carter’s human rights policy and similar democratic movements in the Soviet Union.
By the end of November, rallies were taking place in both Beijing and Shanghai. At one such rally, the American Journalist Robert Novak announced to the crowds in Tiananmen that Deng Xiaoping had declared the wall poster campaign a ‘good thing’, to the rapturous cheers of the thousands in attendance, with many of the young demonstrators remarking that they knew they could trust Vice Premier Deng.
Rumours began circulating that the wall poster campaign was leading to meetings among senior figures in the Party. However, any meetings that were taking place were merely in preparation for the long-planned Third Plenary Session scheduled to run between December 18th and 22nd - but it could be believed that events outside were likely discussed at some point, even if informally.
Already mentioned above, the Third Plenum resulted in the rehabilitation of significant figures, but it was also an important turning point in more ways than one. From the start, the party leadership was split into 3 factions; Deng’s reformists, Wang Dongxing’s old left, and Hua Guofeng’s centrists. The first faction wanted to re-establish the readjustment principles of 1962-65, so desperately needed following the disaster of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The reformist faction, not to be confused with the Reformists in the Democracy Movement as we will see later, saw the need for radical economic modernisation so that China could escape the stagnation of Mao’s Marxist-Leninist economics. Unsurprisingly, Wang’s old left bitterly opposed this suggestion on the premise that it would risk a cascade effect leading to the denunciation of the Cultural Revolution and Mao along with it. There was no knowing where it could end up, even the Party’s hold on power could be threatened. Hua’s centrists likely recognised the challenges the country faced, but feared the same as Wang and sided accordingly. Despite this resistance, Deng did in the end get his way, and the path was laid for reform.
Ironically, if Deng had been defeated, the outcry from the masses may have resulted in disturbances growing to endanger the party - the very fears of Wang and Hua. This alas though wasn’t to be the case, but the wall poster campaigns were certainly convenient for Deng to attack his opponents. Although his interests and that of the demonstrators temporarily aligned, Deng remained above all else dedicated to the Party and its position of power, he only saw the movement as a means to achieve his aims and any sympathy he held with the demonstrators wouldn’t last.
Underground Journals
In a country as restrictive as China when it comes to press freedom, an interesting aspect of the Democracy Movement during this time was the establishment of the Underground Journals. By the end of 1978, the movement had gotten organised and coalesced into several factions who began producing their own journals to espouse their views and in time these would overtake the wall posters as the main mouthpieces of the movement.
These journals were amateur publications, but those who wrote, edited, designed, and printed them did the best with what they had at hand. Often this meant that the journals were hand written and then mimeographed for distribution. Those involved also had full-time jobs, so the time-consuming process of making them had to be done entirely in their spare time. And not only was a lack of time a problem. The raw materials such as paper and ink were all controlled by the state and therefore difficult to obtain in significant quantities, and since these journals were far from being state-sanctioned the whole operation had to take place in secret.
Despite these difficulties, most journals managed to churn out between 200 and 500 copies of each edition - the exception being Masses Reference News which managed to print an astonishing 20,000 copies of their January 1979 edition. Formed between unemployed nuclear physicist Xia Xunjian, steelworker Xu Qing, machinist Yang Changguang, an ‘educated youth’ called Wang Shimin, and four others, it derived its name from a parallel internal government journal simply called Reference News. First published on December 23rd 1978, the bi-monthly journal was unlike many others in that it was only mildly critical of Mao. Being written for the ‘Reformist’ faction, it deplored what it called the radical ‘Abolitionists’, which they said were trying to achieve democracy overnight. The group behind Masses Reference News supported Deng and his Four Modernisations but called for lower-ranking cadres to be democratically elected. Despite being much more moderate than many others, this didn’t save founder Xia from being arrested on April 30th 1979.
Whether they printed a few hundred, or a few thousand, in Beijing one could buy a copy by the Democracy Wall on Sunday afternoons, which must have been quite a quaint sight. How many were actually read is more difficult to ascertain as most ended up being pasted onto the Democracy Wall itself for all to see, and those that were bought, frequently found themselves passed around privately with some painstakingly copied by the readers - not that intellectual property rights would have concerned their creators too much. Early editions were even distributed through the post and were not purely a feature of the movement in Beijing but sprang up in many other Chinese cities too. These feats of mass unauthorised printing became an increasing annoyance to the authorities which ended up pushing the journals further into the shadows.
The breadth of different publications came to reflect the broad demographic of the movement. Although most of those who took part were in their 20s and 30s, journals such as the Enlightenment Society were written by and for older demonstrators who had been Red Guards and had stronger Marxist-Leninist leanings. Whereas the April Fifth Forum and Beijing Spring were aimed at the younger members who had taken part in the 1976 demonstrations and often had more Western democratic views. These two main distinctions would become important later on, but for the time being, they were both part of a larger collective effort in calling for reform.
The Reformists and The Abolitionists
Regardless of which camp the demonstrators stood, they came from all backgrounds such as labourers, clerks, teachers, and some were even the children of high-ranking officials such as Wei Jinsheng whose father was the Deputy Director of the State Planning Commission. Not involved, however, was the intelligentsia who could have been expected to play a major role in the movement. The reason for this was that during the Maoist years, they were especially singled out for persecution over others, making them wary of the CCP and the prospect of angering them. In addition to this, Deng wanted their greater involvement within the function of the state seeing them as being necessary to implement his reforms. So, not wanting to jeopardise this opportunity they opted to stay away from the movement, even if many privately supported it.
Among those who did take part, however, they fell into two main factions. The Reformers wanted to reform the system rather than overthrow it. Committed to Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and by extension the CCP leadership, this group wished to deepen the revolution in an evolution of the 1974 Li Zi Zhe Manifesto. Unsurprisingly, many of the Reformists were former Red Guards. Xu Wenli, a leading member of the faction, stated:
The essence of the Democracy Movement in China is a call for putting the Marxist truth into practice in China.
The Abolitionists on the other hand were far more radical in their demands. Although they too stemmed in part from the Li Zi Zhe Manifesto, they saw the ‘privileged class’ as having been created by the revolution going too far rather than not far enough, even though their ranks included former Red Guards too. Instead, they saw the future in reversing the revolution and establishing a multi-party democracy like seen in the US or Western Europe. Wei Jinsheng, mentioned earlier, was a leading Abolitionist figure who came to write an article that would become a major cornerstone of the Abolitionists. In it, Wei called for a ‘Fifth Modernisation’ on top of the official four. Writing that a socialist state based on Marxist principles does not protect the human rights of the individual and that the system is built on the party’s monolithic leadership leading to a true Marxist dictatorship where the Maoist type rule is to be refuted. The article included:
Whoever opposes and hinders the attainment of this goal … is a traitor to history. And whoever suppresses this genuine popular movement is a murderer in the true sense.
Wei must have known that this political bombshell would alienate the Reformists, who saw the Abolitionists as radicals and would cause Wei considerable personal risk. Despite his incendiary language, Wei still held Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping in high regard which he saw as having seen off the movement’s arch nemesis; the Gang of Four. He denounced the system and its supporters but suggested that the Chinese people were deceived into following the Maoist road - who he described as a self-exalting autocrat - because they were offered false promises and had no choice anyway less they experience Mao’s repression.
Rural Grievances
Among the many thousands taking part in the movement, not all came from the cities. A significant proportion were what are called the ‘Sent Down Youth’ which are otherwise educated youths that during the Cultural Revolution were sent to hard labour in the countryside. Being forced to work on farms or rural construction projects, these youth would have otherwise likely done quite well for themselves if it weren’t for this forced exile.
In 1978, the official press stressed the need to redress all wrongs, which must have struck a chord with these exiled youth who having a large stock of wrongs to redress, flocked to Beijing after they fell on deaf ears locally. There were thousands of harrowing examples of mis-justices over the years, but it was what happened to Fu Yuehua which would have the greatest significance. Raped by the party secretary of her work unit in 1975, her grievance wasn’t actually all that unremarkable compared to others. But what did cause outrage in the Democracy Movement was that she was arrested by the Public Security Bureau after leading a procession of thousands through Beijing on National Day in January 1979 to protest their conditions. The movement published her arrest on the Democracy Wall and began to investigate, demanding her release but despite the efforts of the movement, she wasn’t released and subsequently disappeared.
The Sent Down Youth were not directly connected to the Democracy Movement, but the affinity clearly shown between the two groups in the Fu case demonstrated the potential popular appeal of the movement. These youths numbered in the millions, and if any organised mass mobilisation formed within them, it could easily develop into a existential threat to the CCP. The thousands that did mobilise had already caused headaches for the authorities. Because their migration to the cities was not official, under the restrictive Hukou System, the youths could not receive their food rations and so turned to any means they could to survive, sometimes illegal. Many though protested their situation and in Shanghai, thousands besieged the party headquarters for several hours and disrupted rail traffic in and out of the city. It was this incident that sparked the beginning of the end, although the demonstrators didn’t know it yet.
The Crackdown
By February 1979, the same month as the Shanghai incident, the movement was at its zenith and those involved must have felt unstoppable, that history was on their side. But, behind the scenes, the first signs of the crackdown were emerging. The authorities, growing weary of the movement and no doubt unnerved by the wording of the Abolitionists in particular, began formulating a plan to restore business as usual. Although Deng had signalled his approval of the movement in late 1978, by the time of the events in Shanghai, it had grown beyond what the party leadership considered acceptable. On March 6th, the Shanghai authorities had, with the support of the centre, outlawed all demonstrations that disturbed public order - a convenient way of shutting down any demonstration regardless of how ‘disturbing’ it was.
Deng’s reforms may have opened the floodgates of the more politically liberal Chinese, having been repressed for so long under Mao, he still maintained that China must remain under the leadership of the Party and opposed any calls that could threaten its hold on power. On March 16th, Deng declared to high-ranking cadres that the movement had gone too far and was no longer in the interest of stability, unity, and the Four Modernisations. Therefore, in future, only discussions that upheld the Four Principles of the Party would be permitted, which stipulated that the leadership of the CCP must remain and adherence to Marxism-Leninism.
All banners, posters, and journals that did not follow the Four Principles were effectively banned and subsequently quashed the Abolitionist movement. Wei Jinsheng, the architect of the Fifth Modernisation, responded with a new article on March 25th scathing of Deng stating that he had metamorphosised into a dictator and that ‘he was no longer worthy of the people’s trust and support’. Four days later, Wei was arrested, and over the following few days, so were other prominent figures in the Abolitionist movement such as Chen Lu and Ren Wending. Wei was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment with a further 3 years without any civil rights. Evidently, such a harsh sentence was intended to send a message. The Abolitionists were denounced in Red Flag when it declared that human rights was a ‘bourgeois idea’, and the People’s Daily tried to cover its previous stance on the movement by stating that it was revolutionary because it followed the Four Principles - likely aimed at the Reformist faction. Wei’s fate shocked the movement on all sides, but by August the movement had gathered steam again, assembling some thousand demonstrators at the Democracy Wall to call for a public trial of those arrested in March and copies of Wei’s trial speech were circulated before being stopped by police. The Abolitionist movement showed signs of life too when a new edition of the faction’s Exploration journal was printed in September.
The Abolitionists may have been primarily targeted in March, but in November it appears the party had grown tired of the whole affair. At a meeting of the Standing Committee, the Democracy Wall was decried as being used by a small number of bad people to incite unrest and undermine stability and unity. They concluded that the wall had outstayed its welcome and was to be torn down. A decree on December 8th stipulated that all activities at the Democracy Wall were prohibited and that anyone wanting to put up a poster must do so at the Moon Alter Park in Yuetan, only during designated hours and only after notifying the park office of their name, address, and work unit. The CCP had sought to gain control over the movement, however, this had all but killed it off, and now anyone who did post there faced the possibility of scrutiny.
The final nail in the coffin came in early 1980 when on January 16th Deng at a conference denounced dissidents such as Wei as having gone awry and in need of educating and saving. And by April, the movement was officially crushed once and for all. Article 45 was revised at the 14th Session of the Standing Committee of the 5th NPC when it abolished the Four Greats; speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates, and writing posters. On April 15th, Renmin Ribao attacked the whole Democracy Movement pushing what was left of it underground.
Deng supported the movement in 1978 because it suited his aims within the party. But once he had beaten his opponents in the central leadership, the movement had served its purpose and once it had developed outside of his control, he moved to crush it. Deng then seems to have employed similar tactics as his allies did with the Li Zi Zhe trio in that they were useful in attacking the establishment left, but once they no longer aided them, they abandoned them to their fate. The 1978-79 Democracy Movement therefore, like many other incidents of dissent before it, reflected CCP infighting and whilst it held the support of a particular party faction it was allowed to perpetuate until it was no longer needed.
The Chinese Democracy Movement disappeared for the time being, but it would reappear again - most notably in 1989, but again in the recent A4 protests. The CCP is mighty, but one day the movement may achieve change. But as this article shows, it has deep roots going back to even China’s darkest years during the Cultural Revolution. And as China again appears to entering a new uncertain age, rumblings of dissent may reemerge with the new young cosmopolitan Chinese youth of today, who do not hold the same connections to the revolutionary beginnings their parents and grandparents had. The future of their country is in their hands, and whether that future includes the CCP only time will tell.
Thank you for reading. Apologies for the long delay in publishing, this was due to some personal circumstances. I hope you enjoyed this article, and any likes, comments, and subscriptions will be warmly appreciated.
This article was based on research from Brodsgaard, K. E. (1981). The Democracy Movement in China, 1978-1979: Opposition Movements, Wall Poster Campaigns, and Underground Journals. Asian Survey, 21(7), 747–774. https://doi.org/10.2307/2643619