NEW YORK - Beijing leaders, upset by a recent book on the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, may be lashing out by detaining U.S. residents and citizens of Chinese ancestry, a U.S. academic said on Monday.
A number of Chinese-born academics have been detained in China on spy charges, and Beijing may have ordered its secret police to take some of them into custody because of suspected links to "The Tiananmen Papers," a collection of documents purporting to reveal the internal debates that led to Beijing's 1989 crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, the scholar said.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed civilians were killed when top Chinese leaders sent in troops and tanks to end weeks of pro-democracy protests on June 4, 1989.
"I could imagine a situation in which the leaders in Beijing think there is a connection" between some of the detained researchers' activities and the book's appearance, Boston University Sinologist Merle Goldman told Reuters.
Goldman said China's security apparatus had been shaken over the past few years by such issues as continuing protests by the Falun Gong spiritual sect and the publication in January of the English-language edition of "The Tiananmen Papers."
ALSO AVAILABLE IN CHINESE
A much longer Chinese version of the book came out in New York this month under the title "June Fourth: The True Story." Beijing has called the collection of supposed official reports and minutes of top leaders' meetings "a fabrication."
"There is certainly a greater sense of vulnerability on the State Security Ministry, and I think they are flaying out to make sure that nothing embarrassing will happen that will get them into trouble," Goldman said.
Last week China confirmed that it was investigating a U.S. citizen of Chinese origin suspected of espionage, and a human rights group in Hong Kong said his detention was linked to "The Tiananmen Papers."
Wu Jianmin was detained on April 8 in the southern city of Shenzhen and has been held in nearby Guangzhou on suspicion of spying for Taiwan, the State Department said. The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said Wu had been arrested on suspicion of passing Tiananmen-related papers.
Another U.S. citizen being detained in China is Li Shaomin, who was teaching business at the City University of Hong Kong and was picked up on Feb. 25 in Shenzhen.
Also being held are two Chinese with U.S. residence permits: Gao Zhan, a sociology researcher who has written on women's issues and who was teaching at American University in Washington, and Qin Guangguang, who works for a U.S. medical group. Qin was detained in Beijing in December 2000 on suspicion of leaking state secrets.
ACTIVIST SEES NO DIRECT LINK
The executive director of the international group Human Rights in China, Xiao Qiang, said he did not see any direct link between the detention of the four and "The Tiananmen Papers." But he said the book's publication had caused Beijing to tighten the screws on academics of Chinese ancestry studying the workings of government or Taiwan-related issues.
"The direct link is speculation. The timing is not a coincidence," Xiao told Reuters. He said the book had aroused and enraged Beijing leaders.
"The amount of publicity from the book deeply embarrassed the Chinese leadership and increased the pressure on the security planners to step up their vigilance," he said.
One of the editors of the English-language edition, Princeton University professor Perry Link, declined to comment on any possible connection between individuals and the smuggling of Tiananmen documents out of China.
Link said top Beijing officials had stepped up punishments for Chinese accused of passing secrets to foreigners after the book came out and a recently revealed document by former top Communist Party official Bao Tong helped establish its validity.
The other editor, Andrew Nathan of Columbia University, said, "The publication of 'The Tiananmen Papers,' along with a bunch of other events, has contributed to a siege mentality in the state security bureau, and the security authorities have been ordered to clamp down and find perpetrators of all sorts."