Three Lives, Then and Now

For thousands of Chinese citizens, the massacre in Tiananmen Square marked a personal turning point, irrevocably changing their lives and forcing them to make choices they had never had to contemplate. That was true for student leaders like Wuer Kaixi, who headed Beijing's banned independent union of students. It was also true for intellectuals like Zhou Duo, who spent more than ten months in jail before being released three weeks ago, and for officials like Xu Jiatun, who supported conciliation with the protesters and mysteriously turned up in California this month for an extended stay in the U.S. Their stories:

THE STUDENT

With his handsome face and suave demeanor, Wuer Kaixi was the obvious choice as poster boy of the overseas democracy movement after he escaped from the mainland nearly a year ago. Since then, however, the young dissident has lost some of his hero's aura, and his rumored peccadilloes -- spending dissident funds on a lavish lobster dinner, faking illness during press conferences to avoid tough questions, and hyperinflating the number of students killed last year -- have been well chronicled in the press. But he is the wiser for it. "It was hard, but that's what press freedom is all about," Wuer, 22, said cheerfully last week in Paris, where he lives. "No one gets away with anything."

Though Wuer enrolled at Harvard last fall, he dropped out in February, in part to focus full time on his role as vice president of the Paris-based Federation for Democracy in China. He had hoped to join the Goddess of Democracy and take part in broadcasting pro-democracy messages into China from nearby international waters. But fearing for Wuer's safety, the project's organizers balked, and now that the ship has been sequestered by anxious authorities in Taiwan, they plan to sell it off.

Wuer remains resolutely optimistic about his country's future. "Events in Europe and in the Soviet Union have proved that when the people are determined, the government must give in," he says. But he recognizes that in the short run, the outlook is bleak. Recently, Wuer received unconfirmed reports that his father, a Communist Party member, had been placed under house arrest in Beijing.

THE INTELLECTUAL

When sociologist Zhou Duo heard that the tanks were rumbling toward Tiananmen Square, where he had been on a hunger strike to show solidarity with the students, his first thought was to wave a white flag. But he dismissed the idea as ignoble. Instead, Zhou, 43, and popular singer Hou Dejian approached the oncoming soldiers and negotiated an agreement that allowed the demonstrators to withdraw peacefully.

Three days later, Zhou went into hiding after he learned that the innovative Stone Corp., the computer firm he had worked for as a policy planner, had become the target of a witch-hunt. Its president, Wan Runnan, now a leading dissident in exile in Paris, had been close to then party chief Zhao Ziyang and an ardent supporter of the students.

Zhou made his way to the coastal city of Yantai, where he stayed at a Stone guesthouse for three weeks before police caught him. He was detained in a hostel in the Beijing area, where, except for a three-day period of solitary confinement, he was treated relatively well. Zhou was never formally charged or tried. In December he was told he would be released shortly, but it was another five months before he, along with 210 others, gained his freedom.

For Zhou, who is jobless, there are no more thoughts, however fleeting, of white flags. Asserting that he will continue to speak out against China's leaders, he says, "I plan to walk on two legs. One is to find a job. The other, when the moment is opportune, is to kick their butts."

THE OFFICIAL

Everyone insists that Xu Jiatun has not defected. Beijing says so. Washington says so. And Xu himself says so through intermediaries. But it is clear that Xu had more on his mind than the inviting sands of Malibu when he and three relatives flew from Hong Kong to California four weeks ago. It isn't every day, after all, that a member of the Communist Party's Central Advisory Commission takes off for the hotbed of bourgeois liberalism without permission.

As the head of the Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong from 1983 until last February, Xu was Beijing's de facto ambassador to the British colony, which is to revert to Chinese rule in 1997. Though the 74-year-old Xu's Old Guard credentials are impeccable -- he was among China's early revolutionaries -- he advocated free-market reforms and was a close ally of Zhao Ziyang's. Last year, when the demonstrations in Beijing sparked sympathy protests in Hong Kong, Xu shook hands with some of the hunger strikers who gathered outside his office building.

Xu, who is reportedly living in Southern California, has said through third parties that he is in the U.S. to vacation and conduct "a broad survey of American society." So far, he has visited the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. His friend Lu Keng, a Hong Kong journalist, says this "research" will keep Xu in America "for quite some time." Says Lu: "My feeling is that he won't go back to China until Li Peng is no longer in power. He may want to avoid retaliation." Xu's old associates in Beijing may be cursing him, but Lu says the former envoy is "happy and laughing a lot."