A secret document written by a top Chinese Communist Party official jailed during the Tiananmen Square uprising reinforces accounts of intense disputes at the highest levels of the party at the time of the student-led protests, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The newspaper said it obtained the document -- written by Bao Tong (
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians were killed in what has become known as the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Bao had been chief of staff and senior political adviser to the moderate Communist Party chief, Zhao Ziyang (
"In my heart, I believed we made a terribly wrong move," Bao wrote of the decision to send in the military, according to the Post. In an account he provided to a party investigation on Sept. 25, 1989 while in custody, Bao said, "I was afraid that we would be trapped in a very difficult situation."
Bao was made a scapegoat for Zhao and spent the next several years in jail and under house arrest.
The Post said the Bao document appeared to buttress the veracity of The Tiananmen Papers published in January. They contain minutes of phone calls, meetings and conversations among China's top leaders in the weeks leading up to the crackdown. China's government denounced the Papers as fakes.
In his account of events, Bao criticized a controversial April 26 editorial in the People's Daily, the Communist Party's newspaper, that condemned the protests, angered students and, according to many people, prolonged the demonstrations.
The editorial, Bao wrote, "was harsh in language and lacked analysis and persuasiveness. I had my reservations about it."
Bao also said that in an effort to defuse the situation, he met with law experts to discuss the legality of the protests and facilitate a dialogue with the student groups.
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