by Weijian Shan
For days, the stalemate dragged on. The students continued to occupy the square, while troops called in to enforce martial law ringed the city center, although for some reason they seemed to be restrained from marching into the square. On television, we could see convoys of armored personnel carriers.
I was interviewed a couple of times about my take on the situation in Beijing. When journalists contacted me, I explained the economic reasons for the discontent. But I offered no prediction what would happen next. I was hoping for a speedy resolution and for some meaningful changes. The uncompromising position taken by the government disappointed me. As troops gathered outside Beijing, the big question in everyone’s mind was whether or not the troops would shoot their way into the city, and if there would be bloodshed.
On June 3, 1989, a television camera crew came to our home in Cherry Hill to interview me. They focused the shot on our front lawn. The TV reporter asked me a few questions about how to make sense of what was happening in Beijing, then he asked, “Do you think the troops will open fire on the protesters?”
I replied without hesitation, “No. It won’t happen.”
“Why are you so certain?” he asked.
“There are three reasons,” I began. “First, it isn’t necessary. It seems this is already at the tail end of the protests, and there are not many people left in Tiananmen Square. Second, it is unthinkable the troops will shoot ordinary citizens. Third . . . ”
At this point, someone handed a note to the reporter. He took a brief look at it and handed it to me while I was still on camera. It read: “The troops opened fire.”
I was completely shocked. I had not even finished my sentence before my prediction was shattered by reality. With this breaking news, the interview stopped and we all rushed inside to turn on the television. The coverage on the screen did not show troops, just people running in the streets, but gunshots could clearly be heard. I could not believe it had come to this. I felt so sad and angry.
The reporter wanted to get my reaction to the shootings in Beijing. I had just proved myself wrong with my prediction. Now I said, “I was giving you a rational analysis just now. What is happening there isn’t rational. I don’t know how to explain it.”
It was June 4, 1989, Beijing time. Throughout the day and into the night, we followed the events on television. We heard gunshots and people shouting; we saw images of the wounded or dead being rushed away, tanks being set on fire, soldiers holding their guns as they marched into Tiananmen Square, and students, hand in hand, being herded out by the advancing troops as fire burned around them. By the next morning, the television footage showed tanks rolling down the main street in front of Tiananmen.
In the wake of June 4, the global response was immediate. Western countries including the United States imposed sanctions on China, while leaders worldwide expressed their shock and outrage. What worried me most was that the tragic events in Beijing would set back China’s reforms, now that the staunch reformers such as Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang were gone. Zhao, who had succeeded Hu as the Party’s general secretary, was removed from his position and put under house arrest, because he was opposed to the crackdown. Where was China headed? Would it go back to the old system? I hoped fervently that would not be the case.
* * *
At Wharton, I founded an academic journal, China Economic Review (CER). I did so because of my interest in China and my association with the US-based Chinese Economists Society, even though CER was a sideline undertaking for me and the work didn’t earn me any credit with the university. I signed a contract with Herb Johnson of JAI Press, a well-known publishing house for academic works, and invited a number of well-known economists to be members of the editorial board, including my Wharton colleague the Nobel laureate Lawrence Klein; Gregory Chow of Princeton; Ezra Vogel and Dwight Perkins of Harvard; Nicholas Lardy and Kenneth Lieberthal of the University of Michigan; and Yang Xiaokai of Monash University in Australia.
I also invited Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, then at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He declined, but he sent a very nice letter wishing me success.
The first issue was published in the spring of 1989. I had invited all the members of the editorial board to submit papers for publication and received a gratifying response, particularly as such prominent academics would usually prefer to publish in established journals and not some unknown start-up. There was one problem. Dr. Chow had submitted an account of his experiences teaching economics and studying economic reforms in China. Chow is a renowned expert in the field of econometrics, and his firsthand involvement in China’s economic reforms and his interactions with the Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang made an interesting read. But this was a short memoir of his experiences, not a research paper. I wrote to him to explain that CER was an academic journal and therefore his paper was not suitable.
Dr. Chow did not like my decision. He suggested that I was legally obligated to publish his piece because I had invited his submission. I explained to him that I made clear in my invitation we would only accept academic papers, which his was not. I was concerned about setting a precedent with our inaugural issue, that we would only publish articles based on academic research. He requested that I send his paper for review anyway, as he was convinced independent referees would support him.
Indeed, I had declined to publish the paper before sending it around for peer review, as I thought it was obvious that it was not an academic piece; but his request was fair, and I had to oblige. Given Dr. Chow’s stature, I had to find some heavyweights in the field of economics to review his paper. I sent his paper to two Nobel laureates, Lawrence Klein and Milton Friedman. I left Dr. Chow’s name uncovered, explaining that while this generally violated the rules of peer review and because it was an account of his personal experiences, it would be fairly clear who the author was anyway.
Within a couple of weeks, I received letters from both of them. The decision was unanimous: Dr. Chow’s submission, while interesting, should not be published in CER because it was not a research paper. These were world-renowned economists, and I was sure they were very busy. I was gratified that both were willing to spend the time to help this young publication.
I covered up the reviewers’ names and sent their letters to Dr. Chow, informing him that both were economists of great standing. But I also came up with an idea. I suggested we publish his paper, not in the main body of the journal, but in a special section at the end of the issue titled “Reflections.” I thought it was a good solution that satisfied Dr. Chow and allowed me to keep the academic standards of the journal intact.
* * *
In March 1990, I went with a group of Wharton Executive MBA students to Spain and Germany as part of their foreign immersion program. The EMBA program was an intensive study course for experienced executives. I and the other faculty members were taking them to visit a few companies in Europe, to learn a bit about the European market and to understand how these companies were preparing for the European Union to become effective in 1992.
The program concluded in Munich and students went their separate ways. I joined three other Wharton faculty members for a trip to Berlin. The city’s famous wall separating East and West had fallen just four months earlier, in November 1989, and I was eager to see what the city looked like in the aftermath of such an historic event.
West Berlin, where we arrived on March 17, was like a different country from Munich. It was much more lively, colorful, crowded, and noisy. It felt like New York City at Christmas time. My colleague Skip Rosoff and I and another colleague, Isik Inselbag, walked for an hour and a half from our hotel to reach the Brandenburg Gate, the massive eighteenth-century monument that straddled East and West Berlin. On that bright day, many people were walking on the wide boulevard leading to Brandenburg, as there were almost no motor vehicles. Originally, the boulevard extended through the gate into East Berlin, but the Berlin Wall had cut it off. Just by the boulevard on the West Berlin side was an enormous memorial t
o the Soviet Red Army soldiers who had died in the war, presumably in the final conquest of Berlin. We could only look at the monument from a distance as it was ringed off and guarded by Russian soldiers.
We arrived at the Berlin Wall to find throngs of people, both in front of the wall and on the wall. The barrier at this section was made of two parallel walls, with a no-man’s-land in between. The Brandenburg Gate lay between these two walls, unreachable by either the East Berliners or the West Berliners, until the walls were breached. When we saw it, scaffolding covered the gate, which was obviously under much-needed repair. We learned that between 1961 and 1989, more than 4,000 people had been shot to death trying to scale the walls to flee East Berlin.
The decision by East Germany to lift its border control in November 1989 prompted thousands of East and West Germans to take hammers and pickaxes to the Berlin Wall in a joyous attempt to erase the barrier that divided them. But on the day of our visit much of the wall still stood. It was covered with colorful graffiti and defaced with chisel marks. Many people were busy chiseling at the wall from the side and on top. We climbed onto the wall ourselves and took pictures. On either side of the Brandenburg Gate, there were gaping holes in both the eastern and western walls so that people could cross through the holes. East German soldiers stood idly by without stopping anyone, so we decided to climb through the hole in the wall to visit East Berlin.
The East Berlin side was even more crowded and festive. The sky was blue and the sun was bright. It was warm spring weather even though it was still March. We were told the high temperature was rare at this time of the year. As we walked around, I was impressed with the grand buildings lining wide boulevards. Indeed, all the historic buildings were on the east side of Berlin. East Berlin’s government office buildings, in contrast, were similar to the Soviet-style ones in China. They were tall and heavy, appearing formidable and monolithic.
We came to an impressive-looking white stone building by a river. This was the Pergamon Museum, named after an ancient temple complex in what is now Turkey. It housed several gigantic ancient architectural structures, including the Ishtar Gate of Babylon and the towering Market Gate of Miletus, all of which had been taken from the Middle East and Turkey and reconstructed inside the museum.
The centerpiece of the museum and its namesake was the second-century BC Pergamon Altar, standing 35 meters (∼115 feet) wide and 33 meters (∼110 feet) deep. The massive marble structure had formed part of the acropolis of the ancient Greek city of Pergamon; its front stairway alone was almost 20 meters (∼66 feet) wide. On the side of the structure around the altar was a 113-meter-long (∼370 feet) frieze depicting the struggle of the gods and the giants. It was absolutely amazing to see such a large building inside a building. It was clear that all the antiquities were well preserved and the museum itself looked and felt modern and could rival the best in the West. It was quite a miracle it all had survived the intensive bombing and gunfire the city had sustained before the German surrender in 1945. For nearly 40 years it had been a hidden treasure, unseen by people outside East Germany.
The museum was located on an island in the Spree River, which was probably scenic at one time but was now badly polluted. Pollution, I understood, was a major problem in East Germany. Outside the museum, a crowd was busy exchanging money. The official exchange rate between East and West German marks was one to one. On the black market, however, a West German mark was worth as much as four and a half East German marks—even though in many places, such as the Pergamon Museum, the price was the same regardless of which mark you used. The three of us were Wharton professors, and we could not miss such a good arbitrage opportunity. We bought a bunch of East German marks at the black-market rate.
We had a good lunch in a nice restaurant. I was surprised by the quality of the food and particularly by the good service. Even though it was state-owned, the services in the restaurant were much better than what one would have found in state-owned restaurants in China. I didn’t know the reason for it and put it down to the fastidious German culture. We paid for our lunch with our new East German marks; it cost the three of us the equivalent of only about US$3. Prices in East Berlin were like those in pre-reform China.
Over lunch, we struck up a conversation with an East Berlin couple. We found them to be hopeful and optimistic about the future. They wished for reunification as soon as possible. Even though there was a big gap in the standard of living between the two sides of Berlin, people on both sides longed for reunification. I thought Berlin would become a world-class city after it became reunified. The couple also talked about the general resentment toward official corruption in East Germany, much of which was exposed only after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But listening to them, it seemed the officials of East Germany just had many privileges and better living conditions, not as outrageous as the corruption I heard about in China.
While East Germany was no doubt a less developed part of the city than the western side, I was surprised to see how many cars there were on the street. It seemed that car ownership was common in East Germany, which was probably the wealthiest of the Soviet-bloc countries. But the cars in East Berlin all looked the same: small, boxy, and shoddily built. Most were either light beige or light green. Catching sight of an East German car parked next to a Mercedes-Benz, Skip could not resist pointing out the obvious contrast in quality. He asked me to take a picture of him standing between the two cars, stretching out his arms to point at each of them as if to say, “Look at the difference.” We wandered around until evening came. We came upon what looked like a fancy and expensive restaurant. With the stack of East German marks in our pockets, we felt quite rich. We walked in and sat down for dinner. The decor inside the restaurant showed it was quite high-end, with a grand piano in the corner.
We ordered steak and wine, followed by some good dessert. Again, the service was good. We quite enjoyed the meal while listening to the live piano music. When the bill came, it was equivalent to about US$15. Based on my experience in China, I knew this was not going to last, nor would the East German marks in our pockets, so we might as well spend them when we could.
It was probably about 10 p.m. when we finished dinner. We walked back to the Brandenburg Gate, intending to return to West Berlin the way we had come. But when we arrived, we discovered the crowd had disappeared and bright spotlights illuminated the wall. A tall East German soldier with a submachine gun slung across his shoulder now guarded the hole we had passed through.
We went up to him and explained that we wanted to go back to out hotel on the other side, and that we had come through this hole earlier in the day. For an East German soldier, he spoke good English. He politely refused our request and told us we had to go to Checkpoint Charlie for crossing. The checkpoint was about 2 kilometers (∼1.2 miles) away, it was out of our way, and it was already getting quite late. So I was trying my best to negotiate with him to let us through. He would not budge. As we talked, we shifted our positions so that I was standing right in front of the big hole and West Berlin was only one step away from where I stood. At that point, I said to the soldier, half-jokingly: “What if I give a dash across?”
He stared at me, and with a serious and straight face he replied in a polite and subdued voice, “Then I’ll be obliged to shoot you, sir.” He didn’t appear to be kidding.
We took a long walk to Checkpoint Charlie only to find that we couldn’t get through without our passports, which we hadn’t brought because we didn’t expect to cross the border when we left the hotel. It took us more than an hour of further negotiation before the guards finally let us through.
The next day, Skip and I went back to East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie. This time, the crossing took more than an hour. It was so much easier through the hole in the Berlin Wall. We were lucky, as it was a historic day, the day of the first free parliamentary election in East Germany since 1932 (when Hitler lost the presidential election but was soon appointed chancellor). We followed the crowds in
the direction of a tall television tower rising into the sky. A young man caught up with us and offered to walk with us. We were happy to have an English-speaking local guide. He told us that he was a resident of West Berlin. He also said he could easily tell who in the crowds around us was an East Berliner and who a West Berliner. We asked him how he knew, as they were all German and they all looked more or less the same to us. The difference, he said, was in the clothing and in the shoes. It reminded me of the day I had first arrived in America, when Andy Andrews could immediately tell I was from Mainland China by my haircut.
In the square around the television tower a band was playing on a large makeshift stage. Here and there, some people were speaking on a high stand—politicians doing some last-minute campaigning, I supposed. So many people, including many foreign journalists, had swarmed East Berlin to cover this historic election. Children were running around with colorful balloons. It was another beautiful sunny day, and most people just walked around to enjoy the festivities and the sun. We mingled with the crowd and soaked in the excitement and happy atmosphere.