1989 in China's People's Daily: the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, day by day

The year, one issue at a time#

The strip shows 1989 from left to right, one column for each issue. Above the line are the characters printed that day about each of the six countries. Below it, in red, is the number of articles that use 动乱 (dongluan, turmoil) or 暴乱 (baoluan, riot), the paper's words for the Beijing protests from late April and from June. Before then the two words turn up in other news, mostly from abroad.

Under the strip is the issue of the chosen day: its pages side by side, every article a block as tall as its text is long. The coloured blocks are the reports about the six countries; their headlines are listed beneath.

What the year adds up to

The transcription holds 30,049 articles for 1989. Of these, 729 are news items about one or more of the six countries: 2.4 in every hundred articles and 1.4 in every hundred characters. At least one appears on 316 of the 365 days.

Most are short. Leaving aside the 41 columns of news in brief and the 18 captioned photographs, half of the other 670 reports have fewer than 298 characters, and 26 run to 1,000 or more. A 300-character report is four or five sentences.

They sit where foreign news sat. Until 19 February the international pages were 6 and 7; from 20 February they were pages 3 and 4, where 497 of the 625 items printed from that day sit. A page number alone says little about weight. What the count shows is how rarely this news left its page: 49 items reached page 1 (see below).

They are not late. 545 of the items open with a dated dispatch line, and 473 of those (87 in a hundred) were printed within two days of that date. A long wait has two parts: the first report of the Prague march of 17 November is a dispatch dated three days after it and printed three days after that.

In June the paper itself shrank. A notice on page 1 of 7 June says that paper has been hard to obtain and printed copies “cannot be sent out”, so the issue will have four pages; a second notice, on 25 June, blames “the counter-revolutionary riot in Beijing” and counts 18 days of four pages. On 18 June, 21 of the 30 articles use 动乱 or 暴乱.

October and November are the fullest months for the six countries, with 93 and 104 items. In December, the month in which the governments in Prague and Bucharest went, there are 59; without Romania the five other countries fall from 94 items in November to 38.

Six countries: what happened and what was printed#

For each country the table sets the event, by the day it happened, against the first report in the paper, by the date of the issue. Event dates follow The Revolutions of 1989: A Handbook and the dispatches themselves. Where a row says there is no article, the sentence names what was searched.

The words: which appear, and when#

The counts in this section are taken from the whole paper, every article of 1988, 1989 and 1990, and each gives the number of articles in which the word occurs at least once.

Two words for Beijing

19881119891,1941990348

暴乱, riot, is in 12 articles from January to May 1989 and in 290 in June, one article in every six that month. 动乱, turmoil, rises from 239 articles in 1988 to 1,169 in 1989. The same words then turn up in the reports from Eastern Europe: 23 of the 729 items contain 暴乱, and in every one the subject is China: a statement of support for the Chinese leadership, a meeting in Beijing, greetings on the fortieth anniversary of the People's Republic. In the headlines over the reports of the six countries' own unrest the paper's words are 闹事 (making trouble, 12 October), 非法 (illegal, 23 August) and, for Bulgaria in December, 动乱 itself. In the text of the dispatches the events are 示威, demonstrations, and in Prague on 21 November a “peaceful demonstration”.

Peaceful evolution

1988019891091990216

和平演变, peaceful evolution, is the paper's name for a Western strategy to turn socialist states capitalist without war. It is in no article of 1988. In 1989 it is in 109, all but two of them from July onwards, and in 1990 in 216. Its first use in that sense in 1989 is on 24 June, about China. On 9 July a long article on the Voice of America names Eastern Europe among the targets of American policy in the 1950s. The first article to apply the phrase to the Eastern Europe of 1989 is a commentary of 14 July on the Soviet and American leaders' visits to Europe, which says that George Bush “openly encouraged, in Poland and Hungary, a peaceful evolution towards the West”.

Words for what happened in Europe

The phrase by which the events are known in China today, 东欧剧变, the drastic change in Eastern Europe, does not occur in the paper in 1989. Its two words first share a sentence on 30 December, when the foreign minister, Qian Qichen, says that “drastic change has recently occurred in Eastern Europe” (最近东欧发生剧变). A looser form, 东欧局势剧变, follows on 20 January 1990, and the fixed phrase itself on 31 October 1990. The neutral 东欧局势 or 东欧形势, the situation in Eastern Europe, is in 26 articles in 1989, 19 of them in December.

The names

The table counts the articles of the whole paper that contain each name. Each of the leaders who fell in 1989, Krenz among them, is named in one article or in none in 1990; Wałęsa and Gorbachev are there for comparison.

Page 1: China's own part in the story#

49 of the 729 items are on page 1. In 37 of them the headline is about China's own dealings with the country: a meeting in Beijing, a telegram, a delegation, a spokesman's answer. The other 12 are events abroad, all printed before August: the Polish Round Table, Kádár's removal, the Hungarian party's statement on Nagy.

On the days of change the two kinds of news part. Honecker's resignation is on page 3 and the telegram to Krenz on page 1. Zhivkov's removal is on page 4 and the telegram to Mladenov on page 1. The Ceaușescus' execution is on page 4 and “China respects the choice of the Romanian people” on page 1.

All 49 page-1 items, in order of date

• 23 FebChina's dealings · 681 characters赵紫阳会见罗马尼亚客人时谈国内形势 治理整顿取得成效 今后任务更加艰巨Zhao Ziyang, meeting Romanian guests, talks about the domestic situation / Improvement and rectification has produced results / Tasks ahead are more arduous
• 12 Marevent abroad · 299 characters波“圆桌会议”讨论政治改革 就设立参议院和总统制取得一致意见Polish “round table” discusses political reform / Agreement reached on establishing a Senate and a presidential system
• 18 MarChina's dealings · 137 characters莱比锡春季博览会中国荣获四项金奖China wins four gold medals at Leipzig Spring Fair
• 7 Aprevent abroad · 692 characters波“圆桌会议”取得积极成果 双方签署一项《公报》和三个协议Polish “round table” achieves positive results / The two sides sign one communiqué and three agreements
• 7 Aprevent abroad · 276 characters波兰当局同教会方面 草签保障信仰自由法Polish authorities and the church / Initial a law guaranteeing freedom of belief
• 14 Aprevent abroad · 245 characters匈党中央全会重新选举政治局成员 格罗斯继任总书记Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party Central Committee plenum re-elects Politburo members / Grósz succeeds as general secretary
• 20 Aprevent abroad · 205 characters格罗斯谈匈党面临的最大危险 党内存在派别组织活动Grósz on the greatest danger facing the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party / factional activity exists within the party
• 26 AprChina's dealings · 705 characters李鹏会见匈牙利客人时重申 我国改革开放方向不变Li Peng, meeting Hungarian guests, reiterates / China's direction of reform and opening up will not change
• 3 MayChina's dealings · 570 characters胡启立会见保加利亚客人时说 建设民主政治是渐进过程Hu Qili, meeting Bulgarian guests, says / building democratic politics is a gradual process
• 6 Mayevent abroad · 476 characters波党全国代表会议开幕 将讨论波党在改革中的地位和任务Polish United Workers' Party national conference opens / will discuss the party's position and tasks in reform
• 6 Mayevent abroad · 330 characters瓦文萨谴责非法示威游行Wałęsa condemns illegal demonstrations and marches
• 8 Mayevent abroad · 962 characters把为人民服务作为竞选纲领 波党号召党员人民参加六月大选Making service to the people the election platform / Polish United Workers' Party calls on members and the people to take part in the June elections
• 10 Mayevent abroad · 414 characters匈党中央主席 卡达尔因重病被免职Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party Central Committee chairman / Kádár removed from post because of serious illness
• 11 MayChina's dealings · 458 characters赵紫阳会见保加利亚客人时指出 政治体制改革步子要稳 中心是民主和法制建设 没有政治体制改革，经济改革中的困难很难克服Zhao Ziyang, meeting Bulgarian guests, points out / The pace of political reform must be steady / Its core is the building of democracy and the legal system / Without political reform, the difficulties in economic reform will hardly be overcome
• 22 Mayevent abroad · 335 characters内梅特总理说 匈牙利面临动荡潜在危险 不准用军队解决内政问题Prime Minister Németh says / Hungary faces a latent danger of upheaval / the army must not be used to resolve internal affairs
• 2 Junevent abroad · 753 characters匈党中央就重新安葬纳吉发表公报 称纳吉是社会主义改革政策代表人物Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party Central Committee issues communiqué on the reburial of Nagy / calls Nagy a representative figure of the policy of socialist reform
• 12 JunChina's dealings · 324 characters民德人民议院就中国事态发表声明 北京发生的事件纯属中国内部事务 反对任何外国的干涉GDR People's Chamber issues statement on the situation in China / Events in Beijing are purely China's internal affair / Opposes any foreign interference
• 15 JunChina's dealings · 291 characters保加利亚反对外国干涉中国内政 支持我稳定国内局势的措施Bulgaria opposes foreign interference in China's internal affairs / supports China's measures to stabilise the domestic situation
• 18 JunChina's dealings · 228 characters捷共领导人列纳尔特接见我驻捷大使时说 相信中国根据国情继续改革Communist Party of Czechoslovakia leader Lenárt, receiving the Chinese ambassador to Czechoslovakia, says / he believes China will continue reform in line with its national conditions
• 5 JulChina's dealings · 146 characters江泽民电贺涅尔什当选匈党主席Jiang Zemin cables Nyers congratulating him on his election as chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party
• 11 JulChina's dealings · 887 characters江泽民总书记昨天分别会见罗马尼亚和埃塞俄比亚客人General Secretary Jiang Zemin yesterday meets Romanian and Ethiopian guests separately
• 15 JulChina's dealings · 435 characters在会见民主德国客人时 江泽民说：患难知真交 沙博夫斯基说中共四中全会所做的事都是必要的Meeting GDR guests / Jiang Zemin says: in hardship one knows true friends / Schabowski says everything done at the Fourth Plenum of the CCP was necessary
• 16 JulChina's dealings · 881 characters李鹏会见捷副总理日阿克时强调 改革开放必须坚持四项基本原则 同日会见即将离任的尼加拉瓜大使Li Peng, meeting Czechoslovak deputy prime minister Žák, stresses / Reform and opening up must uphold the Four Cardinal Principles / Meets the departing Nicaraguan ambassador the same day
• 31 Julevent abroad · 367 characters拉科夫斯基出任波党第一书记Rakowski becomes first secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party
• 1 SepChina's dealings · 151 characters我愿继续发展同波兰关系China is willing to continue developing relations with Poland
• 2 SepChina's dealings · 170 characters李瑞环会见民德客人Li Ruihuan meets GDR guests
• 10 SepChina's dealings · 822 characters李鹏会见捷克斯洛伐克客人时说 中国警惕外来颠覆阴谋 在平等互利原则下同西方开展交往Li Peng, meeting Czechoslovak guests, says / China is on guard against foreign subversive plots / and will conduct exchanges with the West on the principle of equality and mutual benefit
• 16 SepChina's dealings · 310 characters江泽民会见捷国防部长 宾主希望发展中捷两国友好合作关系Jiang Zemin meets Czechoslovak defence minister / Host and guest hope to develop friendly and cooperative relations between China and Czechoslovakia
• 26 SepChina's dealings · 822 characters乔石同克伦茨举行会谈 双方就加强中德两党两国关系取得一致意见Qiao Shi and Krenz hold talks / Both sides agree to strengthen China–GDR relations at party and state level
• 27 SepChina's dealings · 1,223 characters江泽民万里分别会见克伦茨一行 高度评价中德两党两国关系Jiang Zemin and Wan Li separately meet Krenz and his party / Highly praise relations between the two parties and two countries of China and the GDR
• 3 OctChina's dealings · 561 characters江泽民会见捷工会代表团 同日分别会见美国教授和企业家Jiang Zemin meets Czechoslovak trade union delegation / Meets an American professor and an American businessman the same day
• 3 OctChina's dealings · 180 characters姚依林率党政代表团出访民德Yao Yilin leads Party and government delegation on visit to GDR
• 6 OctChina's dealings · 527 characters江泽民会见罗共访华代表团时说 发展中罗友谊是我党一贯方针Jiang Zemin, meeting Romanian Communist Party delegation visiting China, says / Developing Sino-Romanian friendship is the consistent policy of the Chinese Communist Party
• 20 OctChina's dealings · 351 characters江泽民总书记昨致电祝贺克伦茨当选德国统一社会党中央总书记General Secretary Jiang Zemin yesterday sent a telegram congratulating Krenz on his election as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
• 20 OctChina's dealings · 140 characters外交部发言人发表谈话 中国民德友好合作关系相信将进一步得到发展Foreign Ministry spokesman makes statement / Believes friendly and cooperative relations between China and the GDR will develop further
• 28 OctChina's dealings · 168 characters乔石会见捷客人Qiao Shi meets Czechoslovak guests
• 3 NovChina's dealings · 640 characters江泽民李鹏分别会见捷外长 宾主表示要进一步扩大两国合作Jiang Zemin and Li Peng separately meet Czechoslovak foreign minister / Host and guest say they will further expand cooperation between the two countries
• 7 NovChina's dealings · 625 characters李鹏分别会见尼泊尔和保加利亚客人Li Peng meets Nepalese and Bulgarian guests separately
• 8 NovChina's dealings · 116 characters江泽民会见保外长Jiang Zemin meets Bulgarian foreign minister
• 9 NovChina's dealings · 133 characters宋平会见保中友协代表团Song Ping meets delegation of the Bulgaria–China Friendship Association
• 12 NovChina's dealings · 189 characters宋平会见捷共客人Song Ping meets Czechoslovak Communist Party guests
• 15 NovChina's dealings · 196 characters江泽民电贺姆拉德诺夫当选为保共中央总书记Jiang Zemin sends telegram congratulating Mladenov on his election as Bulgarian Communist Party general secretary
• 18 NovChina's dealings · 266 characters乔石率团赴罗保两国访问Qiao Shi leads delegation on visits to Romania and Bulgaria
• 23 NovChina's dealings · 836 characters我党代表团团长乔石转交 中共中央致罗共十四大的贺词Qiao Shi, head of the Chinese Communist Party delegation, conveys / the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee's congratulatory message to the Romanian Communist Party's 14th Congress
• 25 NovChina's dealings · 767 characters齐奥塞斯库再次当选罗共总书记 江泽民总书记致电表示热烈祝贺Ceaușescu re-elected general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party / General Secretary Jiang Zemin sends telegram of warm congratulations
• 27 DecChina's dealings · 292 characters杨主席回答科威特新闻界提问时说 希望罗马尼亚尽快恢复平静 无论发生什么变化都希望东欧同中国保持友好President Yang, answering questions from Kuwaiti press, says / Hopes Romania will restore calm as soon as possible / Whatever changes occur, hopes Eastern Europe will keep up friendship with China
• 27 DecChina's dealings · 188 characters田曾佩会见罗驻华大使时说 中国尊重罗人民的选择 我红十字会提供紧急人道主义援助Tian Zengpei, meeting the Romanian ambassador to China, says / China respects the choice of the Romanian people / China's Red Cross provides emergency humanitarian aid
• 27 DecChina's dealings · 148 characters外交部发言人发表谈话 愿在和平共处五项原则基础上继续同罗马尼亚发展友好关系Foreign Ministry spokesman makes statement / China is willing to continue developing friendly relations with Romania on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence
• 28 DecChina's dealings · 256 characters杨主席李总理分别致电祝贺罗马尼亚新领导人President Yang and Premier Li separately send telegrams congratulating Romania's new leaders

What the leaders said then, and what was published later#

In print, the position is one sentence, repeated from August to December by the Foreign Ministry's spokesmen: what happens in these countries is their internal affair. The premier, Li Peng, goes a step further in Dhaka on 19 November; the headline of the next day's report is “advises certain people not to rejoice too early over the situation in Eastern Europe”.

奉劝某些人不要对东欧局势高兴太早

“[He] advises certain people not to rejoice too early over the situation in Eastern Europe.”

People's Daily, 20 November 1989, page 4, headline

An instruction, as reported by a historian

The historian Péter Vámos, working from Hungarian diplomatic and intelligence files, writes that after 4 June all news about Poland and Hungary was examined politically before publication, and that a Central Committee instruction forbade commentary and analysis: “Only short, factual news items were allowed to be released” (Vámos, 2015, pp. 106–107). The instruction itself has not been published; his sources are Hungarian reports from Beijing.

The count can be set beside that account. Signed analyses of Polish politics stop after 11 June; two signed pieces on the Polish economy follow. No signed analysis is devoted to Hungary in the whole year, before or after June; the commentary of 14 July treats it together with Poland. Length changes little for Poland: half of the reports are shorter than 336 characters before 4 June and shorter than 316 after it. For Hungary the figures are 336 and 245.

Vámos also writes that the execution of the Ceaușescus “came closer to disturbing Beijing's uneasy calm than any other upheaval in Eastern Europe”. The historian M. E. Sarotte argues, from East German and American records, that fear of contagion from Europe was already “one of the main motivations” for sending in the army in June (Sarotte, 2012).

Deng Xiaoping, in the paper and in the Selected Works

On 24 November the paper reports on page 1 that Deng Xiaoping has called on Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, the day before. In its 424 characters Deng tells him that he has come to see an old friend, “but not to talk politics”. The report ends: “the two old friends then talked in a very cordial and friendly atmosphere”. It prints nothing of what was said, and the words Eastern Europe are not in it.

我来看望你，是为了看看老朋友，叙叙友情，但不谈政治。

“I have come to see you in order to see an old friend and talk of friendship, but not to talk politics.”

People's Daily, 24 November 1989, page 1, given as reported speech

The third volume of Deng's Selected Works, published in November 1993, carries an excerpt of a talk with Nyerere dated 23 November, the day of the visit (Chinese edition, p. 344; Deng Xiaoping, 23 November 1989).

东欧的事情对我们说来并不感到意外，迟早要出现的。东欧的问题首先出在内部。

“We are not surprised at the developments in Eastern Europe. These changes were bound to take place sooner or later. The trouble there started from inside.”

Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works, vol. III, p. 344; official English translation

The same volume dates to 4 September 1989 Deng's three phrases on the international situation, 冷静观察、稳住阵脚、沉着应付: “observe the situation coolly”, “hold our ground”, “act calmly” (p. 321; Deng Xiaoping, 4 September 1989). And the outline of a speech that Jiang Zemin gave to a seminar on press work on 28 November 1989, saying that “hostile international forces” were stepping up their strategy of peaceful evolution and that “several East European countries are in sharp upheaval” (动荡), was printed on page 1 on 2 March 1990.

Method and limits#

The text. The source is an unofficial transcription of the People's Daily, with a date, a page label, a headline and a body for each article. The three years used here hold 95,319 articles: 33,551 for 1988, 30,049 for 1989 and 31,719 for 1990. No exact duplicates were found in these years. Lengths are counted in characters of body text without spaces, the dispatch line included and the repeated headline left out.

The dates were corrected. In the months when China kept summer time, the transcription dates every issue one day early: the editorial known everywhere as the 26 April editorial is filed under 25 April, and the paper's own notice that “summer time ends tomorrow” under 15 September. All dates on this page are issue dates after that correction (16 April to 16 September 1989, and the matching months of 1988 and 1990). The issues of 16 and 17 April 1989 are filed under one date in the transcription; 77 articles of those two days could not be assigned with certainty and are shown under 16 April.

Which articles count. An article is “about” a country when its headline names it (in full, by the paper's shorthand such as 波, 匈, 民德, or through a leader or party), when the first 120 characters of its body name it, or when it was filed from one of its cities and names it. Sport is left out of the counts where the rule recognises it; features and news in brief are shown in the issue view, and the totals in the text count news, news in brief and captioned photographs. The rule was checked by hand on 100 items drawn at random from those that name one of the six countries or are counted for one: it was wrong 11 times. Three times it counted a country that was not the subject: twice the country is only listed in the opening lines, and once 奥匈帝国 (Austria-Hungary) was read as Hungary. Eight times it missed a country: four briefs lower down in a column of news in brief, two countries named by shorthand in a list in the headline, and two texts whose headline and opening lines name a party, a leader or a product instead of the country. The totals are therefore more likely to be a little too low than too high. A signed analysis here means a text of 600 characters or more on the news pages that opens with a correspondent's byline instead of a dispatch line.

“No article” means searched and not found. Each such statement names the dates and the words searched, in the articles kept in full: every article of the three years that names one of the six countries, Yugoslavia, Albania, Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact, a list of leaders, parties and cities, or the phrase 和平演变. Word counts in the section on words are from every article of the paper.

Translations. The headlines were translated from Chinese for this page. 我 (“our”), as in 我外交部, is rendered as “China's”. The quotations from Deng Xiaoping's Selected Works are in the official English translation.

What this is not. It is a count of one newspaper. Page numbers are the transcription's, and the page a report sat on depended on the paper's layout as well as on its weight. The count is narrower than the one on the page about Romania in the same paper: that page counts every article that names Romania, 196 in 1989; this one counts news items about Romania, 84. Earlier studies of how the Chinese press treated the region exist, among them Tubilewicz (1997), which could not be consulted for this page; no claim is made here about what they did or did not count.

• The 365 issues, day by day (CSV)
• The headlines, with translations (CSV)
• Words and countries by month, 1988–1990 (CSV)

Sources

• Papersnake, “people_daily_news”, Hugging Face: an unofficial transcription of the People's Daily, 1946–2025 (the files for 1988, 1989 and 1990), labelled CC0 by its uploader
• Péter Vámos, “The Tiananmen Square ‘Incident’ in China and the East Central European Revolutions”, in W. Mueller, M. Gehler and A. Suppan (eds), The Revolutions of 1989: A Handbook, Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2015, pp. 93–112 (open access)
• W. Mueller, M. Gehler and A. Suppan (eds), The Revolutions of 1989: A Handbook, Vienna, 2015: the country chapters, used for the dates of the events
• M. E. Sarotte, “China's Fear of Contagion: Tiananmen Square and the Power of the European Example”, International Security 37 (2), 2012, pp. 156–182
• Czeslaw Tubilewicz, “Chinese Press Coverage of Political and Economic Restructuring of East Central Europe”, Asian Survey 37 (10), 1997, pp. 927–943
• Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works, vol. III, Chinese edition (《邓小平文选》第三卷, Beijing, People's Publishing House, November 1993), pp. 320–321 and 344, in the electronic edition at theorychina.org.cn
• Deng Xiaoping, talk with leading members of the Central Committee, 4 September 1989, in Selected Works, vol. III (official English translation)
• Deng Xiaoping, talk with Julius Nyerere, 23 November 1989, in Selected Works, vol. III (official English translation)

Related#

• Romania in China's People's Daily: eighty years of Romania–China relationsThe same newspaper followed from 1946 to 2025: every article that names Romania, month by month.