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

The night the Berlin Wall opened reached readers of the Chinese Communist Party's newspaper two days later, on page 4, in 554 characters, a short paragraph, without the word “wall”. Every issue of 1989 can be opened here, with the 729 news items the paper printed about Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania.

> 民主德国宣布开放边界 / 民德一著名女作家呼吁公民留在家乡参与改革 / 西德内政部长指出民德公民慎重考虑移居问题
> 
> 这一步骤意味着民主德国实际上开放了两个德国和东西柏林之间的边界。在民德40年历史上，这是第一次。
>
> — 人民日报, 11 November 1989, page 4, 554 characters. GDR announces opening of the border / A well-known GDR woman writer urges citizens to stay in their homeland and take part in reform / West German interior minister points out that GDR citizens should think carefully about the question of moving away

On the evening of 9 November 1989 East Germany opened its borders, and that night people walked through the Berlin Wall. The People's Daily (人民日报, Renmin Ribao), the newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, printed it on 11 November, on page 4, under the headline above. Page 1 of the same issue carried Deng Xiaoping's words to Henry Kissinger: “China is now very stable, and I am at ease.”

Most of the year reads like that. This page counts what the paper printed in 1989 about Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania: on which day, on which page, at what length and in which words. From late April the same paper filled with the protests in Beijing, first under one word, 动乱 (turmoil), and from June under a second, 暴乱 (riot).

The count describes one newspaper, read in an unofficial transcription of it. It does not measure what people in China knew: the foreign-press digest Reference News (参考消息), radio and television are outside it.

## 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.

### Poland

Poland has the most reports of the six. The Round Table talks reach page 1 twice in the spring. The election of 4 June fell on the day the army put down the protests in Beijing by force. Its first report is in the issue of 10 June, from a dispatch of 8 June, the day the official results came out: 503 characters on page 4 of a four-page paper. It says the party's leaders admit the result is unfavourable and that the Solidarity side has won a “victory”, with the word in quotation marks.

The next issue carries an analysis signed by a Xinhua correspondent, 1,075 characters, which puts the result down mainly to the worsening economy. No signed analysis of Polish politics follows it in the 1989 issues; two signed pieces on the Polish economy do, in July and August. When Tadeusz Mazowiecki is appointed prime minister, the report of 25 August has 265 characters and does not say that he is the first non-communist to hold the post; the paper says so on 3 September, when it writes of “the first government led by a non-communist in Poland in more than 40 years”. Lech Wałęsa is named in 34 articles during the year, and in none from October to December.

| Date | What happened | In the People's Daily |
|---|---|---|
| 6 Feb 1989 | Round Table talks between the government and the opposition open in Warsaw. | 汇集社会各方人士 探索克服危机办法 波兰“圆桌会议”开幕 (Bringing together people from all sectors of society / Seeking ways to overcome the crisis / Polish “round table” opens) — 8 Feb 1989, page 3, 1,070 characters |
| 5 Apr 1989 | The Round Table agreement is signed: free trade unions, a freely elected Senate, elections in June. | 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 Apr 1989, page 1, 692 characters |
| 17 Apr 1989 | Solidarity is registered again as a legal trade union. | 团结工会获准登记注册后 瓦文萨说将牢记感情用事的教训 (After Solidarity is granted registration / Wałęsa says he will remember the lesson against acting on emotion) — 19 Apr 1989, page 3, 384 characters |
| 4 Jun 1989 | First round of the parliamentary election. Solidarity wins almost every seat it may contest; official results follow on 8 June. | 波首轮大选结果出人意料 拉科夫斯基等人落选 (Results of Poland's first round of elections are unexpected / Rakowski and others fail to be elected) — 10 Jun 1989, page 4, 503 characters; 波兰大选结果说明了什么？ (What do the results of the Polish election show?) — 11 Jun 1989, page 4, 1,075 characters; In the issues of 5–9 June Poland appears in two articles: a football match and a proposed trade agreement with the European Community. |
| 18 Jun 1989 | Second round. After both rounds Solidarity holds 99 of the 100 Senate seats. | 波兰大选第２轮选举揭晓 执政的联盟派在议会中占６５％ (Second-round results of Polish election announced / Ruling coalition camp holds 65% in parliament) — 22 Jun 1989, page 3, 478 characters |
| 19 Jul 1989 | The National Assembly elects General Jaruzelski president. | 雅鲁泽尔斯基当选总统 他将尽快任命总理组成政府 瓦文萨保证与总统合作解决波兰问题 (Jaruzelski elected president / He will appoint a prime minister as soon as possible to form a government / Wałęsa pledges to cooperate with the president to resolve Poland's problems) — 21 Jul 1989, page 3, 941 characters |
| 24 Aug 1989 | The Sejm appoints Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity adviser, prime minister: the first non-communist head of government in the Soviet bloc. | 波兰议会任命 马佐维耶茨基为政府总理 (Polish parliament appoints / Mazowiecki as head of government) — 25 Aug 1989, page 3, 265 characters |
| 29 Dec 1989 | The Sejm amends the constitution: the country becomes the Republic of Poland again and the party's leading role is removed. | 波兰决定更改国名和国徽 (Poland decides to change its name and coat of arms) — 31 Dec 1989, page 4, 158 characters |

### Hungary

In the first half of the year the paper follows the Hungarian party closely: its Central Committee's communiqué on a multi-party system and on 1956 gets 1,340 characters in February, and János Kádár's removal is on page 1 in May. The reburial of Imre Nagy, under a headline that puts 250,000 people at the funeral, has 271 characters.

*Budapest, Heroes' Square, 16 June 1989: the crowd at the ceremony before the reburial of Imre Nagy and the others executed after 1956. Photograph: Fortepan / tm, no. 2093, CC BY-SA 3.0; resized.*

In August and September the reports thin out. The departure of East Germans through Hungary is mentioned in a report from Berlin on 18 August and not again until November; the Sopron picnic of 19 August and Hungary's decision of 10 September to let them leave do not appear. The October congress at which the party turned itself into the Hungarian Socialist Party is reported at length (1,685 characters), with the verb 改建, “rebuilt”, for the change. Hungary has five articles in December.

| Date | What happened | In the People's Daily |
|---|---|---|
| 11 Feb 1989 | The Central Committee accepts a multi-party system and debates the reassessment of 1956. | 匈党发表中央全会公报 评价一九五六年十月事件 匈党中央决定进一步发展政治多元化 (Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party publishes Central Committee plenum communiqué / Assessing the events of October 1956 / The party's Central Committee decides to develop political pluralism further) — 14 Feb 1989, page 6, 1,340 characters |
| 2 May 1989 | Hungary begins, in front of the press, to dismantle the fence on its border with Austria. | 东西方关系缓和又迈新步 匈拆除匈奥边境军事障碍 (Another new step in the easing of East–West relations / Hungary dismantles military barriers on the Hungarian–Austrian border) — 4 May 1989, page 3, 406 characters |
| 16 Jun 1989 | Imre Nagy, the prime minister executed in 1958, is reburied in Budapest after a ceremony on Heroes' Square. | 匈牙利重新安葬纳吉 国家领导人及二十五万群众参加葬礼 (Hungary reburies Nagy / The country's leaders and 250,000 people attend the funeral) — 19 Jun 1989, page 3, 271 characters |
| 19 Aug 1989 | The “Pan-European Picnic” at Sopron: several hundred East Germans cross into Austria. | No article. In the issues of 20–31 August none of the articles searched mentions Sopron, the picnic or the Hungarian–Austrian border. The crossings through Hungary had been mentioned on 18 August, in a report from Berlin. |
| 10 Sep 1989 | Hungary announces that from midnight its border with Austria is open to East German citizens; tens of thousands leave. | No article. In the issues of 10–25 September none of the articles searched links Hungary or Austria with East German citizens. |
| 7 Oct 1989 | The ruling party turns itself into the Hungarian Socialist Party. | 匈社会主义工人党召开十四大 决定将党改成社会党 格罗斯和许多人反对 (Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party holds its 14th congress / Decides to turn the party into a Socialist Party / Grósz and many others oppose) — 10 Oct 1989, page 3, 1,685 characters |
| 23 Oct 1989 | The Republic of Hungary is proclaimed, on the anniversary of the day the 1956 uprising began. | 匈正式更名为匈牙利共和国 匈外长表示匈尊重对华约承担的义务 (Hungary officially changes its name to the Republic of Hungary / Hungarian foreign minister says Hungary respects its obligations to the Warsaw Pact) — 25 Oct 1989, page 3, 598 characters |

### East Germany

East Germany has more reports in the autumn than any other of the six: 31 items in October and 39 in November. The people leaving through the embassies appear twice before October: on 18 August, as “a very small number of GDR citizens attempting by illegal means to go to West Germany and West Berlin”, and on 15 September, when 290 of them leave the West German embassy in Prague to go home. The October demonstrations reach the paper mainly through the GDR Interior Ministry's own notice, under a headline that says it “rebuts Western slander of the GDR's quelling of trouble”, and through two court reports from Dresden, whose headlines call the accused 肇事者, troublemakers, and 暴徒, thugs. At the end of the first, the paper's correspondent adds a sentence of his own: “demonstrations and marches” took place in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Potsdam and Magdeburg.

*Berlin, November 1989: young people on top of the Wall, above the crowd. The photographer dates the picture 10 November. Photograph: Vietinghoff, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.*

Erich Honecker's resignation is on page 3, in 393 characters; the next day Jiang Zemin's telegram to his successor is on page 1. Egon Krenz had been in Beijing three weeks earlier, on page 1 twice. The opening of the border is the report at the top of this page. The word 柏林墙 appears in eight articles of the whole paper in 1989, in none from September to November, and next on 14 December, in a signed article on German unification: “with the opening of the Berlin Wall”.

| Date | What happened | In the People's Daily |
|---|---|---|
| 7 May 1989 | Local elections; citizens' groups count the votes and show the result was falsified. | No article. In the issues of 7–20 May none of the articles searched speaks of elections in the GDR. |
| 8 Jun 1989 | The People's Chamber adopts a declaration backing the Chinese leadership after 4 June. | 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) — 12 Jun 1989, page 1, 324 characters |
| 7 Oct 1989 | The GDR turns 40. Gorbachev and the Chinese deputy premier Yao Yilin are in Berlin; around the anniversary more than 3,000 protesters are detained across the country. | 民德隆重庆祝建国四十周年 昂纳克强调坚持社会主义道路 姚依林应邀出席大会和阅兵式 (GDR solemnly celebrates 40 years since its founding / Honecker stresses keeping to the socialist road / Yao Yilin attends rally and military parade at invitation) — 8 Oct 1989, page 3, 837 characters |
| 9 Oct 1989 | Seventy thousand people march in Leipzig; the security forces do not intervene. | 民主德国内政部发表公告 斥西方对民德平息闹事的诬蔑 (GDR Ministry of the Interior issues announcement / Rebuts Western slander of GDR's quelling of trouble) — 12 Oct 1989, page 3, 553 characters; The text reports the GDR Interior Ministry's notice about “trouble”. The correspondent adds one sentence of his own: around the anniversary “demonstrations and marches” took place in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Potsdam and Magdeburg. The march of 9 October is not described. |
| 18 Oct 1989 | Erich Honecker resigns; Egon Krenz becomes general secretary. | 德国统一社会党中央全会 接受昂纳克辞职请求 选举克伦茨为总书记 (Plenum of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany / Accepts Honecker's request to resign / Elects Krenz general secretary) — 19 Oct 1989, page 3, 393 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 Oct 1989, page 1, 351 characters |
| 4 Nov 1989 | Hundreds of thousands demonstrate on Alexanderplatz in Berlin. | No article. In the issues of 4–12 November none of the articles searched mentions Alexanderplatz or links Berlin with a rally, march or demonstration. |
| 9 Nov 1989 | The GDR opens its borders; that night Berliners pass through the Wall. | 民主德国宣布开放边界 民德一著名女作家呼吁公民留在家乡参与改革 西德内政部长指出民德公民慎重考虑移居问题 (GDR announces opening of the border / A well-known GDR woman writer urges citizens to stay in their homeland and take part in reform / West German interior minister points out that GDR citizens should think carefully about the question of moving away) — 11 Nov 1989, page 4, 554 characters |
| 13 Nov 1989 | Hans Modrow is elected prime minister. | 莫德罗当选民德部长会议主席 (Modrow elected chairman of GDR Council of Ministers) — 15 Nov 1989, page 4, 389 characters |
| 3 Dec 1989 | The Politburo and the Central Committee resign in a body. | 民德党中央委员会辞职 成立工作委员会暂时主持党的工作 (GDR party Central Committee resigns / Working committee set up to run the party's affairs temporarily) — 5 Dec 1989, page 4, 166 characters |

### Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia has fewer reports in 1989 (106) than in 1988 (131). The August demonstration in Prague is printed under the headline “Illegal organisations in Prague launch demonstration”, with the state news agency's verdict as its second line.

The march of 17 November first appears in the issue of 23 November, in two dispatches dated 20 and 21 November. The headline is the government's meeting and Miloš Jakeš's appeal “to stay rational”; the text, 797 characters, says that demonstrations of students and townspeople have gone on “since the 17th”, that more than 100,000 gathered on Wenceslas Square on the 20th and about 200,000 “in a peaceful demonstration” on the 21st, and gives their demands, among them “free elections”. The police action of the 17th is not in it. Václav Havel's election as president is 157 characters on the last day of the year.

| Date | What happened | In the People's Daily |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Feb 1989 | Václav Havel is sentenced to nine months in prison over the January demonstrations. | 捷判决一月示威被捕者 ７７宪章成员哈维尔被判刑九个月 (Czechoslovakia sentences those arrested at January demonstrations / Charter 77 member Havel sentenced to nine months) — 24 Feb 1989, page 3, 233 characters |
| 21 Aug 1989 | A demonstration in Prague, 21 years after the 1968 invasion. | 布拉格非法组织发动示威 捷通社说示威是破坏秩序的挑衅 (Illegal organisations in Prague launch demonstration / Czechoslovak news agency says the demonstration is a provocation to disrupt order) — 23 Aug 1989, page 3, 311 characters |
| 17 Nov 1989 | Police break up a student march in Prague with violence; over the following days the protests grow daily. | 捷政府开会讨论布拉格局势 雅克什呼吁捷人民保持理智 (Czechoslovak government meets to discuss the situation in Prague / Jakeš calls on the Czechoslovak people to stay rational) — 23 Nov 1989, page 4, 797 characters |
| 24 Nov 1989 | Miloš Jakeš and the party leadership resign. | 捷共中央全会做出重大人事变动 乌尔班内克当选中央总书记 (Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Committee plenum makes major personnel changes / Urbánek elected general secretary of the Central Committee) — 26 Nov 1989, page 4, 611 characters |
| 27 Nov 1989 | A two-hour general strike across the country. | No article on the strike. In the issues of 27 November – 6 December the word “strike” appears in no text about Czechoslovakia; the call to strike had been mentioned on 25 November. |
| 29 Nov 1989 | The Federal Assembly removes the party's leading role from the constitution. | No article. In the issues of 29 November – 10 December no text about Czechoslovakia mentions the constitution or the leading role. |
| 10 Dec 1989 | A government with a non-communist majority; President Gustáv Husák resigns. | 恰尔法出任捷总理 (Čalfa becomes Czechoslovak prime minister) — 12 Dec 1989, page 4, 262 characters |
| 29 Dec 1989 | Václav Havel is elected president. | 捷选出新总统和联邦议会主席 (Czechoslovakia elects new president and chairman of the Federal Assembly) — 31 Dec 1989, page 4, 157 characters |

### Bulgaria

Todor Zhivkov's removal after 35 years is reported two days later on page 4. The third line of the headline is the new leader's: the country's “only way out is to advance along the socialist road”. Jiang Zemin's congratulations to Petar Mladenov are on page 1 three days after that, and Qiao Shi, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, is in Sofia at the end of the month.

When demonstrators surround parliament on 14 December, the paper prints a report of the parliament's statement, 198 characters, under the headline “Bulgarian parliament stresses that stirring up turmoil will not be allowed”. In the dispatch the parliament refuses to let the country be pushed into 混乱, chaos; the headline's word is 动乱, the one the paper had used since April for Beijing. Zhivkov's name appears in 28 articles in 1989 and in none in 1990.

| Date | What happened | In the People's Daily |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Nov 1989 | Todor Zhivkov is removed after 35 years in power; Petar Mladenov succeeds him. | 保共中央全会接受日夫科夫辞职请求 姆拉德诺夫当选保共总书记 强调国家唯一出路是沿社会主义道路前进 (Bulgarian Communist Party Central Committee plenum accepts Zhivkov's resignation / Mladenov elected general secretary / Stresses that the country's only way out is to advance along the socialist road) — 12 Nov 1989, page 4, 584 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) — 15 Nov 1989, page 1, 196 characters |
| 14 Dec 1989 | A mass rally surrounds parliament in Sofia and demands the immediate removal of Article 1 of the constitution, on the party's leading role. | 保议会强调不准制造动乱 (Bulgarian parliament stresses that stirring up turmoil will not be allowed) — 17 Dec 1989, page 4, 198 characters |

### Romania

Nicolae Ceaușescu gave the paper's own correspondent an interview that was printed five weeks before his death: 2,803 characters on page 4 of 18 November, the longest text about any of the six countries in the last quarter of the year. Qiao Shi was in Bucharest for the party congress from 20 November, and the Chinese party's message of congratulations was on page 1 on the 23rd.

The events in Timișoara, where the army and the security forces opened fire on demonstrators on 17 December, first appear on 22 December, in a dispatch of the 20th that reports Ceaușescu's television address in his own terms: a “terrorist action” by “hooligan gangs”. On page 2 of the same issue the Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokesman believes that Romania “can handle its own affairs”. The issue of 23 December has no report on Romania. On 24 December the headline is: “Bucharest, the Romanian capital, falls into serious chaos.”

*Timișoara, December 1989: a man speaks to people gathered in the street. Photograph: Fortepan / Urbán Tamás, no. 31892, CC BY-SA 3.0; resized.*

On 27 December the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu is one sentence of 90 characters on page 4, given as an announcement by Romanian television. Page 1 of the same issue has three items on China's position; one headline reads “China respects the choice of the Romanian people”. Ceaușescu's name is in 57 articles of the paper in 1988, in 46 in 1989 and in one in 1990.

| Date | What happened | In the People's Daily |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Nov 1989 | The 14th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party opens; on 24 November Ceaușescu is re-elected general secretary. The Chinese delegation is led by Qiao Shi of the Politburo Standing Committee. | 罗共14大开幕 齐奥塞斯库总书记在会上作工作报告 乔石率中国共产党代表团出席 (Romanian Communist Party's 14th Congress opens / General Secretary Ceaușescu delivers report to the congress / Qiao Shi leads Chinese Communist Party delegation to attend) — 21 Nov 1989, page 4, 189 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) — 23 Nov 1989, page 1, 836 characters |
| 16 Dec 1989 | The protests in Timișoara begin; on 17 December the army and the security forces open fire on the demonstrators. | 罗马尼亚一县进入紧急状态 齐奥塞斯库呼吁全国团结 (One Romanian county enters state of emergency / Ceaușescu calls for national unity) — 22 Dec 1989, page 4, 416 characters |
| 22 Dec 1989 | Ceaușescu flees Bucharest; the Council of the National Salvation Front takes power. | 罗首都布加勒斯特陷入严重混乱 (Bucharest, the Romanian capital, falls into serious chaos) — 24 Dec 1989, page 4, 580 characters |
| 25 Dec 1989 | Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu are tried and shot at Târgoviște; television announces the execution that evening. | 罗电视台宣布罗特别军事法庭判处齐奥塞斯库死刑 (Romanian television announces that a special military tribunal has sentenced Ceaușescu to death) — 27 Dec 1989, page 4, 90 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 Dec 1989, page 1, 188 characters |

## 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

Articles of the whole paper that contain 暴乱 (riot), by month, January 1988 to December 1990. 1988: 11, 1989: 1,194, 1990: 348

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

Articles of the whole paper that contain 和平演变 (peaceful evolution), by month, January 1988 to December 1990. 1988: 0, 1989: 109, 1990: 216

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

| Word | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 柏林墙 (Berlin Wall; with the variant 柏林围墙) | 0 | 8 | 9 |
| 东欧剧变 (the drastic change in Eastern Europe) | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| 东欧局势 · 东欧形势 (the situation in Eastern Europe) | 0 | 26 | 51 |
| 团结工会 (Solidarity) | 27 | 71 | 21 |
| 圆桌会议 (round table) | 27 | 69 | 13 |
| 多党制 (multi-party system) | 29 | 84 | 80 |
| 和平演变 (peaceful evolution) | 0 | 109 | 216 |

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

| Name | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 齐奥塞斯库 (Ceaușescu, Romania) | 57 | 46 | 1 |
| 昂纳克 (Honecker, East Germany) | 60 | 49 | 1 |
| 日夫科夫 (Zhivkov, Bulgaria) | 21 | 28 | 0 |
| 雅克什 (Jakeš, Czechoslovakia) | 47 | 28 | 1 |
| 胡萨克 (Husák, Czechoslovakia) | 30 | 9 | 1 |
| 卡达尔 (Kádár, Hungary) | 11 | 11 | 0 |
| 克伦茨 (Krenz, East Germany) | 4 | 36 | 1 |
| 瓦文萨 (Wałęsa, Poland) | 23 | 34 | 13 |
| 戈尔巴乔夫 (Gorbachev, Soviet Union) | 404 | 390 | 333 |

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.

## 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.

### 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](https://huggingface.co/datasets/Papersnake/people_daily_news)
- [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)](https://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-46314)
- [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](https://archive.org/details/oapen-20.500.12657-46314)
- [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](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/chinas-fear-contagion-tiananmen-square-and-power-european-example)
- [Czeslaw Tubilewicz, “Chinese Press Coverage of Political and Economic Restructuring of East Central Europe”, Asian Survey 37 (10), 1997, pp. 927–943](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2645614)
- [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](https://ebook.theorychina.org.cn/ebook/upload/storage/files/2022/07/26/b7469def27f222558b43b4f322630ac465633/files/basic-html/page360.html)
- [Deng Xiaoping, talk with leading members of the Central Committee, 4 September 1989, in Selected Works, vol. III (official English translation)](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1989/127.htm)
- [Deng Xiaoping, talk with Julius Nyerere, 23 November 1989, in Selected Works, vol. III (official English translation)](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1989/173.htm)

## Related

- [Romania in China's People's Daily: eighty years of Romania–China relations](https://mariuscomper.uk/romania-china/en/): The same newspaper followed from 1946 to 2025: every article that names Romania, month by month.

Text, counts and translations: Marius Comper. The data may be reused with credit.