In the Spring of 1989, 100,000 students in Communist China left their classes to fight for political and economic reform, sparking the infamous pro-democracy  The Tiananmen Square protests started in the spring of 1989 as a peaceful protest against the lack of civil liberties and democracy. 100,000 students left their classes to fight for political and economic reform. They boycotted and organized unofficial student unions, which were illegal, and demanded to meet with Li Peng, the Chinese premier in the Great Hall of people in Beijing. Some government officials, notably Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was a moderate, wanted to hold conversations with the students and others who were protesting. He argued that the “student mainstream is good” and that their protests showed that they cared about their country enough to fight for what they believed was right.  Demonstrations escalated around April 18 and complaints about inflation, salaries, and housing came flooding in. Unlike Zhao Zhiyang, Li Peng and the paramount elder statesman Xiao Ping were convinced that these uprisings would lead to anarchy, and wanted to “nip this in the bud” but Zhao convinced them to delay.

 

Few could have expected the massacre that emerged from the crackdown on protesters. In an interview with Zhang Boli, a protester at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and dissident of China, now a Christian pastor in California and author of Escape from China: The Long Journey From Tiananmen to Freedom, confirmed in a recent interview that there was no sign that the government would turn to violence. Zhang had expected the government to listen and understand the pleas of the students, who were now joined by workers and officials. Almost everyone in Beijing was protesting, from kids to grandparents, doctors and the military, everyone but the top leaders. And when most students couldn’t protest anymore and were required to go back to class, the rest started a hunger strike on May 13 in anticipation of the Soviet Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit. 160 students began the strike, with manifestos that exclaimed “Compatriots, fellow country men who cherish morality, please hear our voices!” attracting more and more to join. At the peak of the hunger strike, more than 3,000 people were participating, in the process cancelling plans to welcome Gorbachev in Tiananmen Square. 

 

The government became furious and declared martial law on May 19. Troops attempted to occupy Beijing the next day, but they did do little to discourage those who stood in the streets, blocking the trucks carrying dozens of “doe-eyed, puzzled soldiers…not wanting to hurt anybody,” says Orville Schell, a witness of the protests and currently the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. And so the government approves the decision to put down the “counterrevolutionary riot”, clearing the square with military force. Soldiers fired on unarmed civilians, and the rescue workers who came to treat the civilians were shot down too. The Chinese Red Cross reported that 2,600 were killed, but the number was quickly retracted under pressure from the CCP. Today, the “official” number of casualties stands at 241, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded. Western journalists originally stationed at Tiananmen to capture Gorbachev’s visit to China instead began to report on the Tiananmen massacre, providing live coverage to a shocked global audience.. Chinese media stations were banned from bringing up the protests entirely, and to this day  government workers continue to scrub the Chinese internet of any mention of the bloody day that was June 4, 1989.

 

Almost immediately after the massacre, the Chinese government adopted a plan to root out all of the political dissidents believed responsible for the political unrest. This plan included first discrediting the demonstrations, the organizers, and participants. To do so, they called them ex-criminals, misguided college students, and just ignorant bystanders. This was an effort to convince citizens to turn in those they believed were part of the protests to stop the students and workers from “creating political turmoil” and “overthrowing the CCP”, as the CCP argued in their domestic propaganda in the official press. Then, the party carried out mass arrests and prosecutions, followed up by meetings to get people to confess that they or people they knew were involved. Finally, the Party had people watch video tapes of the demonstrations in order to identify people and weeded party members that joined the demonstrations, requiring everyone to re-pledge their loyalty to the party. Premier Li Peng announced, soon after Tiananmen, that “At present, our task is to restore order and strike relentless blows at the counter-revolutionary rebels.” The Chinese Communist Party agreed with this plan so much that they implemented it in June 1989, a mere month after the massacre. 

 

So the dissidents had to run. But where could they go? Escaping to Russia would be futile, as Zhang Boli, a dissident who protested at Tiananmen, confirms. Other dissidents, like Chaohua Wang, were hidden in different tiny rooms being moved “like a parcel”, as she herself explained. Others, like Yan Xiong, were sent by agents of Operation Yellowbird from phone booth to phone booth to be put in touch with people who could help him escape. Some even hid in Triad member’s houses. Ways of escaping differed, but the goal was simple: get out of China’s reach. 

 

Who were the major actors? A quick look at sources like the financial times may lead you to believe that perhaps the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) were the leaders, helped by individuals in Hong Kong. However, further investigation into interviews and news articles helps us conclude that much of the smuggling was done by The Triads, an organized crime group  spread all over Asia, and concerned citizens of Hong Kong, all supported by the rich and famous in the film and entertainment industry. Western intelligence services only became involved in Hong Kong. Fearing that it would harm their relations with China, the British didn’t want Chinese political dissidents to hide in Hong Kong. One dissident, Yan, remembers that he was visited by what he described as an “English Gentleman”, who helped Yan with his paperwork, and was told that “It’s better for you to go to America, not England”. Why? Former officials told the BBC in 20**that the British was avoiding upsetting China before the highly anticipated 1997 Handover of Hong Kong from British colonial rule to mainland Chinese rule. At the end of the day,    Operation Yellow Bird , was an unexpected alliance between The Triad, who sympathized with the protestors and offered to smuggle them out with their connections for no profit, the pro-democracy sympathizers in Hong Kong, and Chinese military and security officials who were covertly supporting the operation. It wasn’t even named Yellow Bird until after the fact, inspired by multiple Chinese proverbs. In a June 1991 interview with the BBC, Tsang Kin-shing citied the idiom “The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind”, and oriole being a yellowish bird native to parts of China. Then in Szeto Wah’s autobiography, he cites the poem “The Yellow Sparrow in the Wild Fields”, a story about an imprisoned sparrow rescued by a small boy, symbolizing the dissidents and agents of Operation Yellowbird. There are many idioms and poems that refer to the operation that could all be the inspiration. 

 

We see that Chinese propaganda reinforced the idea that the protesters were backed by those overseas, especially the US and UK, in order to sow chaos in China. This is shown abundantly clear in a report written mostly by Jia Chunwang, who is a Chinese politician, intelligence officer, and a prosecutor who held high positions in the Chinese government. The report was “viewed as providing one of the best justifications for military action that was about to occur”, that military action being against the Chinese students that were protesting. In the report he stated that “The great socialist country of China has always been a major target for peaceful evolution methods of the Western capitalist countries headed by the US.” He then goes on to say that these methods are to grow democratic ideas within socialist countries, using catchwords such as “democracy", “liberty”, and “human rights” to try and cause, force, or change the nature of political power in China. “Counterrevolutionaries” were such a big threat that an entirely new, at the time, ministry was created, the “State Security Ministry”, the head of which was Jia Chunwang himself. The New York Times even remarks that while the C.I.A and K.G.B have to look for their enemies, the State Security faces no such challenge as the “Chinese Government believes that enemies are everywhere”. However, there is credit to be given to State Security as it had a reputation as a generally human and liberal organization, at least compared to the police and army, with younger and better educated staff members.

 

But why were the US and UK highlighted as the leaders of the operation by the Chinese government? They did help, a little, by taking in dissidents, but they weren't the only ones to do so. Many other western countries did so as well, most notably France and Canada. A newspaper clipping from The Vancouver Sun, dated Dec 24, 1996, stated that not only is Canada taking 5 dissidents during a time of difficult relations between China and Western Countries, but that “Canada retains a better reputation than most among those close to the Yellowbird operation”. This was at least until Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd-Axworthy broke the one rule while visiting Hong Kong, not mentioning the operation, when he asked if Canada would take more dissidents. This was a clear blunder because it was not common knowledge that help for the operation had reached high levels of government support. This is only one example of how countries, other than the US and UK, helped. But, there could be so much information about other countries helping, but that information may never be revealed. Considering that this was a covert operation, with a necessity on protecting identities and tactics used, some information might just be missing. So it is completely possible that there will be more information that comes out in the future, but for now, this is most of what we know. And what we know is that this operation wasn’t much of a spy movie mission where western powers come in from the start and fix everything, but rather the “cousins” across the border and locals taking on the responsibility of helping hundreds of dissidents. 

 

Interviews with two individuals who fled through the Yellow Bird operation illustrate both the actors that took on real responsibility and risk in assisting the operation, as well as the mindset and actions of the escapees themselves. Ju Jing Hua, a broadcaster during the Tiananmen Square protests, ultimately had to leave her baby behind when she fled to the US. However, she was not originally expecting violence during the protest or the need to flee; she remembered that before June 4th “we were all peaceful. Even when I was in Tiananmen Square…there was basically no violence involved.” However when police reprisal became violent , she first hid in her friend's house. She didn’t want to go back home, because she would implicate her family, but eventually she had to go back to grab some money because she hadn't packed anything, not anticipating the protests to escalate this much. In the rush, she could barely say goodbye to her daughter before rushing out the door before the police could catch up. Because she lived in a neighborhood with many mothers, she left the door unlocked so that the neighbors could care for her child when they heard her cries. As for who took responsibility, it was the Hong Kong Welfare Association. A member recognized Jing Hua, and sent her along with a signal to other operatives in the Yellow Bird organization :  a simple copy of the day’s newspaper. She met a man and a woman in the Guangzhou train station, holding that day’s newspaper. She fled south, evading police that had assumed she would go north because she’s from northern China. Although she fled, she didn’t intend to, stating “I was a Chinese who loved the country. I came to a British colony in Hong Kong. For me, this was kind of [a] struggle.”

 

Zhang Boili, a pastor and the author of “Escape From China, The Long Journey From Tiananmen to Freedom,” likewise did not expect to need to flee.  In his interview, he said that he believed “the government will accept our request [for democracy and reform]”. And that “through a peaceful dialogue, we will solve a political crisis.” Just like Jing Hua, he didn’t expect the violence at all. There was little preparation to flee. However during the time of crisis, he fled to the Soviet Union, who after imprisoning him for a period of time, let him go without turning him into Chinese authorities. He then spent 2 years hiding in China, cared principally by Chinese citizens who supported him. Once he left China, there was also little debate about where he would go next. In Hong Kong, the place he first escaped to, he went to a US consular official to apply for his political asylum status to live in the US. Curiously, he didn’t feel particularly welcomed by Hong Kong.  While the people were kind and helpful, the government – aware that mainland China believed Hong Kong served  as a “counter-revolutionary base” “didn't want these dissidents to enter Hong Kong and strain the relationship between Britain and China before the transfer of Hong Kong into China’s control. Again, like Jing Hua, he still wants to return to China. Powering this desire is his work as a pastor – a calling he found after entering the United States. In his interview, he expressed his wish to spread Christianity in China, stating that “there’s no Jesus, there’s no love, no beliefs, that’s why they (the Chinese people) do whatever they want.” As a parting note, he ended the interview with some wisdom “Any government has no right to deprive us of our human dignity.”

 

As a whole, these dissidents feel that the Chinese government has failed to serve its people. Unlike what the CCP claims to be the cause of the protest, foreign influences, these students and workers just wanted rights. As said by both Lu Jing Hua and Zhang Boli, the reason that they protested was for the betterment of the country that they loved. They wanted democracy and reform, human and constitutional rights to improve the lives of their fellow community members. But where Mainland China lacked support and safety for these advocates, Hong Kong – ranging from civil societies to the triads – expressed  an overflow of kindness and concern, eventually helping more than 400 dissidents. These efforts combined with the somewhat restrained actions of other countries, such as the US, France, and Canada, who risked important relations with China. All in all, while the Chinese fought for their rights, Operation Yellowbird was responsible for saving hundreds.