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8.
We have no good estimate yet of the number of arrests in our area, nor of the number of students or intellectuals known to be in hiding. However an undoubted silver lining has been the readiness of good friends here to maintain contact. I have also found that relationships have become closer. The veils of careful dishonesty which both sides have sometimes felt it better to preserve have now dropped away. There are also less good friends or good vulnerable ones who maintain the tradition of lying with a poker face.
9.
My best Fudan contact came to lunch three days ago despite having to negotiate the guard here and despite having signed a public petition in support of the students (against his wife's advice). There were a number of acts of bravery amongst Shanghai's artists and intellectuals. One which should be particularly remembered is the fund-raising concert given by the Principal Conductor of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Mr Chen Xieying, who took his orchestra out onto the street.
10. The Soviet Consulate has a big presence here and we see quite a lot of them. At a time when most Western commentators thought Li Peng was insecure their political analyst Viatislav Lukjanchuk ("Slava" to his friends at the regular Australian TGIF drinks) told me firmly that Li would remain Prime Minister and that we were all under-estimating the strength of the old army veterans. While he was, in may ways, right, I suspect that we got a Inumber of points more correct than Soviet observers about the inherant strengths of the pro-democracy movement. Perhaps an honourable draw in interpreting middle kingdom affairs, with the West characteristically erring on the side of the revolutionary future and the Soviet Union on the side of the feudal past. Das Kapital and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were products of the same intellectual and emotional climate of 19th century Europe.
11.
Colleagues in Moscow might look out for Slava when he is back in Moscow on leave around 17 July. He is a good contact and his daughter Marsha has English lessons from my wife. He made a couple of points new to me last night about Jiang Zemin and his new position. First, when an 18-year-old he taught mathematics in the "Resist Japan" school in Yanan: the head of the school was .... Yang Shargkun. Second, he is Deng's choice partly because of his presentational qualities. We agreed he is a politician
and unlike most Chinese leaders can speak fluently and often wittily without notes. (The Governor of Hong Kong saw him in action here in November 1986 and will no doubt also remember that Jiang actually paid far more attention to Miss Lydia Dunn as she then was and that was because he likes his eyes to feast on lovely ladies not because of a polical judgment about who matters in Hong Kong). ITW !
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