The Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Beijing arrived late as usual on May 11.

Beijing had changed much since I ended my residence here in 1984.What had grown steadily in the years since was the sense of political activism, political fervor.

In January 1987, on a visit to Shanghai, I found young people engaged in political discourse as had not been possible in China in more than forty years. The excitement in the streets, outside the gates of Fudan University was palpable. 

I had seen a similar headiness during visits to Beijing in 1979 and 1980 when Deng Xiaoping had tolerated a limited degree of popular political expression. Then it took the form of "big character posters" written by groups and individuals, both signed and unsigned, plastered on a brick wall along the capital's Chang An Boulevard. The wall came to be known as "Democracy Wall."

By Spring 1989, the movement for reform of the communist party had reached critical mass. The May 15 visit of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, to which I was assigned, simply fanned the flames of protest...When Gorbachev left, I stayed on.

"Goddess of Democracy; late May 1989" 

On Sunday May 28, I again had the lead story of ABC's World News Tonight. Despite a martial law declaration and an order that the "counter-revolutionary elements" end their agitation, the student movement in Beijing still seems to have a head of steam up.

But I wrote in my diary on May 28th."A split has developed in the movement. Wuer Kaishi is advocating for the safety of all, an early retreat. The young firebrand Chai Ling, however, pushes for prolonging the standoff. 

At Bei Da (Beijing University) Wang Dan says 'we have achieved a lot…most of all a changed attitude of people toward the government.'" 

By June 1, my notes record the suspicion that the students may have lost their way." They continue in the square. But the life has gone out of the movement. There is little to report this Thursday. The government repeats its 'martial law' orders and re-iterates restrictions on media coverage."

On June 2nd, I taped a piece to camera:

 "For many Chinese, it's still not wise to take many chances. But people increasingly wonder about a government that issues so many threats but takes so little action. There is a sense that somebody must act soon."

On the afternoon of June 3rd, I wrote in my notebook: "People in the streets are celebrating a victory. They have defied martial law. They have refused to call off their protests in Tiananmen  Square. Some believe they have the momentum again in forcing China's leaders to reform the party, to allow free expression, to put a stop to corruption. They feel they have pushed back the army back in the west. They gather again just outside the Great Hall of the People in their thousands."

Students camped out in Tiananmen Square June 3,1989, the night before the massacre."

The Massacre

By nightfall that certainty had vanished. Ominous signs emerged. Reports came in that fresh troops were assembling on all sides of the capital. Everyone in or near Tiananmen Square seemed nervous.

Shortly after 7pm, feeling the exhaustion of 8 days, I returned to my hotel room at the Great Wall Sheraton for a nap. 

I was awakened sometime just after 10:30."The army is moving in," our assignment editor shouted in my ear, "there is a lot of gunfire." I was out the door in an instant. Grabbing a two-way radio , I joined my cameraman Charlie Pinkney and my young friend and interpreter Wen Jun. We headed west to Muxidi, west of Tiananmen Square. 

Since we already had reporters stationed at the square itself, my first reaction was to get to the hospitals nearest to the action to assess the scale of injury caused by the gunfire.

I was not prepared for what I saw next.

As we entered the Beijing Children's Hospital, there was applause amid gunfire. That was the astounding thing. They were applauding us, Charlie and Wen Jun and I and our camera. Urging us to do our job.

"Tell the world what they have done here," they screamed as if with one voice. "Get inside the hospital. Shoot. Shoot. Pai Dian Shi . Take pictures. The world must know."

As midnight approached, the crowd pushed us toward the entrance of hospital. Several thousand people shouted outside the hospital gates. We seemed to be drowning in a sea of hysteria. 

Ambulances came and went. Many more bicycle pedicabs arrived carrying horribly wounded young people. At one point our vehicle was commandeered to bring in more wounded.

The hospital entrance was packed with people of all ages unified by the incredible rage which shown on their faces. 

If there were a way to touch the deepest recesses of shock and anger, we touched it that night. I counted several dead. I was told later 50 died at Beijing Children's.

My assistant Wen Jun, then a 20 year old junior at Beijing University, birthplace of the student democracy movement of the late 1980's, recalls his fear that night.

"I couldn't get over it. Mu Xi Di, where there was the highest death toll, was a family residential area. Many residents were high government officials. People had come out on their balconies to look as the troop convoy advanced toward Tiananmen. Many arrived at the hospitals wounded or dying in their pajamas. They were all innocent." 

They weren't demonstrators, just bystanders, shot in a crazy fusillade of bullets just sprayed  along the wide avenue in every which direction.

We visited three hospitals in the hours just before and after midnight June 4th.It was the same at all three - blood and anger.

The "2nd Artillery Li Shi Road Clinic." (Nan Li Shi Lu) was right in the middle of a military area. The little clinic was quickly overwhelmed by patients.

The facility only a block off of Fu Xing boulevard was itself in harms way.
As we crouched down behind cars parked in front of the clinic, stray bullets whizzed over our  heads. As the badly wounded arrived sprawled on peddle carts, clinic staff with panic on their faces were turning people away.

"Go to Fu Xing Hospital they shouted. Or the Children's Hospital. We can't handle bullet wounds"

Elsewhere very soon, the desire to let the world know what was happening, turned to fear of the consequences if the Chinese hospital staff were known to be cooperating with the foreign media. 

"You can't be in here!" one nurse shouted! "You are interfering with our work," exclaimed a doctor.

I went off to file the details with my two way radio. Wen Jun meanwhile got into a heated argument with hospital officials who had now turned against us.

By 3 am we broke off our round of hospitals and headed back to the Great Wall Hotel.

 It was the next morning. We were dead tired. And I was about to make one of my greatest  mistakes in television.

How does it feel to ruin man's life? I don't suppose many journalists spend time pondering that question. 

I don't know how many reporters can say that through their work, through their medium, they have ruined a life. 

The thought that I can say that has haunted me for more than ten years. 

In 1994, a 47 year old factory worker named Xiao Bin was released from prison after serving five years of a ten year sentence.

His crime was that he had talked to me!

Next Page