Tiananmen and China’s Future: The View Five Years Later

Chai Ling was a member of the Beijing Federation of Autono mous Student Unions and emerged as one of the principal student leaders at Tiananmen. She fled China in April 1990 and is currently living in Boston.

Shen Tong led the Olympic Institute, a political discussion group, at Beijing University and was also one of the principal student leaders at Tiananmen.

Yan Jiaqi, a prominent Chinese political scientist and member of the Chinese Communist party, became a leader of the Beijing Autonomous Federation of Intellectuals during the student demonstrations at Tiananmen. He later escaped to France and was elected head of the Paris-based Front for a Democratic China.

Gao Xin was one of the four who signed the June 2 hunger strike proclamation, a former editor of the weekly newspaper of Beijing Normal University; today he is at Harvard’s Fairbank Center.

Wang Juntao was deputy editor-in-chief of the independent Economic Studies Weekly and a former central committee member of the Communist Youth League of China. Sentenced to a 13-year prison term for “reactionary” activities, he was released earlier this year because of health reasons; he is currently a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center.