CRAIG CALHOUN
577
practice of buying cheap and selling dear as shady.
As
exhilarating and unexpected as the success of the student protest
movement was, it is important to recognize some of the issues which were
inadequately faced and problems which remained unsolved. The first and
most important was simply that this was a movement of urban people with
almost no resonance in or connections to the countryside. This is not to say
that China's rural population is without grievances or uncritically supportive
of all government policy.
It
is not. But word of the protest spread less in the
countryside than in the cities, and primarily through official govenlment me–
dia. And few peasant children go to universities, so that the informal com–
munications network which spread unofficial and insider views of the protest
did not work effectively in rural areas. Links between students and peasants
also were inhibited by class bias. Students in the April 27th march shouted to
soldiers: "Farmers go home; you have no business here." Farmers in China
as elsewhere have suspicions about "city slickers." Moreover, some of the
complaints and interests of urban and rural populations pitted them at least
superficially against each other as consumers versus producers. Higher food
prices (even in the form of an end to the scrip payments by which peasants
were forced to loan money to the government) would have furthered the
inflation which worried urban people.
Students and urban workers found common cause in the protests, but
few organizational linkages united them. Though the idea of sending delega–
tions to visit factories, or offorming ajoint student-worker committee, were
sometimes mentioned, little action was taken. Occasionally activists mentioned
the model of Poland's Solidarity movement. This was a popular idea. But
Solidarity is rooted in stronger, more independent workplace organizations
than exist in China. It was enhanced by linkages between intellectuals and
the workers'movement in which the intellectuals did not completely preempt
the leadership positions. Polish society has more arenas free from close state
supervision than China. And in China there is no institution like the Polish
Catholic Church to
link
together urban and rural populations.
The student movement also was hampered by internal difficulties. One
was a weakness of decision-making capacity. Western reporters (like the
Chinese government in the course of its repression) often exaggerated the
role of centralized leadership in organizing the movement. In fact, leadership
was diffuse. Different contingents of demonstrators acted with some auton–
omy, guided by constant observation of each other rather than by directives
from a hierarchy ofleaders. This did not prevent a high level of organization,
but it made the implementation ofdecisions difficult.
The occupation ofTiananmen Square had provided the movement
with a setting at once neutral (not confined to anyone campus) and central.
It
