Journalist recounts covering China

CAMDEN – John Pomfret arrived in China as a journalist working for The Associated Press in May 1988, just as the youth-led pro-democracy movement gathered steam.

“It was a very interesting time,” Pomfret told those attending the Camden Conference on Saturday, with a million protesters regularly taking to the streets, calling for democracy.

The movement was crushed June 3-4, 1989, by Chinese troops killing untold numbers in Tiananmen Square and imprisoning more.

To illustrate how China has changed since that watershed event, Pomfret, who for five years was the Washington Post’s bureau chief in Beijing, related the story of an officer with the People’s Liberation Army whom he befriended.

The man was a cultural officer, who composed classical and jazz music. Just before the military crackdown, the officer summoned Pomfret and another reporter to a meeting where he disclosed in advance text of a speech announcing martial law.

Shortly after the crackdown, the officer was arrested, and Pomfret was detained and interrogated for six hours by Chinese officers. After denying the cultural officer had leaked the speech, the Chinese produced video and audiotapes of the men together.

Pomfret was expelled from the country, and he lost contact with his Chinese source and friend.

Returning to China in 1998, the reporter received a call from a man who wanted to set up a meeting between Pomfret and the officer. Pomfret felt guilty about the man’s fate.

“I was the reason he was locked up in jail,” he said.

When he met his old friend, Pomfret learned that he had been sentenced to 21/2 years in jail. A longer sentence would have meant he would lose his military job. On his release, the man was visited regularly by a Chinese official, and asked if he had changed his thinking.

Finally, growing angry at the harassment, the former officer left the military, moved from Beijing to another province, and got work in construction. He also began composing music again, landing work scoring Chinese patriotic documentaries.

On one film, extolling some Chinese victory, the lyrics spoke of high tides, “each wave higher than the previous one.” The refrain was repeated 15 times, Pomfret said.

Since the phrase “high tide” is synonymous in Chinese with “sexual climax,” Pomfret asked his friend, “What’s with all the ‘high tides’?” His friend answered that he wanted to subtly mock his audience, and so used the phrase as an inside joke.

The former officer is living well with two apartments and “a TV the size of my car,” Pomfret said, “but he’s living in a system he despises.”

That kind of cynicism dominates the middle class, he said.

In the 1980s, Chinese asked about their beliefs would say, “I believe in myself.” Today, they would likely answer, “I believe in nothing,” Pomfret said.

Like other speakers at the conference, he said China’s government is no longer driven by Marxist thought, but rather is “part Mafia, part corporate board.”