Word: jia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...night before the march, Jia Guangxi and his five roommates at Peking University toasted one another with farewell glasses of wine. "Some of us even wrote last wills," recalled Jia, 18, an economics major from Inner Mongolia. And why not? Chinese officials, having tolerated eleven days of protests by tens of thousands of students, were darkly warning of a crackdown that would put an end to the demonstrations once...
...Thursday morning Jia rose early, grabbed a megaphone and headed for the headquarters of the student organizing committee. As his classmates poured out of their dormitories, Jia held up his megaphone and shouted quotations from the constitution. "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration!" he bellowed. School officials blasted a threatening countermessage over loudspeakers: "Go back to your classes! Don't give in to pressure from your fellow students! Beware of the consequences to yourself and your family...
...Jia Guangxi and his fellow students took these actions as provocations and immediately began organizing their largest protest yet. "The government wants to intimidate us, but the measures they have resorted to only make us angry," he said minutes before the giant march began. Meanwhile, tear gas, helmets and ammunition were being readied for the police...
...Jia Guangxi is a good example. The son of two physicians, he lived a comfortable middle-class life before arriving at Peking University this year. He was only a halfhearted participant in the original rally on April 16. "I was rather doubtful that it could lead to anything useful," he says. Only after the police roughed up demonstrators in front of Zhongnanhai compound, where China's top leaders officially live and work, was he moved to strong action. Says he: "After that, all my social gripes came surging out, and I threw myself into the movement...
...Jia is hardly a firebrand. He still holds three youth posts at the university. And he intends to apply for membership in the Communist Party soon. "I idolize the party just as Christians do their religion," he said. "If China must establish some ideology, we should rely on the party...