EXILE'S EMOTIONAL TOLL CHINESE DISSIDENTS LIVING IN US STRUGGLE TO KEEP THE FAITH

Author(s): Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff Date: June 22, 1998 Page: A1 Section: Metro

Shen Tong came to America a frightened undergraduate, on a dead run from the June 1989 massacre of unarmed demonstrators around Tiananmen Square. Now a graduate of Brandeis defending a doctoral thesis at Boston University, he promotes democracy in China from a spacious house in Wellesley.

Yang Jianli already was in this country, working on a doctorate in math at the University of California at Berkeley, when the democracy movement that would be crushed by the massacre emerged. He rushed back to China to advise and support students in the square; on June 4, he watched as 30 of them were killed. Now Yang is a PhD candidate at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and is active in broadcasting and publishing pro-democracy information in China.

Both men are "Forty-niners," leading dissidents whose names are on a list of 49 people most strictly banned from returning to China. Both are doing well, academically and materially, in the United States. But in their home lives, they are very different.

Yang has married, fathered a son, and bought a Cambridge three-decker he and his friends are rehabilitating. Shen is single and a renter who says he can't bring himself to buy a house. "I feel like I always have to be ready to pack and go back in three days," he says.

Nine years after Tiananmen, on the eve of the first visit to China by a US president since the bloodletting, China's exiles are divided -- not by bitter personal and political competition, as they were just after the massacre, but by difficult personal emotions and choices forced on them by their banishment and the decimation of their ranks.

"We often run into a dilemma of conscience," Yang says. "I don't feel sad I'm here, but we all want to go home and share the burden, share the suffering with our colleagues. My dream is to contribute to democratization there."

Elite Chinese students -- especially those from Beijing and Qinghua universities, the Chinese analogues to Harvard and MIT -- have little trouble making their way in this country. Most are able to qualify for scholarships and teaching assistanceships at top-flight schools.

Life is harder for older exiles and for worker-intellectuals. "Among older dissidents whose English is not so good, there is an element of quiet desperation to their lives," says William Alford, director of East Asia legal studies at Harvard Law School and a frequent visitor to China. "These intelligent, well-spoken people, who were not high-profile dissidents, are just managing to get by."

Wang Xizhe, who lives in a one-room apartment in Somerville, speaks little English and receives bare subsistance for academic work, compared with PhDs. Wang spent 15 years in prison for political offenses before being freed in 1993 as part of a bid by China to increase its chances of winning the 2000 Olympics by softening its repression of political dissidents. After two years of police harassment and surveillance, he fled.

"After long years in prison, I felt I needed to get charged with the knowledge of what was going on in the world," Wang says, "and I was being monitored so closely it was impossible to accomplish anything there."

Now, he says he "probably will return home as soon as possible. A couple of years is enough to study and recharge . . . so when I am recharged, I should return."

Merle Goldman, a Boston University professor who specializes in Chinese intellectual history and dissent, says exiles who are qualified scientists or who go into business are doing well here, while "the ideologues cannot find a job."

Members of the exile community generally are "very helpful to each other," she adds, working out "communal living arrangements, sharing food" when that is necessary.

Exiles generally agree that it would not be difficult for them to return to China in defiance of the ban on their entry, but say they would be swiftly apprehended and probably imprisoned once they tried to support themselves or renew their liberalization activities.

Some, like Wang, say they don't care and will return regardless. Others say they can do more for the democratization of China from exile, but they are torn by the recognition that the longer they are away, the more they lose touch with their rapidly changing homeland, and the weaker their voices become.

The solution for many of the activists is to work on projects, including publishing and broadcasting in mainland China, and meeting with sympathetic mainland intellectuals, while avoiding direct confrontation with authorities. It is intellectually daring, absorbing work, they say.

"We have a large operation in China, and the people we are working with are closely watched," says an advocate in one of several foundations with Boston-area ties that are active on the mainland. "Yet there are certain things you can do" even in expressing, publishing, and broadcasting messages in support of liberalization. "There is a space, a gray area, for negotiation of visible dissent."

The passage of time, approval by President Bush of permanent residence status on request for any Chinese student who entered the United States legally after the massacre, and the gradual relaxation in China of the repressive atmosphere all have reduced the ranks of exiled dissidents. Activists who have persevered say this has not necessarily been bad.

In the fall of 1989, Shen says, there were 8,600 Chinese dissident groups around the world, and the number of dissident students was estimated in the tens of thousands. Now there are fewer organizations, and the number of dissidents barred from returning probably is about 200, with perhaps twice that number in self-imposed exile.

As a result, activists say, there is far less personal rivalry among those who have stayed the course. Disagreements over how to act, and how to encourage the United States to act, toward China are much more civil.

"Most students -- including many of the leaders -- were not highly politically motivated" before the massacre, Shen said. "Those who stayed with the movement got a chance to really understand politics as a serious vocation with its own ethics, its own rhythms and balances."

In addition, Harvard Law's Alford notes, "where everyone was looking for political solutions in '89, they have now come to realize that change comes in many ways -- through economics, and through communication that is not directly political but has hopeful expectations for society."

In this environment, all concerned are sensitized to symbols. Thus there is virtually no opposition to President Clinton's visit to China, which begins Thursday. But there is apprehension over how Clinton will handle the welcoming ceremony at Tiananmen Square, a ritual on which the Chinese government insisted.

Liu Gang, third on the list of students most wanted by the Chinese government following the massacre, served six years in jail. He was beaten, subjected to electric shocks, and kept in isolation. Harassed by police and prevented from working when he was released, he fled, and is now barred from returning. Recently, he received a master's degree in computer science from Columbia University, and last week he started work at Teradyne in Boston.

"To go there, that's his business," Liu says of Clinton. "But if he goes he should do something for the victims of 1989. Tiananmen Square is a very sensitive place."

Many exiles believe Clinton is making a mistake going to the square. They themselves are torn over the symbolism and don't believe the president has a grasp on it at all.

"It is not proper," Yang says. "Tiananmen Square is the symbol of murder. It is a symbol of organized lying and coverup. . . . How can Chinese people interpret it if he is welcomed where so many died, and just shakes hands and says nothing