ABSTRACT
The Western press and Chinese dissidents abroad usually characterize the events of China's spring as a "democracy movement". Metaphors from the world of the theater are so much a part of the language of politics in modern China that protesters and observers continually adopted theatrical turns of speech. The analyses offered by Western social scientists, foreign journalists, and Chinese dissidents, though considerably more persuasive than the official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) line, are also problematic. Many, especially the professional Pekingologists of political science, stress the role that power struggles between Li Peng and Zhao Ziyang played in shaping the 1989 events. Imperial ritual, the highest genre of h, was overwhelmingly confined to the palace and the special temples for imperial sacrifices near the capital. Ritual gives relatively limited play to the creative powers of scriptwriters or actors, and as soon as participants break away from traditional structures, their actions become theatrical.
