ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to suggest that a greater appreciation of the "establishment" role of intellectuals will help us better understand the events of 1989 and the likely future contribution of intellectuals to China's unfinished revolution. It is devoted to putting the issue in perspective and highlighting some of the key features of the post-June Fourth contract between the intelligentsia and the state. It is true that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lost the "silent majority" of China's establishment intellectuals in 1989. The irony of the popular movement of 1989 and its suppression is that the wishful image of increasing professional autonomy many of us thought saw before June has become more of a reality precisely because of the suppression of traditional forms of loyal remonstrance Intellectuals have made a further step in the movement from priest-rentiers serving the cosmic state to professionals salaried in a bourgeois society.
