These days, Lois Snow has a far different relationship with the Chinese government. At 79, she is one of Beijing’s most vocal critics. Snow’s views on China took a U-turn on June 4, 1989, she says, when the People’s Liberation Army turned its guns on unarmed student protesters in Tiananmen Square. Snow calls Li Peng and other Chinese leaders who sent in the troops “arrogant people who should bear the consequences of their violence.” She now regularly flies from her Swiss home to America to join anti-Beijing protests.
She’s also determined to prevent her husband’s life from being turned into pro-party propaganda. China’s state-run Changchun Film Factory is making a movie, called “Mao Zedong and Snow,” that Lois Snow believes will alter her husband’s work into a cinematic paean to China’s current leaders. A screen of secrecy surrounds the movie; film officials in China refused to talk about it. Snow worries that the script includes material taken without authorization from her husband’s book–and is threatening to sue the studio for copyright violation and invasion of privacy.
Snow is especially angry about what she says is the continuing harassment of Tiananmen survivors. Last April government authorities refused to let her meet with some of the families of students shot down in 1989. During that five-day trip, she says, “secret agents in black sunglasses and black cars followed me everywhere–it felt like I was in a cheap spy movie.” When Snow returned home, she found “seven or eight members of the Chinese film crew videotaping outside my house.”
Song Jiangbo, one of the film’s directors, says “Mao Zedong and Snow” will not be shown publicly in China until mid-2001. He denies that his script has lifted any portion of Edgar Snow’s “Red Star.” He calls Lois Snow’s objections to the film “just a pretext–everyone knows that her conflict is with the [Communist] Party and the events of June 4, 1989.”
Snow forecasts that China’s 20-year-old market reforms are unleashing forces that will eventually change the country’s political leadership. Says she: “No one believes in communist ideals anymore, including the leaders of the party.” Call her a disillusioned red star.
