How ‘China’s IBM’ funded the movement and then paid for it
It may be hard to believe now but an electronics company, once predicted to become “China’s IBM”, was the primary corporate backer of the studentled unrest that swept China in 1989 only to be crushed by the military by June 4 of that year.
After the Tiananmen Square protests were quelled, the Stone Group Corporation — considered China’s top electronics company at the time — was accused by authorities of funnelling money into the movement and providing logistical support.
Till then, the company had the makings of a tech success story and was considered a model among privately initiated enterprises in a command economy.
Wan Runnan founded the company in 1984 and, a year later, moved to an office at Zhongguancun Street in Beijing – aptly called the start-up street or silicon street since then.
The group, in collaboration with Japanese company Mitsui, soon began to make, market and sell word processors.
“By 1988, Stone had captured 80% of the domestic word processor market, a share it would maintain until the mid-1990s. By 1988, Stone had finished its second year as China’s largest hightech firm having generated over RMB 830 million in total sales,” China scholar Scott Kennedy wrote for the China Quarterly Journal of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
But then came the turbulence of 1989 and Wan and his firm got swept into it, demanding political reform and a free economy.
Expectedly, the Stone Group fell on hard times soon after, with the army raiding its offices and arresting employees.
Wan’s flight abroad helped to soften the blows, and the company was not shut down because it had become an example of innovation in China. But survival came at a cost and it probably could never live up to its promise.