Li Rui’s daughter reflects on the anniversary of June 4 in the wake of the legal victory to secure his legacy from erasure by the Party.

By Probe International

Follow-up Report on the “Li Nanyang v. Chinese Customs” Case (142)

— Li Rui’s Diaries Preserved at Hoover, the CCP’s Crimes Engraved in History
June 1, 2026, Li Nanyang

“Protecting the Party? No. Deng Xiaoping was protecting himself. He wanted to ensure that,
after his death, China would not produce a Khrushchev who might denounce him and destroy his
reputation. To achieve that goal, he was willing to do anything—even if it meant tearing the
Party apart or ordering troops to fire on ordinary people in the Party’s name.
That is the essence of the issue. The June Fourth crackdown was a military action directed
against the people, decided upon by Deng Xiaoping himself and launched in pursuit of his own
interests.”
— Bao Tong

The quotation above, from the late Bao Tong—Zhao Ziyang’s former chief of staff and a principled eyewitness to power—cuts to the heart of the June Fourth tragedy. It reveals not just a military crackdown on unarmed citizens, but the personal calculations of Deng Xiaoping, who chose to protect his own legacy at the cost of lives and the Party’s soul. These words, drawn from Li Nanyang’s My Life Took a Turn in 1989, carry special weight because they echo the testimony preserved in her father Li Rui’s diaries—80 years of primary historical documents, including correspondence, meeting minutes, work notes, official government policy paperwork, poetry, photographs, and continuous handwritten diaries (1935–2018).

On March 31, 2026, a U.S. judge issued Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law affirming Stanford University’s (Hoover Institution’s) rightful ownership of Li Rui’s diaries. Despite eleven counterclaims and defenses—from alleged copyright infringement to enforcing a Chinese court judgment—the finding represents a decisive defeat of efforts by the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies to seize and silence these irreplaceable historical records.

Li Rui, a former high-ranking Party official who became one of its most courageous critics, documented the regime’s inner workings with unflinching honesty. His June 4, 1989 entry, with its raw account of gunfire, armored advances, and ordinary citizens shouting “Fascists!” and “Bandits!” from their balconies, stands as living proof of what the authorities have tried so hard to erase. By securing these diaries at the Hoover Institution, this legal battle ensures that the truth endures—engraved, as Li Nanyang writes, “in the pillar of history.”

A scholar and archivist affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Nanyang has documented her struggles and confrontations with Chinese officials since 2013, including the legal struggle over her father’s diaries, the court hearings, related personal and family matters (including disputes over Li Rui’s archives), as well as broader commentary on Chinese politics, law, and society in a serialized blog/newsletter-style format circulated by overseas Chinese-language blogs, exile/dissident websites, and platforms like Wenxue City or IPK Media.

Below is Nanyang’s June 1 entry from her ongoing “Follow-up Report” series, featuring an abstract from Li Rui’s diary and his record of June 4 as he looked out over Tiananmen Square and a “scene unlike anything” he had seen before.

Translation of the Chinese-language original by Eleanor Zhang.

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