California Court Keeps Li Rui's 1989 Tiananmen Diaries at Stanford Hoover Institution
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jun 3
California Court Keeps Li Rui's 1989 Tiananmen Diaries at Stanford Hoover Institution
2 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jun 3
Summary
A California court ruled this year that Li Rui’s diaries will remain at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, rejecting an effort to send the papers back to China.
Li’s daughter, Li Nanyang, said she transferred the diaries to Hoover to honor her father’s wishes and argued they could be destroyed or hidden if returned.
The dispute began after Li’s 2019 death, when his widow sued for the papers; Nanyang and Hoover said the case was driven by CCP pressure, an allegation the widow’s lawyers denied.
Li, a senior Communist party official, recorded elite politics and described 4 June 1989 as a “black weekend” with soldiers “firing randomly,” making the diaries a rare firsthand account.
The ruling comes as overseas projects such as the China Unofficial Archives, launched in 2023, try to preserve Tiananmen records amid tighter censorship and harassment inside China.