Last week, plainclothes police arrested and pummeled a young man in Tian An Men Square until he bled. His crime? Dropping a soda bottle.

Xiaoping, as in Deng Xiaoping, means "little bottle" in Chinese. Since last June's massacre in the square, thousands of Chinese have left bits of broken bottle glass in public places to protest the government's crackdown.

Members of an underground network of Chinese dissidents, which spans five continents and 20 countries, faxed messages throughout China calling for similar gestures of resistance, including prearranged walks, whispers and claps. Thousands of unsigned letters urged a silent stroll through Tian An Men Square to honor those who died last spring. And an underground newspaper, Steel Currents, called for the formation of a political opposition than could unite and disperse on command. All this compelled the Chinese government to shut down the area briefly and send in young scouts.

If breaking bottles and walking become subversive acts, the pro-democracy movement will triumph. If Tian An Men Square remains heavily guarded, the stroll will move to Shangdon Boulevard or to a host of other streets in Beijing until the government closes the city down. When the Asian Games open in August, foreign friends will chant "Tian An Men, Tian An Men, Tian An Men (clap-clap-clap)" in the hopes of starting a chorus.

The Western media have already confirmed that such small gestures of resistance in China provoke government brutality, the first step of its self-destruction. Last Sunday in Beijing, police arrested a scientist from Southern China for the crime of pinning white flowers on his shirt in mourning for pro-democracy demonstrators. Such repression cannot quell the pro-democracy movement.

Fourteen years ago, on the traditional day for remembering the dead--the Qingming Festival--the Chinese army brutally cracked down in Tian An Men. Thousands of Chinese, including one of the above authors, Chengsheng Li, put on black arm bands and placed gigantic wreathes and flowers at the Martyrs Monument in Tian An Men Square in honor of Chou En-Lai, who had died a few months earlier. The following evening, police moved in and clubbed people who didn't obey orders to leave.

Outraged by this assault, people fought back, burning two police vehicles and a police station bordering the square. The police returned the next night with armed gangs and forceably ejected the remaining few thousand "counterrevolutionaries." The square stayed closed until it was scrubbed clean of the blood.