The information on these pages about Chai Ling and Jenzabar, the software company she runs with her husband, Robert Maginn, contains excerpts from and links to articles about Jenzabar in The Boston Globe, Forbes, Business Week, and other publications, and is intended to provide the reader with additional information about Chai Ling, one of the most well-known and controversial figures from the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. These web pages are the sole responsibility of the Long Bow Group, and are in no way affiliated with or sponsored by Jenzabar, Inc.
About Chai Ling and Jenzabar, Inc. | News Accounts
Update 2009:
Twenty years after the events of 1989, Chai Ling and her company, Jenzabar, are attempting to censor this website. The Boston PBS station, WGBH, released a statement about the lawsuit, saying that it "poses first amendment issues and is a potential threat to all newsgathering, reportorial and academic sites."
Click the following links to read a summary of their lawsuit against the Long Bow Group, and to read an online appeal for support.
For independent coverage of the lawsuit, see the Guardian, Nov. 17, 2009: From Democracy Activist to Censor, the Boston Globe, June 7, 2009: Beijing Lesson Unlearned, The World (from the BBC, PRI, and WGBH), June 4, 2009: A Legal Dispute Over Remembering Tiananmen, the Times of London, May 4, 2009: Tiananmen activist Chai Ling sues makers of film about 1989 protest, and the New Yorker, May 7, 2009: The American Dream: The Lawsuit.
In 1998, Chai Ling founded a software company, Jenzabar, of which she is President and COO; her husband, Robert Maginn, is the CEO. Jenzabar has received considerable publicity in part because of Chai Ling's role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.Jenzabar itself, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, "plays up the past celebrity of its founder, Chai Ling. ...Company press releases, which invariably note that Ms. Chai was 'twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize,' breathlessly describe Jenzabar as a tool to 'create another kind of revolution,' fueled by communications technology." (Sept. 3, 1999, "Colleges Get Free Web Pages, but With a Catch: Advertising")
Chai Ling has also actively cultivated her public image and openly expressed her desire to use her connection to Tiananmen Square to promote her current activities. As stated in the South China Morning Post ("Seizing the Day All for Herself", written on the 10th anniversary of the June 4 massacre):
Ms Chai's publicist has been reminding the world that Ms Chai's job prior to being smuggled out of China to the United States was "leading thousands of students against a communist government more ruthless than Microsoft".
She also suggested that June 4 would be a good opportunity to write about Ms Chai's Internet start-up which runs a site called jenzabar.com.
"Ling is a dynamic personality who has found many similarities between running a revolution and an Internet start up," journalists have been told. "Ling used the techniques and charisma of a true revolutionary to impress the CEOs of Reebok, WebTV/Microsoft and Bain to back Jenzabar."As a public persona, Chai Ling has attracted attention from multiple media sources. A number of stories published about Jenzabar begin with the saga of the student leader from China who became a successful entrepreneur in America. For example, a Business Week (June 23, 1999) headline reads, "Chai Ling: From Tiananmen Leader to Netrepreneur." Computerworld (May 6, 1999) leads with: "Tiananmen activist turns software entrepreneur." Or as Forbes (May 10, 1999) puts it, "From Starting a Revolution to Starting a Company."
Other articles from the international press present different perspectives on Chai Ling and her relationship with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. See, for example, American Dream (The Boston Globe, Aug. 8, 2003, byline: Steve Bailey), which concludes:After Tiananmen, Chai detractors said her hero's image did not square with her hardball tactics. Now her critics are saying much the same again, this time about her corporate life. Meanwhile, Chai continues to sell her story of the Tiananmen heroine-turned-American-entrepreneur. "Today, I am living the American dream," Chai told Parade magazine in June.Daniel Lyons, in Forbes.com (Great Story, Bad Business, Forbes.com, Feb. 17, 2003, byline: Daniel Lyons), notes:
With Ling Chai, distinguishing the dream from the reality has always been the hardest part of all.Chai Ling would like total control over her biography. In her version, she risks her life leading student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, escapes China stowed in a crate and is twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Then she moves to America and marries a millionaire venture capitalist who bankrolls her promising internet startup. Alas, the market crashes before the company can go public, and it is unfairly besieged by lawsuits from former executives....
"You're not going to write about that, are you?" Chai says, when asked about the suits. "Do you really have to mention those things?" Chai's seeming naiveté is a little out of character. She has frequently scored points in the press by recalling her glory days as onetime 'commander-in-chief' of rebel students in Beijing.Lyons may have been referring to an article written about Jenzabar by Chai Ling herself, which is headlined: "Revolution Has Its Price: In Tiananmen Square, she was a student leader who stood up to tanks. In the U.S., she became a software executive who had to deal with venture capitalists. Guess which one was the tougher opponent." In the article, Chai Ling wrote:
For me, the longest hour and the longest night I ever lived was in Tiananmen Square, in 1989, when the student movement tried to demand democracy of our nation's unyielding governors. My role was to lead a hunger strike for seven days and nights. We tried to be peaceful. We tried to be rational. But the end result was tanks, bloodshed and the massacre of innocent people.
Here, at least, power in Washington can change hands without bloodshed, according to the expressed will of the people. And economic revolution, even a minor one such as that fostered by Jenzabar, occurs without bloodshed. Even in the dot com bust, no one had to die.
But the creation of a company is no less stressful than running a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square.
... But I am happy, because I am the leader of another student movement. I have been given the chance, by fate, to help the youth of America prepare for the next century.
... As we found in China, even the most determined authority can't put technology back in the bottle.
Which makes its dispersion the greatest revolution any student, faculty member or administrator who cares about freedom of thought can be involved in.In other contexts, Chai Ling has appeared more reluctant to discuss her role in the 1989 events. In "Anatomy of a Massacre" (Village Voice, June 4, 1996), Richard Woodward made multiple attempts to interview Chai Ling for a cover story about The Gate of Heavenly Peace and her role in the student protest movement. "At first she was 'too busy.' When I offered to call at another time, she said with fatigue, 'It's over. I don't want to get involved.'"
Similarly, in his book Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing, Ian Buruma describes a meeting he had with Chai Ling in 1999:We met for a cappuccino in a nice outdoor café in Cambridge, Massachusetts… Chai handed me a folder with promotional material. It contained references to her career at the Harvard Business School and her "leadership skills" on Tiananmen Square. She spoke to me about her plans to liberate China via the Internet. She joked that she wanted to be rich enough to buy China, so she could "fix it." But although she was not shy to use her celebrity to promote her business, she was oddly reluctant to discuss the past. When I asked her to go over some of the events in 1989, she asked why I wanted to know "about all that old stuff, all that garbage." What was needed was to "find some space and build a beautiful new life." What was wanted was "closure" for Tiananmen. I felt the chilly presence of Henry Ford's ghost hovering over our cappuccinos in that nice outdoor café. From being an icon of history, Chai had moved into a world where all history is bunk.
[Ian Buruma, Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 9-10.]Because of her status as a public figure, future media coverage will continue to throw light on Chai Ling for those who are interested in following her story.