Feature
Tiananmen
by Hamish McKenzie
Twenty years after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Government still suffers from 'collective amnesia', but there are many who will never forget.
It’s a grey and drizzly day in Tiananmen Square, one week out from the 20th anniversary of a massacre that is rarely spoken of here in China. Although the weather is grim, clumps of tourists pound the paving stones of this formidable testament to state power, following coloured tour-group flags to each historic corner, posing for happy snaps in front of a giant portrait of their cherished Chairman, and soaking up the site’s importance as the starting point for a Cultural Revolution that tore a country asunder.
Just south of the mausoleum that houses an embalmed and unsleeping Mao Zedong, stone statues depict fierce scenes of determined workers, peasants, and students embroiled in the work of the communist revolution. Standing in the square’s centre, tall, thick, alone, is a stone monument dedicated to the martyrs who gave their lives for the revolution.
Nowhere, however, is there a memorial to the hundreds – some say thousands – who were killed here by a ruthless government just two decades ago. When it comes to the events of June 4, 1989, the population of China – all 1.3 billion – suffers from what one local reporter has described as “collective amnesia”. Few can tell you who the democracy protesters were, or why they occupied this square for six weeks. Even fewer care.
I’m here with my Chinese-American girlfriend, posing as tourists (which, ostensibly, we are). We approach a Chinese man dressed in shorts and a dark blue T-shirt, with a camera hanging from a strap around his neck.
He’s here with two female companions – all look like they’re in their twenties. My girlfriend asks in Mandarin if they know what happened here in June of 1989.
“I was too young then – I don’t remember,” the young man says dismissively. And the women? He jumps in on their behalf. “They were even younger.” Putting his arm around one of the girls, he leads the group away. “That’s revolutionary talk,” he says with a coy smile, waving as he walks. “I don’t do that.”
One Chinese national who does engage in such taboo talk is 41-year-old Dean Peng, an economic consultant who, oddly, is a fan of Richard Prebble’s I’ve Been Thinking (he wants to translate it into Chinese). In 1989, the Beijing resident had just graduated with a physics degree from Beijing University. He says he was one of the last 10 protesters in the square on June 4.
“The authorities are quite successful in making people forget,” says Peng, a tall man with hunched shoulders, close-cropped hair, and a slight lisp that mars only slightly his articulate grasp of English. “The education is monopolised. They simply don’t talk about it.”
Until five years ago, Peng wasn’t what he calls a “June 4 man”. Although he held fast to democratic and free-market ideals, he considered himself a moderate intellectual with a balanced and objective view of the conflict between the Government and opposing ideas. Then, in 2003, his name made it onto a government blacklist. Although he can’t be sure, Peng assumes it was because he advocated for the release of blogger Liu Di in the foreign media. Liu had been detained because she satirised the Communist Party and called for the release of other cyber-dissidents. She was ultimately released and Peng claims he was later struck off the blacklist.
After that case made headlines, Peng found himself under house arrest for a 10-day period during the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Police guards blocked his apartment door and would push him back inside if he tried to leave.
“The authorities tried to shut me up,” he says during an interview at a cafe in Beijing’s trendy Sanlitun district, “and that is the very reason I should keep talking about it.”
As the army’s tanks rolled in to literally crush the Tiananmen Square protesters that bloody day, Peng remembers being puzzled. “I was wondering, ‘What is going on inside the top leadership?’ It was so stupid and evil-minded. It was not necessary. There were many, many, many other means to stop it.”
It took him 15 years to reach a conclusion about the government’s tactics. “The philosophy of this regime is ruling. No discussion. Negotiation is not allowed. Only one thing is allowed: ‘You tell me what your [grievance] is and you beg justice for it.’ No other way. You cannot go demonstrating – there must be no threat against the regime.”
Peng remembers that for two to three months after the massacre there was a concerted propaganda effort by the Government to justify the crackdown and assert that public order had been restored. The army embarked on a campaign to win back hearts and minds – offering free haircuts and bicycle repairs – and then, all of a sudden, all talk of the protests ceased and attention turned to the economy.
Since then, not a word has been printed in the Chinese press about the campaign, not a breath uttered in the Communist Party-approved television news bulletins, and the Government line has not wavered: as far as the Party is concerned, the case is closed. There has been no national reflection, and there likely never will be.
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