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China
Thirty years after Tiananmen:  What remains in the popular memory and what doesn’t

  Harini Madhusudan

If the collective memory mobilisation of the Tiananmen ‘Massacre’ is inevitable, both sides of the story should remain afloat- 30 years now, and many years ahead. 

Research Associate, ISSSP, NIAS

Every year Chinese authorities detain dozens of people as part of their annual crackdown, ahead of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Chinese media censors any mention of the massacre and refuses to acknowledge the brutality and the impact, that the incident holds on its society. This incident is one of the main reasons for the emergence of media censorship in China, which exists even to this day.  Is the event truly forgotten among the recent generations in China? If rapid economic growth caused the Tiananmen, why has there not been another attempt at democratisation? Why is there an active attempt to mobilise the memories of the incident in 2019?

Brief Background

In May 1989, following the death of Hu Yaobang, pro-democracy protesters consisting of mostly students marched to the Tiananmen Square through Beijing. For these students, Hu was a symbol of liberal reform and clean government. They were quick to launch spontaneous mourning activities, using Hu's death to express their dissatisfaction with the pace of political change. Eventually, the students were joined by thousands of people at Tiananmen square and by the end of May, over a million people took to the streets in protest against the Communist Party. 

 In the background,  the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev for the four-day Sino-Soviet Summit was scheduled in Beijing between May 15–18. The original plan was to receive the Soviet delegation with a grand ceremony at Tiananmen Square. The protests disrupted with the visit and eventually, what was intended to be a “natural restoration” of relations between the two countries went unnoticed. Ultimately, the Soviet Union began to collapse in the same year. 

The western media were quick to catch on the story, and this propaganda in the western media made a lasting impact on China. Thirty years after, there still remain two persuasive political discourses associated with the incident. One group of experts say that the event was brutal and over 2000 students and protesters died at Tiananmen Square. They believe that the Chinese government has ‘covered up’ the incident very well. 

There is another group that believes that the incident was blown out of proportion in the western media and in reality, there were two kinds of protests ongoing in Beijing at the time and three groups of people present in the region. They say that most of the troops which entered the square were armed only with anti-riot gear — truncheons and wooden clubs; while they were backed up by armed soldiers and there were not many students killed. In reality, they say, a bunch of rebels killed the soldiers in the area by throwing gas lighters at moving vehicles carrying troops and PLA personnel. The former is widely believed across the world but the latter is what was revealed by Wikileaks in 2011, which included statements of ambassadors and foreign nationals who were around the region and got to witness the incident first-hand.

Suppressed Sentiments vs Collective Amnesia

 China has a systematic approach in its attempts to erase the incident from their history. It refuses to acknowledge that the incident event occurred. Every year around the time of the anniversary, China detains, house arrests and ensures that a specific group of people in China do not go anywhere far from the capital. Some of these are the names included with the pro-democracy protests and many others the families and friends of the victims from that time. This consists of the non-governmental group, Tiananmen Mothers, an independent Chinese filmmaker who tweeted a photo from the massacre and two brothers who produced alcohol called, “Eight Liquor Six Four,” which in Chinese, sounds precisely like the date of the incident. 

Do the present youth speak of the incident? Not really. In a study made by an American scholar, only 15 out of 100 students knew what Tiananmen Square incident was. This is because of the rapid change in Chinese society, which has led to a generational gap and ‘interest’ in the crackdown. Zhang Shijun was a medic with the PLA’s 54th Army Group. This was one of the groups that were called in to enforce the martial law on the days before the crackdown. Zhang, in his interview to SCMP, revealed that he resigned from the PLA just days later. He is known to speak publicly about his memories from that night, when asked if he has talked about the incident with his children, he told he would not bring up the events with his daughter unless she asks about it, recalling the horrors that his family faced every time his house was raided over the years. This shows that there is a strong intent in the society as well, to remove the memories from that day, or at least try not to impose the memories on their progeny. 

China’s will to completely censor the incident has been active in the past 30 years and will continue to remain the same. However, there have been multiple incidents that indicate that the memories are still fresh in the minds of the people. Despite knowing that the party will not spare anyone who tries to oppose, a report was published in 2016 that listed all the words that were tracked on Weibo, which have been used in place of the name of the incident. ‘History’s Wound,’ ‘square of eight,’ ‘35 May,’ ‘Butcher Deng,’ and over 200 words have been traced by this website to show how the people have not entirely forgotten or forgiven the incident. However, to the world, it seems like the collective memory in China portrays that the incident has disappeared. 

Economic Development and Pro-Democracy Movements 

When the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, the communist party called the protests a "counterrevolutionary riot", and the leaders who ordered the crackdown were never talked of. Spectators of the incident were convinced that another mass popular uprising was just a sneeze away. However, 30 years after, the world has not seen another such uprising in China, with Falun Gong unrest in 2005 as an exception. From time to time, some reports emerge of a few protests in China, but the scale has never been this huge. The party’s tactic was the reversal of the verdicts. This meant labelling the students as patriotic, erasing the criminal records of the thousands sent to prisons or labour camps, and paying compensation to the families of those killed.

Two things take the credit for this success of the Communist party, of defying the political and global trend of ‘more openness.’ First is China’s easing up of its market and joining the WTO. This has induced massive economic growth in China, has kept its peoples busy and also managed to develop at a higher pace against popular discontent. At the time of the incident, in the 1980s, China’s economy was growing, and there were significant economic, social and cultural reforms, which increased China’s international linkages. However, the domestic cost of living was high, and the people witnessed corruption and inflation, which frustrated them. Now, the situation is much better, and China manages to keep a growth rate above six despite the slowdown. 

Second is the famous Internet Censorship. China installed a firewall and ensured the removal of all global media platforms. WeChat, Weibo, Tencent came into being. These were crucial in gaining control over the web, and strict regulations removed anonymity. Well known bloggers called the “Big V’s” were closely monitored and many vanished. They have also managed to construct the world's most sophisticated, and high-tech system of population surveillance and control, popularly known as the ‘Social Credit’ system where every citizen is tracked virtually all the time. These have helped the party achieve durability in suppressing further dissent. 

 The propaganda surrounding the incident

Why does the Tiananmen Square incident get so much global attention even after 30 years? For over twenty days before the anniversary, multiple agencies and newspapers have flooded the internet with articles that talk about the day. In 2019, it feels over-done. China is not the first country that saw the student protests take a terrible turn, and it was certainly not the last one. Incidents similar to Tiananmen, have occurred in Thailand (1992) Algeria and Burma (1988) Philippines (1986) Korea (1980) to name a few, even Kent State or Bloody Sunday in the USA. These never get mentioned in the Western media, ever! 

One such example is the Voice of America radio broadcast. This was very popular among the Chinese youth during the 1980s. “VOA was broadcasting to the student protesters the whole time during their sit-in at Tiananmen offering comfort and encouragement, provoking, giving advice on strategy and tactics, from their broadcasting station at Hong Kong. “Who are they waiting for and why are they in a defensive position?” is one of the many rhetorical questions that were broadcasted to the students sitting in protest.” said one blog post by a researcher who has been living in China and interacting with hundreds of survivors. Incidentally, VOA is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy which is known to be a proxy of the CIA. This may very well be a Chinese counter-propaganda. Nevertheless, the distortion of truth in the media raises a lot of suspicions of the role played by the West and why it intends to hugely portray a dark side of China’s history, that it wants to be erased.

Considering the current strain in relations between China and the US and also knowing that the west uses its propaganda as a foreign policy tool, the representation of the incident in the media today seems misplaced. To conclude, if the collective memory mobilisation of the Tiananmen ‘Massacre’ is inevitable, both sides of the story should remain afloat- 30 years now, and many years ahead. 

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