The events of Tiananmen Square have been erased from Chinese history. On the 25th anniversary of the massacre, eyewitness accounts are tackling this public amnesia
Many young Chinese have no idea what happened in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 Photo: Magnum London
To those who watched it unfold – the massive demonstrations across Chinese cities; the sea of protesters’ tents in Tiananmen Square; the open confrontation between student activists and Party elders; the erecting of a “Goddess of Democracy” statue in Tiananmen, right in front of the portrait of Mao – an overturning of Chinese Communist rule seemed genuinely possible in 1989. Then, on the night of June 3, the People’s Liberation Army turned its guns on the people. A handful of vignettes retain a powerful hold on our memories of this year: the pale, hunger-striking students in the square, their banners demanding “democracy or death”; the grainy video of a white-shirted civilian successfully facing off a tank just south of the Forbidden City on June 5.
The writer Paul French has described the protests and their denouement as “the most pivotal moment in modern China’s history”. Both Louisa Lim and Rowena Xiaoqing He justify this claim in their fascinating new books exploring the realities and legacies of these events on their 25th anniversary. In 1989, for the first time in the history of the People’s Republic of China, “people power” threatened to defeat the iron fist of the state. On May 20, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed martial law and truckloads of soldiers began travelling into Beijing, with orders to secure Tiananmen Square. Only a few miles into their mission, however, throngs of civilians hemmed in the lorries, explaining why they were protesting and asking the army to “go home”; a few days later, the troops retreated. “You might have said that our army was big and powerful,” one of the soldiers later told Louisa Lim, “but at that time… we felt very useless.” In order to reassert authority over the capital in early June, the government needed to mobilise armed divisions personally loyal to the country’s veteran leader, Deng Xiaoping.
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