The Tiananmen Taboo

To assume the 1989 massacre has been forgotten by China is to assume the Communist party line

Beijing is reported to have forbidden live Olympics coverage from Tiananmen Square. This will be a bitter disappointment to international broadcasters, who would have cherished the exoticism of live pictures from China's most iconic site.

Tiananmen Square, and the massacrethat took place there in 1989 after six weeks of anti-government demonstrations, is one of China's great taboos. Some western commentators say that after nearly 20 years, people in China have forgotten the massacre of June 4, citing the fact that no one talks about it. That is true, no one talks about it. But I would contend that this does not mean it has been forgotten.

Nineteen years on, the Communist party is prepared to offend the western businesses it has spent so much time wooing for fear that some incident – a banner raised, a pot of paint thrown at the portrait of Chairman Mao – will echo the Tiananmen demonstrations, and will be captured on film and broadcast around the world. Nineteen years on, anyone in China typing "June 4" or "Tiananmen massacre" into Google will find their use of the search engine temporarily disabled by China's firewall. It is the party censors who have turned Tiananmen into a taboo, and precisely because they know it has not been forgotten.

Nineteen years ago, I watched from a 14th floor balcony of the Beijing Hotel as an armoured personnel carrier sped down Chang'An Avenue towards Tiananmen Square. I had expected these tank-like vehicles to be slow, lumbering things, but given a good straight urban road they were fast. I was a young foreign correspondent with no experience of war zones. I'd never seen a tracer bullet before, and I was horrified to learn that a tank could crush a bus pulled across the avenue as a roadblock and keep right on going. If June 4 was a nasty shock to me, that night was a tragedy for many families.

Nineteen years on, the house of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist party general secretary who supported the students, is still sealed off, although he is dead. His secretary, Bao Tong, is still under 24-hour surveillance, as is Ding Zilin, the mother of one of those who died.

The massacre was followed by mass arrests and a vicious purge. Those who had protested were forced to lie about their involvement or recant, face disgrace and worse. Of those who took part, hundreds were jailed, and between 50 and 200 are thought to still be imprisoned. Many others fled the country. Some of those have now returned, with foreign passports in their pockets and high-paying jobs in business. But millions came out to demonstrate – every day on the street I probably pass several people who took part.

And yet, in Beijing you almost never hear the words "June 4" uttered. Such is the party's alarm at the words "Six Four" (as the massacre is known) that I am always uncomfortably conscious of the fact that the digits six and four form part of my phone number. To the party, June 4 is a taboo because it fears that open discussion of the massacre would erode party authority. To the man and woman in the street, June 4 is taboo simply because to talk about it remains extremely dangerous.

One result of the taboo is that many young people simply do not know what happened in 1989, and that in itself is a propaganda coup. I have heard of Chinese students first learning about the massacre from foreign students. I am told that most families don't discuss June 4 in front of their children. It's a depressing topic, after all. There was no happy ending. Besides, there is no imminent prospect for change, so what's the point? Parents have seen what can happen to children if they rebel. Better to pretend it never happened, and get on with life.

Getting on with life is subtly different from the "Get a Life" school of thought, which says that June 4 is not a taboo, it's just irrelevant. This line of argument, advanced by some westerners and Chinese, runs thus: "China's moved on. It's not the same place that it was. Get a life." A sub-set of the "Get a Life" approach adds: "No country's perfect, every country commits human rights abuses. Get a life."

For those who want to believe the best of the Communist party – and this includes many people both Chinese and expatriate – there is a third option: "The Communist party really wants to admit that the massacre was wrong but it can't do so until the former leaders who were involved have died."

Traditionally, the Chinese are past masters at putting unpleasant truths behind them temporarily while they do the only thing they can do, which is to get on with life. For the past 19 years, that has meant elbowing for survival and in some cases even for prosperity in a chaotic, booming economy. That's certainly distracting. But getting on with life does not mean forgetting. Every year in Hong Kong, where there is more freedom and where there are many distractions, thousands gather to commemorate the June 4 massacre. When I do broach the topic with Chinese acquaintances, I become convinced that at some point in the not very distant future, June 4 will re-emerge as a political rallying point. Although people almost never bring it up in conversation, it only takes a little gentle encouragement in private to provoke a flood of anguished memory. One woman I know started to talk about a neighbour who had set fire to a petrol can in an effort to slow the advance of the army. "He was executed," she said, still clearly horrified all these years late, "just for that. He wasn't even allowed to see his family at the end." Another woman described how her husband had gone to the square and had seen doctors shot dead even while they were trying to collect the injured.

To assume Tiananmen is forgotten is to assume the party line. There are many people who would like to forget, but that is a different thing. I doubt the silence will go on forever.