FEATURE: Tiananmen: 20 years on

On the evening of June 3, 20 years ago, protesting Chinese students filled Beijing's Tiananmen Square, not knowing that the People's Liberation Army was about to roll through with tanks and other heavy weapons.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed that night and the next day. It was the brutal culmination of months of pro-democracy demonstrations, and for many, the scars have not healed.

Inside China, this event remains virtually taboo in terms of public discourse, and the government has been preparing to make sure that the anniversary is not marked in any way.

Stephen McDonell

Last Updated: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 13:06:00 +1000

With the dawning of each new day, under the gaze of former leader Mao Zedong, the Chinese flag is marched through Tiananmen Gate, then out and on to the giant square named after it. The flag raising is a solemn occasion. After all, Tiananmen Square is the heart of Beijing, and in many ways, the heart of China.

But this time 20 years ago, the mood was very different. Mass protests started off peacefully, when hundreds of thousands of students occupied Tiananmen Square for six weeks in 1989. Inflation was soaring and corruption rife.

Wang Junxiu was a third year law student at the time. He joined the wave of street protests along with nearly all his classmates. They didn't know exactly what they wanted, but the early days were full of idealism.

"The weather was very hot and after shouting out for freedom and democracy, it was like drinking a cup of cold water - very cold, very nice, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet," he said.

"It was like eating an ice block on a hot day."

The students could take over Tiananmen Square because the Chinese leadership was split into two factions which couldn't agree how to respond to them.

"One was a much more conservative view about China - reform, yes, but very slow; versus people who felt we need political reform, we need economic reform, we need to take risks, we need to move forward, we need all of these," David Zweig, from Hong Kong's University of Science and Technology, said.

Troops approaching

The then leader of the reform faction was Communist Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang.

"Zhao Ziyang goes to Tiananmen Square and he speaks to the students and he says, 'I have failed you, but you must pull out of the Square because you will be hurt'," David Zweig said.

Standing next to him was young office manager Wen Jiabao, who would later distance himself from Zhao, and is now China's number two leader. What the students didn't know then was that China's supreme leader, Deng Xiaoping, was bringing in troops from outside Beijing and that Zhao was about to be purged.

For supporting the students, the former head of the Communist Party would spend the rest of his life under house arrest behind this door until he died in 2005. But this year, he sent a message from the grave in the form of voice recordings smuggled out of China on music cassettes. His secret memoirs have now gone on sale internationally, but not in China.

We went to visit one of those who smuggled the cassettes out of China. Zhao Ziyang's former aide, Bao Tong, who's also under house arrest. But we weren't allowed to see him, so I called Bao from outside.

"Some people from the Government have come and told me not to do any interviews this morning," he said.

Bao has since been sent on an enforced holiday outside of Beijing.

Gunfire and casualties

The recordings that Bao Tong smuggled out of his old boss make for eerie listening, as Zhao Ziyang describes events from 20 years ago.

"On the night of 3rd June, while sitting with my family in the courtyard, I heard intense gunfire. A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted and was happening after all,"

What Zhao could hear was the sound of the People's Liberation Army firing on its own citizens.

"Even after the soldiers fired, people couldn't believe it," said Xu Youyu from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "They thought these must be rubber bullets."

If the casualty figure is known to Chinese authorities, it remains a state secret.

Most of those who died were ordinary people on the outskirts of the square who were trying to protect the students from the soldiers.

Philosophy Professor Xu Youyu was on the Square for the last night of the protests.

"To shoot defenceless people?" he said.

"Even if I was one of China's rulers, even if I fully supported China's autocracy, even if I agreed to crack down on the students, I'd only agree to use the police to drag the students from Tiananmen Square - to use tanks and machineguns is totally unacceptable."

Then one man carried out what could be the most famous protest ever seen.

The image of a single Beijing citizen confronting the driver of one of the tanks is one that most people in mainland China have never seen.

We asked young people on the street if they knew what happened on 4th June, 1989.

"I was really young then. I don't know, sorry," one said.

"We are not too sure about that, sorry," answered another.

The Chinese Government seems happy with this state of affairs.

When we asked if the government would consider an apology, foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu replied: "The word "apologise" you use is inappropriate.

"Over the past 30 years, China has made great achievements in terms of economic and social development," he said.

We were told that most Chinese people are happy with their country's direction, so the notion of an apology to the students just doesn't exist.

In the official government transcript of the press conference, this question and answer were deleted, while international news reports about this anniversary, like those from the BBC and Voice of America, are being blocked in China.

High security

Twenty years after the mass protest and brutal crackdown here, Tiananmen Square is still a very sensitive place. You may not notice it if you come here as tourist, but there are security cameras and police and heavily armed soldiers all around this square. So if there's even the slightest hint of trouble, the authorities are ready to pounce.

On the anniversary of the brutal crackdown on mass student protests, the square has been locked down. Reporters are prevented from entering the square in the heart of Beijing.

Many hundreds of tourists have flowed into the square, as they always do for the flag-raising ceremony, but there's no sign of remembrance of the protest.

The scene is peaceful, and other than a major police presence, it seems like a normal day.

But it would be wrong to think that it's only heavy security which is holding back crowds of students wanting to emulate the protests of 1989.

"This is not a politicised student body," David Zweig said. "This is much more a student body today in China that's bought into the dream of a car, a better apartment. This is not the same youth that in the '80s - in the 1980s, they were much more idealistic."

For the class of 89 they're left to wonder whether things could have been different if they'd pulled out of the square earlier.

Wang Junxiu was a third year law student at the time.

"You may say if we'd taken more modest measures, less people would've been killed," he said.

"That's possible. But how then would we have been able to promote Chinese democracy?"

But for the families who lost their loved ones, those who saw the killings and those who still believe in the ideals of 1989, this is not a matter to let go.

"It is impossible to forget 4th June," Xu Youyu said.

"It's an earth-shattering event in modern China. For us to forget about this would be easily the biggest misfortune this nation has ever seen."