The Power of Tiananmen’s Memory; On the massacre’s 25th anniversary, China’s leaders fear the signs that unrest is reviving

The Power of Tiananmen’s Memory

On the massacre’s 25th anniversary, China’s leaders fear the signs that unrest is reviving.

WU’ER KAIXI

June 3, 2014 7:17 p.m. ET

The Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 has been banished from the collective memory of the Chinese people. Or so we are often told. It is certainly true that many older Chinese don’t want to talk about it, and some young Chinese don’t know it happened. But for a society just like an individual, repressing a memory is different from forgetting. Tiananmen continues to reverberate across China.

One proof is the way the Beijing regime remains vigilant against any commemoration of those its soldiers killed. By one count, 48 high-profile dissidents were detained or placed under house arrest this year, and the true number is undoubtedly much higher.

Foreign reporters were ordered not to report on “sensitive issues” ahead of the day. A massive security clampdown got under way, apparently aimed at ensuring that June 4 this year passes unremarked in the capital. This is not amnesia. It is anxiety.

I’m often asked whether the Chinese authorities have successfully turned their people apolitical. My answer is always the same: Yes, to a certain extent.

Their methods include the censorship of key words in Internet searches and on social media. The state-owned media are tightly censored, and anyone who attempts to spread dissident views will be arrested and their family mistreated. It is no wonder that most Chinese don’t even contemplate speaking out.

As a result, there are many young people in China who know next to nothing about what happened on June 4, 1989. But, I always continue, those young people don’t matter. The point is, up to 100 million people took the streets against the Chinese Communist Party in 1989, and they remember.

In short, enough people remember, and those who do are the ones who really count.

Enough people remember for Tiananmen to seriously trouble the Beijing leadership, because that memory is so powerful. If the circumstances were right for it to spread again, it could quickly wash away the Communist Party’s claim to rule on behalf of the people.

The 25th anniversary comes at a key juncture for the party. It is ideologically conflicted and at war with itself amid a series of high-profile purges. As economic growth slows and conflicts at the grass roots intensify, the party faces a level of public disaffection unmatched since the years leading up to 1989.

Look at the backdrop to the security clampdown over the past week. President Xi Jinping has consolidated his power by waging a war on corruption. But corruption is the lifeblood of the political system. Almost all of the system’s beneficiaries are connected in one way or another with the elder statesmen of the party.

Mr. Xi is as much a part of the problem as anyone else at the top of the pyramid. Even if he does target one or two “big tigers,” he can’t resolve the problem. Only the overhaul of a system built on the abuse of privilege will resolve it. But the party depends on the right to hand out lucrative contracts, to hold high-level positions in state owned enterprises, and to sign off on regulatory changes with vast consequences for industries. Without these, it cannot hold together.

Meanwhile, there is growing evidence that the facade of a harmonious China—which the past two Beijing regimes have put so much work into cultivating—is under siege. The high-profile recent terrorist attacks by Uighurs and the continuing tragic self-immolations by Tibetans show that the edges of the empire are restive. Within Han China, the government admits to more than 200,000 cases of large-scale civil unrest every year. The People’s Republic of China faces several destabilizing factors, and none of them bodes well for the trajectory of single-party rule.

In reaction, the government has in recent years spent more on domestic security than on national defense. Beijing’s somewhat opaque figures suggest that this year spending on domestic security and national defense are equal at around $130 billion each, as China seeks to add muscle to its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Nevertheless, the takeaway here is that the party leadership is as concerned about internal threats as its regional military reach—and for good reason. Just as in the heady days of 1989, when I took to the streets of Beijing and marched against the party leadership along with 100 million people China-wide, a specter haunts the government. That specter is the growing realization by China’s population that 30 years of heady growth has enriched an entrenched, powerful elite. As the Chinese economy shows signs of faltering, the vast majority of Chinese remain as disenfranchised as they were 25 years ago.

The ideology of China’s leadership is falling to tatters, as it was 25 years ago. The demands made by the people then are coming back. The best way to sum up the legacy of Tiananmen is not enforced forgetting, it is resurgent memory.

Mr. Wu’er Kaixi was a student leader in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and now lives in exile in Taiwan.