Forgetting Tiananmen

Today, if anything, the government is even more heavy-handed; recent bombings in the western province of Xinjiang have only added to the imperative to stifle dissent.

Still, the "Great Firewall," China's effort to censor the Internet, is rather easily breached, especially by a techno-savvy young generation adept at enlisting virtual private networks to evade official blockages. Young people determined to discover the events of 6/4 can find a workaround.

But that assumes a widespread discontent with the free-speech status quo that instead seems disconcertingly muted.

Eric Li, a Shanghai-based 46-year-old venture capitalist who watched the protests from afar, as a Berkeley undergraduate -- he went on to work for Ross Perot and earn a Stanford MBA -- expressed undisguised relief at the crackdown, notwithstanding the "tragic" loss of life. Li echoes the official view that letting the protests continue would have jeopardized governmental stability and imperiled an economic rise that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

"I look at what happened" in Egypt and Ukraine "and think, 'Thank heaven it didn't succeed here,'" Li said in an interview.

Many younger Chinese express a similar tolerance. Amanda, a graduate student, described being "shocked" on seeing a video of Tiananmen in a constitutional law class, her first exposure to the protests. The professor's message? "It is difficult to change the situation of China." Others questioned whether photos had been doctored, or authorities forced to act only after negotiations failed.

This has become a privileged, me-first generation of "little emperors" and empresses, only children coddled by parents and grandparents. Even with rising tensions over China's astonishing income inequality and anxiety over whether those less well-connected will be able to nab their share, this new cohort enjoys a standard of living unimaginable at the time of Tiananmen.

They are, according to pollsters, particularly nationalistic -- more worked up over Japan's wartime atrocities and perceived territorial incursions than over issues of personal freedom, or, perhaps more threatening to Chinese leaders, unrest over rampant corruption and pollution.

For them, the explosion of wealth often seems worth the price of studied ignorance about Tiananmen. Hence the chilling question: If those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, what becomes of those who never knew the past at all?

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.