Forgetting Tiananmen

BEIJING -- The young man approached with an air of furtive urgency, covering his mouth with his hand. "Please can you tell me," he asked, "what happened in 1989?"

In China, there is a single answer to that question: the Tiananmen Square massacre, 25 years ago next week. The quarter-century mark is not auspicious in Chinese culture, but the date itself has acquired iconic significance: 6/4 is to China what 9/11 is to the United States.

Except that in place of public commemoration in China, there is careful whispering and sly references to troops firing on unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators.

And, an even more unsettling exception: As the young man's question illustrated, a new generation remains ignorant, uninterested or both about Tiananmen. China has become, in the title of a new book by National Public Radio reporter Louisa Lim, "The People's Republic of Amnesia."

For Americans, the image of the unknown young man standing in front of a menacing tank is seared into memory or -- for the post-Tiananmen generation -- taught as a central moment in modern Chinese history.

Yet for many Chinese, as became clear on a trip here sponsored by the Committee of 100, a U.S. nonprofit dedicated to promoting mutual understanding, the topic remains best unmentioned, if not unknown. Only the bravest teachers broach it, and then most likely as a cautionary tale of popular protest that unfolded too fervently, too soon.

The horrors of the Cultural Revolution have become safe ground for public discussion. "Coming Home," a new film by Zhang Yimou, who directed the 2008 Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, tells the story of a professor sent away for "re-education" and a family destroyed.

The events of 1989, by contrast, remain distinctly off-limits. Imagine a comparable moment of searing national shame -- Kent State, Watergate, Abu Ghraib -- effectively banished from public discussion.

It would be most comfortable, from a Western perspective, to understand this phenomenon in China as a brutal and ultimately self-defeating reflection of government censorship and intimidation.

Certainly, suppression of free speech plays a significant role. Five years ago, as the 20th anniversary neared, dissidents were detained, foreign newspapers had pages excised, television screens went strategically dark, and the plug was pulled on Internet sites.

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