Tiananmen Square: Read an excerpt from Vijay Gokhale's account of violence that unfolded on 4 June 1989

More than three decades later, the Tiananmen Square incident refuses to be forgotten. The events that occurred in the summer of 1989 would not only set the course for China’s politics but would also redefine its relationship with the world. China’s message was clear: it remained committed to market-oriented reform, but it would not tolerate any challenge to the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party. In return for economic prosperity, the Chinese have surrendered some rights to the state. A democratic future seems far away. Tiananmen Square: The Making of a Protest, is an eye-witness account by Vijay Gokhale, former foreign secretary of India. The book presents a 360-degree view of the decade (1979-1989) when China set out on the path to becoming a world-class economy and a major power, while managing an inner-party struggle for the control of China’s political soul. Vijay Gokhale, then a young diplomat serving in Beijing, was a witness to the drama that unfolded in Tiananmen Square. Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, this unique account brings an Indian perspective on a seminal event in China’s history that the Chinese government has been eager to have the world forget. “The current politics of China cannot be properly grasped without a good understanding of the tumultuous events in Tiananmen Square in the fateful summer of 1989,” says Gokhale. The following excerpt has been reproduced here on Firstpost with due permission of the publishers HarperCollins India.

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I recall being woken by noise of armour moving down the Avenue of Eternal Peace. It was 5 am on 4 June. I counted at least fifteen tanks, several armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and troop trucks sweeping down the avenue. The man-made barriers were no match for battle tanks; they were simply crushed or pushed aside. Citizens ran for cover. Helicopters hovered above the moving columns. There were reports of automatic weapon fire in other parts of the city, but none could be heard from where we were. Foreign media were claiming that the army had fired into crowds with several hundred casualties. We witnessed an ambulance and an army truck being set afire just outside the Friendship Store, but soldiers were not attacked. Resistance was largely passive, though there were reports, and later images, of petrol bombs being thrown at the APCs. There is no accurate account of what happened in Tiananmen Square on the night of 3–4 June. Movement of foreign media had been severely restricted, and in any case, by that time, they were groping for information because their sources were drying up as Deng regained control over the state apparatus. The best that can be surmised is that fully armed troops forced their way past barricades and crowds. In the process, it cannot be ruled out that some firing took place in areas where the citizenry attempted to block troop movement by force. There are reports of rocks and Molotov cocktails being thrown. The troops responded with live ammunition.11 There are credible eyewitness accounts of people dying of gunshot wounds, but these casualties were mostly bystanders and people blocking the advance of the troops. The PLA surrounded the square after midnight of 3–4 June and demanded that the remaining students vacate it. Chai Ling says she asked those who wished to go to leave immediately. There were differences among the student leaders as to whether or not they should talk to the troop commander, and it seems that finally the Taiwanese singer Hou Dejian and intellectual activist Liu Xiaobo both went. The troop commander advised them to tell the students to leave the square. While this was being debated, armed troops from inside the Great Hall of the People descended on Tiananmen Square. With no choice left, the remaining students left at dawn on 4 June. The Communist Party of China regained its control over Tiananmen Square, likely without firing a shot inside the square. According to those who were present, and who spoke much later to the Western press, there was certainly no killing inside the square.12 By mid-morning the next day, troops were fully in control of the square and its vicinity. Mopping-up operations were underway in other parts. This continued through 5 June, and at least twice a motorized tank column rolled up and down the Avenue of Eternal Peace in front of our apartment block in a show of strength. Feeble attempts by some citizens to erect barriers were quickly abandoned. Tanks were parked at key intersections. This time the citizenry made no attempt to approach them. One eyewitness, a diplomat from Chile,13 who later briefed the US embassy, had driven to the square around 2100 hours on 3 June to fetch his ambassador who was dining at the Movenpick Hotel on the western side of Tiananmen. He said that troops had filled the approach roads to the square but had not impeded his passage. He had parked just east of the Museum of Chinese History, and walked into the square. He had heard sporadic gunfire but no automatic fire. He told the US embassy that troops were mostly armed with anti-riot gear. He also claimed that most tents in the square were empty when the tanks rolled over them. There were no signs of a massacre. In the early hours, the remaining students, arms linked together, left the square through the south-east corner, after which troops cleared the square of the tents and garbage. His account matched the narrative that the student leaders would offer many years later. Violence did occur in other parts of the city. Troops fired upon citizens or students who resisted martial law,14 but there were also instances of the troops themselves being assaulted and killed. Some of our embassy personnel who had gone to Xiyuan Hotel that evening to enquire about the welfare of Indian nationals reported seeing fifteen burnt-out vehicles. The exact number of casualties is not likely to be known unless the communist authorities disclose the truth. Lacking credible inputs, the US embassy and foreign media began to give wildly speculative accounts of the happenings on the night of 3–4 June. Declassified US government documents show that the estimates of casualty figures increased from 180 to 300 in the briefing paper for the secretary of state on 4 June, to 500 to 2,600 a couple of days later, and the number of those injured was put at 10,000. The 5 June briefing paper claimed that ‘hundreds’ of military vehicles ‘including at least thirty-four tanks and numerous APCs’ had been destroyed, and some students, having seized APCs and weapons, were ‘vowing to resist’. The US embassy continued to treat rumour and speculation as fact and report it to Washington. An embassy cable reported that the PLA opened machine-gun fire in the square, which was subsequently found to be untrue. Another cable claimed that, according to one report, Deng Xiaoping was giving attack orders from a hospital bed.16 This too turned out to be false when Deng made an appearance a few days later in public. Yet another cable on 6 June suggested imminent hostilities between the 27th Army deployed at the Jianguomen flyover and other unnamed PLA units, and rumours of infighting in the PLA.17 The US ambassador even alluded to this in a Voice of America broadcast. It is not always possible to get accurate information in a crisis, but US diplomats abandoned even the normal caution that should have been adopted when reporting back to headquarters. Many diplomats, who were living in the diplomatic compound overlooking the Jianguomen bridge and thus had a bird’s-eye view of the area, knew that the rumours were untrue. Presumably, US diplomats, who were staying in the same compound, also had these facts, and yet a US embassy cable on 7 June claimed that there was fighting between PLA units, and artillery fire had been heard in south-west Beijing on the night of 6 June. Recently released British archives tell a similar story. The British ambassador, Sir Alan Donald, reportedly sent a telegram to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, claiming that 10,000 fatalities were a minimum estimate, and providing a dramatic description of how tanks mowed down students in the square and then ran over their bodies time and again.18 He claimed that this information had been provided by sources (unnamed) in the government, but eyewitness accounts by student leaders themselves decisively refute such an account. In the fog of war or revolution it is not always easy to get facts, but responsible governments are expected to desist from reporting rumour as fact. This is especially the case when they are representatives of nations that wield extraordinary influence in the shaping of global public opinion, as in the case of both the United States and the United Kingdom. And yet, the news that went out to the world through the Western media and from Western representatives in China were mostly half-truths mixed with downright fiction. It was not a proud moment for the Free World or its Free Press. *** Tiananmen Square: The Making of a Protest is published by HarperCollins India and will be released on 10 June 2021.