Tiananmen memoirs spark rare response
Ousted party chief Zhao Ziyang's memoirs have touched a raw nerve in Beijing and earned a rare rebuff from official media, political analysts say.
The semi-official Hong Kong China News Agency broke the taboo on June 4 and published a lengthy commentary on Zhao's memoirs, accusing western media of using the former leader's journal to pressure Beijing into adopting western-style democracy.
While that viewpoint is nothing new, it is a break because official media usually treat such topics with total silence.
'What Zhao Ziyang said in the memoirs touches the Communist Party's most painful spot because it points out that Deng Xiaoping made the decision to open fire and that decision violated the party charter and state law,' said To Yiu-ming, an assistant professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's journalism school.
'The Chinese government has to respond to the book because it has aroused such intense public attention overseas.'
While it is a tradition to use signed commentaries in state mouthpieces like the People's Daily or Xinhua to make known Beijing's stance, the commentary appears to target overseas readers only because it was published by Beijing-backed newspapers in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily.
So far mainland media have not mentioned Zhao's memoirs.
Political scientist Joseph Cheng Yu-shek at City University of Hong Kong said the commentary was a planned public defence by Beijing. 'It is sensitive timing and the commentary is a planned reaction,' he said. 'It clearly targets Hong Kong readers because Hong Kong people have such deep emotional ties to June 4.
'Otherwise why haven't they carried it in the People's Daily?'
Paul Lin, a Taipei-based political commentator who taught Communist Party history on the mainland from 1955 to 1976, has challenged Beijing to publish the same commentary in mainland media to pave the way for open discussion.
'If the Beijing leadership agrees with the opinions expressed in the commentary, how come the commentary was not released by Xinhua and other party mouthpieces to share with the mainland public?' he asked.
The commentary accuses western media of 'ballyhooing' Zhao's memoirs on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown with the intention of trying to force Beijing to overturn its June 4 verdict and adopt western-style democracy.
But Professor Cheng said it was normal that foreign media would be intensely interested in the book because it was the 20th anniversary of the crackdown.
The commentary also argues that China's rapid economic development in the past 20 years justifies Beijing's decisions and that overturning the June 4 verdict would cause social upheaval that might spill into neighbouring countries or even cause a 'global calamity'.
But Professor Cheng said: 'If a government is so vulnerable that a review of history causes turmoil, then one must ask questions about the stability and legitimacy of the regime.'
