Japanese diplomats holed up in the embassy in Beijing at the height of the Tiananmen Square crackdown incinerated classified documents and planned to escape on bicycles as they feared the Chinese army would storm the building, an official stationed in the capital in 1989 has said. In an interview with Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper, former diplomat Morio Matsumoto recalled the tension in the city on June 4 three decades ago as the Chinese military launched its armed response to the democracy activists who had occupied the square for several weeks. A meeting had been convened as early as mid-May to draw up plans for the evacuation of the embassy in the event that the crisis worsened dramatically, with one scenario being the Chinese military entering and occupying the embassy. Matsumoto, now 67, said it was decided that personnel levels in the embassy would be quickly drawn down, with families of the staff and female officials the first to depart. Ultimately, the embassy was scheduled to be reduced to two young officials fluent in Chinese, including Matsumoto. A senior diplomat told the two men who had been chosen to remain until the last possible moment that they were to “escape in ordinary clothes if the military breaks into the building” and to mingle with the crowds to make their getaways. 30 years after Tiananmen, Beijing can turn tragedy into opportunity They were instructed to take two old bicycles and to head for the port city of Tianjin, more than 100km away, and to try to make their way back to Japan. And although the worst-case scenario never did materialise, despite the bloodshed in Tiananmen Square, a sense of danger hung over the city, most notably when a unit of the Chinese military sprayed gunfire at an accommodation block for Japanese diplomats. Japanese media has reported widely on the anniversary of the brutal suppression of the democracy movement in China 30 years ago, including the statement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday calling on Beijing to “make a full, public accounting of those killed or missing to give comfort to the many victims of this dark chapter of history”. Perhaps mindful of the recent improvement in China-Japan relations and not willing to rock the boat, Japan has been far more muted on the anniversary of the crackdown. In a statement to the South China Morning Post , the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “For the Japanese government, freedom, respect for basic human rights and the rule of law are universal values in the international community and it is important that they are guaranteed in China. “These ideas have been communicated to the Chinese side and Japan will continue to promote positive movements in China.” Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor of international relations at Tokyo’s International Christian University, said this was “in line with Japan’s traditional approach of being not overly critical of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and for historical reasons Japan has felt that it was not its place to be too critical of China”. “But today we must also put this into the broader context of the China-US-Japan economic relationship and the trade war , and it is clear that Tokyo does not want to worsen its economic ties to China and is therefore not overly criticising Beijing on this occasion,” Nagy said. “At the same time, it is encouraging to see that every one of the Japanese newspapers and all the television stations appear to be covering the anniversary quite significantly and it’s on a lot of front pages today.” National broadcaster NHK has run an interview with a former soldier in the Chinese army who sympathised with the protesters’ calls for democracy and used a military truck without permission to deliver food and water to the students. Shocked at the ferocity of the government crackdown – including seeing a young woman shot in the head in front of him – Bian Ning said his resentment towards the authorities grew. Punished for stealing an army vehicle, he fled to Japan the same year and has never returned to China. What is the US Navy still doing on Japan’s Iwo Jima, 75 years on? Now 56, he has worked at a dissident magazine calling for democracy in China but was told at the embassy in Tokyo when he went to renew his passport that he would only be granted a new document if he stopped criticising the Communist Party of China , stopped working on the dissident magazine and provided the Chinese authorities with information on everyone he knew in the pro-democracy movement. None of the conditions were acceptable to Bian and he refused. Bian now works as a long-distance truck driver in Japan. His father died in 2018, nearly three decades after he was last able to see him, and he was able to meet his 81-year-old mother for the first time since 1989 when she came to Japan earlier this year. Bian said he wanted to return to China to help his mother as she gets older, but he feared that was impossible. “There is no doubt that I would be put under government observation,” he told NHK. “That would definitely inconvenience my family and friends, so there is no easy choice.”