Chen Xitong and Tiananmen Square - Washington Post

 

Shortly after Chinese troops stormed into Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, Chen Xitong, former Beijing mayor, described street demonstrations by millions of people in Beijing and other Chinese cities as an American-backed conspiracy orchestrated by a “tiny handful of people." In a report in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests, Chen Xitong hailed the crackdown as “correct” and unavoidable.

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Yao Jianfu, a former official and the author of a new book detailing interviews with Chen Xitong, the former Communist Party chief of Beijing, is shown in his office in Beijing. Yao recently interviewed Chen for a book in which Chen claimed his Tiananmen report was merely a script prepared for him by China's National People’s Congress.

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In the book of interviews, which was released Friday, Chen Xitong declared that the bloodshed at Tiananmen Square was “actually a tragedy that could have been avoided and should have been avoided. ... Nobody should have died if it had been handled properly.” Yao Jianfu, pictured here, is a former official and the author of a new book detailing interviews with Chen Xitong.

David Gray / Reuters

 

Copies of the book, titled "Conversation With Chen Xitong," are displayed for sale at a bookstore in Hong Kong. The book, based on interviews with disgraced ex-Beijing mayor Chen Xitong, gives a surprising reassessment of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. It has gone on sale in Hong Kong despite efforts by Chinese authorities to stop it.

Kin Cheung / AP

 

An undated photo shows Chinese author Yao Jianfu interviewing Chen Xitong. Chen’s efforts to distance himself from his earlier hard-line stance in 1989 highlights how -- more than two decades after a massacre that has been scrubbed from public discourse inside China -- the 1989 bloodshed continues to haunt China’s ruling Party. Chen’s disavowal of his own words suggests that even those who cheered the crackdown have personal views at odds with their own pronouncements.

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A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Cangan Boulevard in Tiananmen Square in this June 5, 1989, photo.

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Chen said he believes that those killed in other parts of Beijing numbered “several hundred,” an estimate in line with official figures issued at the time. This photo taken on June 3, 1989, shows exhausted soldiers on the night of clashes with pro-democracy demonstrators in central Beijing. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters were killed by China's military as communist leaders ordered an end to six weeks of democracy protests in the heart of the Chinese capital at Tiananmen Square.

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Chen, who was ousted from office in 1995 after what he derides as trumped-up allegations of corruption, sheds little light on the still-unanswered question of just how many people died when the People’s Liberation Army blasted its way into the center of Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989. Chen said he spent the night of the assault overlooking Tiananmen Square and insists that “not a single person died” in the square itself. Here, Zhang Xianling reacts near a photo of her late son, Wang Nan, top left, who was killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Ng Han Guan / AP

 

Security at Tiananmen Square has been stepped up in advance of Monday’s anniversary, with uniformed and plainclothes police keeping a watchful eye on the mostly Chinese tourists visiting the area. Here, Chinese military policemen march past the Great Hall of the People beside Tiananmen Square in Beijing on May 16, 2012.

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Chen’s denunciation of China’s highly politicized legal system comes at a particularly sensitive time for Chinese leaders. Chen has compared his fate to that of Bo Xilai, the former Party chief of Chongqing now in detention. Here, Chinese paramilitary policemen guard before the customary ceremony of lowering the flag at Tiananmen Square on May 17, 2012.

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