Efforts to Preserve Memory of Tiananmen Square Massacre Amidst Chinese Censorship

Discussions about the bloody crackdown on peaceful protesters that took place around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on 4 June, 1989 – and in cities across China – often dwell on the risk of forgetting the massacre.

The passage of time, with the world’s eyes soon drawn elsewhere, and suppression by authorities at home mean that the pivotal moment in Chinese history is at risk of fading into grey.

“Even when it was happening, people felt like the memory of it was going to be fragile,” says Jeffrey Wasserstrom, chancellor’s professor of history at UC Irvine, who has studied student protest in China.

One aspect particular at risk is a detail less commonly associated with the massacre: the hope that blossomed in the days leading up to the killing of hundreds, possibly thousands, of unarmed protesters by the Chinese army as they demanded democratic reforms.

One collection encapsulating that sense is a set of photographs taken by Austrian sinologist Helmut Opletal who was posted to Beijing as a journalist in May 1989. His photographs show crowds of protesters holding up banners calling for freedom and democracy, many with smiles on their faces and thrusting peace signs into the air.

“One of the things that gets forgotten was that at the early phase of [the protests], there was this incredible kind of joyousness and sense of possibility,” says Wasserstrom.

But in recent years, censorship controls inside China have grown tighter, with state-sponsored amnesia intensifying under the rule of leader Xi Jinping, sparking renewed efforts abroad to document what happened on that night, when Beijing’s streets flowed with blood.

The Opletal photographs are among the hundreds of items hosted by China Unofficial Archives (CUA), a grassroots project launched in 2023 as a US-registered non-profit that aims to protect “censored and suppressed Chinese history”.

Sharon, one of CUA’s Chinese editors, who uses a pseudonym to protect her identity because of threats from the Chinese government, says that “history cannot only be written by officials”.

“If you don’t have real information, it’s difficult for you to have independent thought,” she says.

The Tiananmen Square massacre remains one of the most sensitive topics in China. Virtually all mention of it scrubbed from physical and digital spaces within China’s borders. Those who participated in the protests or have tried to memorialise it have been harassed or imprisoned, sometimes for years at a time.

Just last week, a Chinese activist called Dong Guangping, who has previously attempted to commemorate the event, risked his life to sail more than 300km to South Korea in an attempt to flee China, where he has been imprisoned several times. He remains in custody in South Korea.

CUA hosts a range of material about the Tiananmen Square protests, from the diary of a soldier who protested against the massacre to a subversive documentary made by state-employed filmmakers.

“We don’t advocate,” says Ian Johnson, the founder of CUA. “We’re just trying to provide a resource in a neutral way.”

CUA is supported by grant funding and donations from readers. The website is blocked in China and can be visited only with the use VPN, a type of software that allows users to mask their IP address and jump over the censorship firewall. That makes it hard to track how many readers come from inside China, but Johnson says that around 80% of visitors navigate to the Chinese-language version of the website.

Any material that counters the Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) official historical narrative is likely to be a target for transnational repression. CUA’s website has received several hacking attempts and its Chinese staff have been harassed.

Diaries of a Communist party official

One of the most contested artefacts of Tiananmen Square history currently sits in a library on the west coast of the United States. But until recently its fate looked uncertain, as some in China seemed desperate to get it back.

The diaries of Li Rui, a senior CCP official, are considered to be one of the most important artefacts of unvarnished modern Chinese history. Li, who died in 2019, kept detailed records of his life at the heart of elite politics, including his observations about 4 June, 1989, which he witnessed from a balcony overlooking Tiananmen Square. It was a “black weekend” of “soldiers firing randomly,” Li wrote.

The diaries are housed at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. They were transferred there by Li’s daughter, Li Nanyang, who says she was carrying out her father’s wishes.

But after Li’s death, his widow – Nanyang’s stepmother – filed a lawsuit to get the papers returned to China. Nanyang and the Hoover Institution said the CCP was pulling the strings behind the lawsuit in an attempt to censor a key historical artefact. Lawyers for the widow, who has since died, denied the allegation . This year a court in California ruled that the diaries should stay at Hoover.

Nanyang says it is important the diaries are kept in the US because they would likely be destroyed or concealed if returned to China. That would enable the CCP to claim that the truth about the massacre was “fake news that comes from the western world,” Nanyang says.

CUA and the Li Rui diaries are just two of a trove of archives that are dedicated to preserving Chinese history beyond China’s borders.

Zhou Fengsuo, a former Tiananmen student leader who is now the executive director of Human Rights in China, a US-based NGO, has collaborated with Teacher Li, an influential X account, to share pictures of the 1989 protests with more than two million followers.

“Every year, I learn more about Tiananmen through people, every year I get new pictures, new documents,” Zhou says. “I think it’s pretty clear that the memory of Tiananmen is preserved.”

Although technology has empowered China’s censorship and surveillance regime, it has also allowed activists to reach new audiences, Zhou says. Asked if he’s concerned that the combination of ageing witnesses and CCP pressure could weaken the memories of 1989, Zhou is optimistic: “I’m much less worried than 10 years ago”.