Denise Y. Ho says 2019 marks one centennial and two decennial anniversaries of significant events in China’s history – the May Fourth Movement in 1919, the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. While the Communist Party (CPC) erected a monument dedicated to the May Fourth Movement, it chooses to sweep the brutal suppression of a protest in Tiananmen square under the carpet.

On May 4, 1919, a huge student protest took place in Beijing in front of Tiananmen (The Gate of Heavenly Peace), a massive entryway to the Forbidden City, which had been the home of China’s emperors until the 1911 Revolution that toppled the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China.

The protesters were outraged by the refusal of delegates at the Versailles Peace Conference outside Paris to return the former German colonies in Shandong, eastern China to Chinese sovereignty at the conclusion of World War I. They feared the Allies were planning to hand over the territories to Japan after Germany’s defeat. They wanted to embrace the new era of national “self-determination” ushered in by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918.

A century ago the students protested against not only Western imperialism but their own government’s weakness. Today the CPC trumpets this “great patriotic revolutionary movement” — in sharp contrast to its silence on the Tiananmen events. In 1989 the students were critical of their political system and called for reforms – more equality, freedom and human rights. The state branded the Tiananmen protest a “counterrevolutionary riot,” and denounced a “handful of conspirators for misleading the people.”

On June 4, 1989, the CPC sent 200,000 soldiers in armoured tanks to crack down on the peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. They opened fire on the crowd before running over them. The brutal response shocked the world and crushed the movement. Despite official silence and the CPC’s most ardent efforts to wipe the episode from history, the “public amnesia” has not erased memories of the massacre. The number of fatalities remains unknown. The Chinese government has always refused to provide a list of those killed, "disappeared," or imprisoned, and has failed to publish verifiable casualty figures.

The author says the June 4 anniversary “remains politically sensitive,” because the state has not come to terms with the past. The three decades of denial and repression have let the wounds to fester and leave them unhealed. Every anniversary the authorities always go into “high alert in the lead-up to it. In what has become an annual ritual, foreign journalists in China are blocked from covering the anniversary.”

As time goes by the CPC has come up with its own narrative of the two protest movements. “The May Fourth legacy is one of patriotism and enlightenment. Born of those claims, Tiananmen in 1989 ended in violence and silence.” While the narrative appears contradictory, critics maintain it is historical nihilism, giving the impression that China has a problem with its own history – denying the past and censoring any debate in the future. The outside world comes to the conclusion that “China now has the power to shape its own historical narrative.”

The author points out that some students who “support the CPC’s own Marxist ideology became the latest generation of protesters to run afoul of the authorities. Last summer, groups began organizing factory workers in southern China, calling attention to abuses and helping workers to form an independent labor union. Presenting themselves as loyal to Chinese President Xi Jinping, the students launched campaigns in the field and on their university campuses.”

These students pursue a movement that is diametrically opposed to the Tiananmen protesters. With various protest movements brewing across the country, Chinese authorities can justify its own grip on power, saying they need to maintain law and order.