Memoir allegedly penned by Tiananmen-era leader says soldiers fired in self-defense in 1989

Memoir gives new insight in China’s 1989 crackdown

BEIJING — A memoir purportedly written by China’s hardline premier at the time of the Tiananmen Square democracy crackdown in 1989 defends the military suppression, saying soldiers acted in self-defense when they fired on citizens.

If verified as authentic, the book would be one of the few insider accounts of the cataclysmic events that split the communist leadership and remain a tragic grievance for some Chinese 21 years later. It would also be the first detailed account from then-Premier Li Peng, who sided with Communist Party elders against reformist leaders in supporting the crackdown.

The memoir is being published in the Chinese-ruled but separately governed territory of Hong Kong later this month and parts of it appeared in Hong Kong media in the run-up to Friday’s anniversary of the 1989 suppression.

In the memoir, Li says he was at Zhongnanhai, the high-walled headquarters for party leaders west of Tiananmen Square, when the crackdown unfolded late on June 3 to the early hours of June 4. People’s Liberation Army soldiers moved toward the square from various parts of the city and were “blocked and attacked by organized rioters.”

“It’s the armed rioters who first opened fire at the military, burning military vehicles and brutally beating, burning and killing the warriors. When the PLA was forced to return fire in self-defense, both sides sustained casualties,” the book says, according to an excerpt provided by Hong Kong’s New Century Press.

Hong Kong media have published other excerpts of “The Tiananmen Diary of Li Peng” and among the revelations is a tally of the crackdown’s casualties — 313 dead, including 42 students and 23 soldiers.

The democracy protests and their suppression remain a taboo in China. The government has never provided a credible account nor allowed an independent investigation into the events and the fatalities.

The book, if authentic, offers a rare insider account into the thinking of the more hardline leaders who prevailed in the internal debates over how to handle the protests that raged for six weeks and brought a million people into the center of Beijing.

“This is an amazing transcript because it provides so much detail of the decision process and the subsequent execution once the decision was made” to go ahead with the crackdown, said editor Bao Pu.

A previous insider account that surfaced a decade ago, “The Tiananmen Papers,” was purported to be a compilation of official documents smuggled out of China by someone who worked for the leadership. Last year came the posthumous memoirs of party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, the liberal reformer who was purged for opposing the clampdown and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Bao also edited Zhao’s memoir, his father having been a key lieutenant of the reformist leader.

Whether Li Peng’s memoir is truly his, however, is uncertain. Bao said he was given a photocopy of the typed transcript earlier this year by a stranger who would not explain how it came into his possession.

The Information Office of China’s Cabinet, the State Council, did not immediately respond when asked whether the memoir was penned by Li.

Hong Kong media reported earlier that Li, 81 and said to be in bad health, had written about the Tiananmen period but that the current leadership denied him permission to publish it. Bao said he compared the text to other accounts and samples of Li’s writing and believes the memoir is authentic.

“We’ve been studying very hard and have compared with all kinds of known published historical records,” said Bao. “After careful comparison, there’s just no way this is going to be fake. I am putting my reputation on the line. I think this is real.”

In one of the book’s digs, Li accuses the liberal leader Zhao of aggravating tensions by publicly sympathizing with the student demonstrators when the two leaders visited the protesters in Tiananmen Square in the early hours of May 19, 1989.

“Zhao put on a show, paying tribute to the students by bowing,” the memoir said. It would be Zhao’s last public appearance.

Less than a day later Li would announce martial law — an act that made him notorious among many Chinese.

Min Lee reported from Hong Kong.