China Returns to Ignoring Tiananmen Anniversary After Celebrating Massacre During Hong Kong Protests

A girl holds up a candle and a cellphone as she walks near the Victoria Park after police
Anthony Kwan/Getty Images
Frances Martel

China’s top English-language government propaganda outlets completely ignored the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre this weekend, a return to a standard Beijing disposed of in 2019 when it began celebrating the mass murder following the rise of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement.

The 2019 protests against communism attracting millions of people in Hong Kong subsided after two years of violent crackdowns and the implementation of an illegal “national security” law that requires sentences of at least ten years in prison for those found guilty of “calls to foreign interference,” “incitement to secession,” “subversion of state power,” or “terrorism.”

Under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy nominally in place, laws like the “national security” regulation passed through Beijing’s National People’s Congress (NPC) should not apply in Hong Kong, but the city’s police have enforced it, anyway, prompting a mass exodus of pro-democracy activists.

Hong Kong police banned a candlelight vigil for the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre again this week, the third time since claiming to shut it down to prevent coronavirus infections in 2020. Prior to 2020, Hong Kong’s Victoria Park was home to the largest memorial event for the Tiananmen victims in the world, held continuously since 1990.

The Tiananmen Square massare of June 4, 1989, was a violent Communist Party crackdown against peaceful, mostly student protesters in Beijing’s eponymous plaza. The protesters, inspired by the slow fall of the Soviet Union and protests across the east side of the Iron Curtain, took the streets demanding democratic reforms in China. The protests largely consisted of marching and holding up symbols like the “Goddess of Democracy” statue, which Chinese police destroyed.

No final death toll exists for the Tiananmen Square massacre but experts believe thousands were killed, both in the streets – images success the military rolled over protesters with tanks – and in the hospitals after police initially attacked.

The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, did not mark the June 4 date this year by acknowledging the occasion on its English-language website. Neither did the Global Times, China’s top English-language newspaper, nor China Daily or the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The Chinese government had not addressed the Tiananmen Square massacre at all before 2019 – the 30th anniversary of the event – and heavily censors online searches to ensure that its citizens cannot see the bloody images of that day. In 2019, however, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe celebrated the mass killing during an address in Singapore.

“That incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence which is a correct policy,” he claimed. “The 30 years have proven that China has undergone major changes China has enjoyed stability and development.”

Wei encouraged those disgusted by the mass killing of peaceful protesters to “visit China” to “better understand” the event.

The Global Times published an article that year, as well, calling the massacre a “political success.”

“We consider such practice a political success, although some people have criticized it from the perspective of news governance. Merely afflicting China once, the incident has not become a long-term nightmare for the country,” the Times claimed. “Neither has the incident’s anniversary ever been placed in the teeth of the storm. It has become a faded historical event, rather than an actual entanglement.”

The Global Times acknowledged that, without the mass killing of protesters, the Chinese Communist Party may have “collapsed” in 1989.

In 2021, after the crackdown on Hong Kong’s memorial Chinese propagandists escalated their celebrations of the massacre. Hu Xijin, then the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, compared the pro-democracy protests in 1989 to the Capitol riot of January 2021, warning Americans, “the US crackdown on Capitol rioters took place not long ago. If you want to condemn ‘state violence,’ condemn Capitol crackdown first.”

In the pages of the Times, the state propaganda outlet’s writers celebrated that, during the massacre, “the Party used all resources to ensure the fundamental political system of the country was unshakeable and safeguarded the stability of the country to create an ideal environment for reform and development.”

Another article referred to the mass killing as a “political vaccine” – comparing it to the experimental Chinese coronavirus vaccines then debuting around the world – against China becoming a free society.

“Tiananmen Square embodies the Chinese people’s confidence and pride in the politics of the country, and it is a symbol of China’s unity as well as the country’s independence and increasing prosperity,” the Global Times asserted. “We laugh at those posturing ‘commemorative’ activities and political stunts orchestrated by outside forces.”

Reports prior to Saturday indicated that Chinese authorities had to force pro-democracy dissidents into house arrest or otherwise disappear them to prevent Tiananmen Square massacre memorials from happening within the country’s borders, in addition to police crackdowns in Hong Kong. According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), “dozens” of known activists were banned from leaving their homes. At least one human rights lawyer was forced into a “vacation” to ensure he was not in Beijing for the anniversary.

A member of the Tiananmen Mothers group – which honors the fallen at the massacre with visits to the cemetery every year, told RFA that she had been banned from speaking to media, but the regime would allow the mothers a quiet visit to see their children in the cemetery on Saturday.

In Hong Kong, where police began banning the Tiananmen memorial attracting tens of thousands every year in Victoria Park in 2020, police warned locals not to “test the boundaries” of police action by appearing in any way to be mourning the Tiananmen dead in public. Outgoing Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam explicitly suggested prior to the anniversary that observing it could be a violation of the Chinese “national security” law. In 2020, thousands of Hong Kong residents attended the Victoria Park vigil “illegally” but, as dissidents have fled the city to Taiwan and other free societies, no such display occurred this year.

Police reportedly terrorized residents who appeared in any way to potentially be honoring the date.

“People were stopped and searched for carrying flowers, wearing black and, in one case, carrying a toy tank box,” the Agence France0Presse (AFP) reported. “Five men and one woman, aged 19-80, were arrested in the course of the day, Hong Kong police said.”

Taiwan held what appears to be the largest Tiananmen memorial in the world this weekend, hosting many Hong Kong pro-democracy dissidents. Taipei unveiled a replica statue on Saturday of the “Pillar of Shame,” a tower memorializing the dead that Chinese police in Hong Kong disappeared from its longtime location in that city.

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