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On the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, a Chinese state-run newspaper published an editor's note applauding generations of strong leadership at the helm of the Chinese Communist Party.
The editor's note, published as a prologue to a series of stories building up to the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party's founding in July, did not explicitly identify the 1989 protests. The protests were crushed when tanks fought their way into Tiananmen Square in Beijing, killing thousands of people.
Instead, the editors of Global Times made a veiled reference to "the impact of Western ideology in the late 1980s" in a long list of challenges the Communist Party has faced. The list recounted specific events, ranging from the Chinese Civil War of the early 20th century to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Global Times also made an indirect reference to a surge in tensions with the U.S. and its allies over trade, territorial disputes in the Pacific and the origins of the COVID-19 virus which has killed nearly 600,000 Americans.
"Today, experts and scholars are trying to find out what is the key for the Party to overcome those challenges through wise decision-making and self-correction, to prevent a collapse and failure like other communist parties in some former socialist countries, and make China a powerful, successful and confident country that makes the West, which used to have unshakable confidence and supremacy, more and more anxious," Global Times wrote.
The Tiananmen Square massacre triggered a wave of global outrage and chilled relations with the U.S. which had been warming since the 1970s. When the pandemic, which originated in the city of Wuhan, began sweeping the world in April last year, Chinese leaders were asked to prepare for a Tiananmen-style global backlash, Reuters reported.
To help determine COVID-19's origins, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill declassifying federal information on the pandemic's initial source. The bill's passage coincided with Democratic President Joe Biden's order of a deeper investigation into the global pandemic's causes.
Both followed months of growing suspicion in the U.S. that an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) triggered the pandemic. China has vehemently denounced the suggestion of a lab leak as Western propaganda. However, the country's claim that the outbreak began in a Wuhan wet market has failed to satisfy U.N. investigators and Western scientists.
Biden directed U.S. intelligence agencies to explore the pandemic's origins more deeply and to report back to him in 90 days, basically by late August. The Senate bill orders the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to declassify any documents detailing the WIV's connections to COVID-19.
The bill cited a January 15 fact sheet released by the Department of State which said that the U.S. government believes that several WIV researchers contracted an illness similar to COVID-19 in autumn 2019. The bill also states that the U.S. has determined that the WIV collaborated with China's military on secret projects. The bill gives the DNI 90 days to submit a report of its findings to Congress.
The Chinese Communist Party has long cracked down on any mentions of the 1989 protests and killings. Authorities monitor Chinese natives whose relatives died in the massacre. Some relatives are detained or forced to stay away from their homes during the anniversary so they don't draw public attention, according to the Associated Press.
Party officials forbid public memorials on the mainland. Authorities have also banned annual vigils in the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macao, threatening an "unprecedented crackdown" on anyone who dares participate. Party leaders also recently shut down a Tiananmen museum in Hong Kong three days after it opened.
Nevertheless, Hong Kongers may experience a repeat of last year's Tiananmen vigil. It drew tens of thousands of attendees, but also resulted in multiple arrests and convictions of pro-democracy activists.
Past estimates put the number of protesters killed in the 1989 massacre at somewhere between several hundred to over 1,000. A Chinese statement released in June 1989 estimated that only 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel died, the BBC reported.
However, a recently released secret diplomatic cable from June 5, 1989—written by British then-ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald—put the number of deaths closer to at least 10,000. Donald said the number was provided by "a close friend" who served in China's State Council, a body that basically serves as China's ruling cabinet.
In its editor's note, Global Times said that "experts on Party history and Chinese politics" concluded that the Chinese Communist Party "can always overcome those crises and find the correct direction of the path [because] the Party can always find its proper and strong core leadership to ensure the victories against the enemies and realize self-correction."
Newsweek contacted the U.S. embassy in China for comment.
