Dealing with China: the day I shook hands with the author of the Tiananmen massacre

I am grateful to Peter Foster’s blog for reminding me of the continued existence of the Chairman Mao cult; not something that one is often reminded of these days. He isn’t mentioned much; the doublethink involved is something most Chinese prefer not to get involved with.

But what about those foreigners who have to get involved on a daily basis with Mao’s successors at the head of the Party – the diplomats? How does it feel to deal with a regime which is the direct descendant of Mao’s, and which still derives its entire legitimacy from his victory in 1949?

On 1st October there will be a huge Olympic-style spectacular to celebrate the 60th anniversary of this regime. This in itself makes me feel queasy; I was in Beijing for the 50th, and refused to have anything to do with it, saying ingratiatingly that China was not 50 years old, but 5,000. And the tank parade down Chang’an Avenue was in execrable taste.

In 1991, to my great shame, I was unable to avoid shaking hands with then Premier Li Peng, the author of the Tiananmen massacre. (Yes, of course I fantasised about syringes and little-known poisons, but….) And I remember my Ambassador, hearing of the release from prison of the last member of the Gang of Four, saying “Grrr! I’ll send a hit-man after him!” (he had been en poste during the Gang’s reign of terror, when diplomatic immunities were not respected). The difference between us and the Chinese is that we keep the past in mind while we’re doing our jobs, and they try not to. (I have never forgotten reading in some demographic study that there is a massive slump in the population’s age graph for the year of my birth, 1960: that was in the middle of the famine caused by Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and it is true that I rarely meet exact contemporaries.)

Now, of course, our people are content to follow the Chinese line; it’s all got so much better now, and China is on the right track; there’s nothing to be gained by raking up the past, and China may well be better off as it is than had the regime been messily overthrown in 1989. But those of Judaeo-Christian heritage can’t help feeling that somewhere along the line the past will come and bite China back; it’s only forty years since they were eating each other, and there are an awful lot of ghosts still to be laid.

So, while wishing China well, I stick to the sentiments expressed ten years ago, when two veteran China correspondents and I noisily toasted the day when the big picture of the old bastard is finally torn down from Tiananmen Gate.