Tiananmen Square 15 years on

Fifteen years ago the tanks rolled in to crush the student rebellion in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. It came as the world's two great communist powers, China and the Soviet Union, pursued entirely different routes to reform.

In Russia, politics came first. In China, the leadership concluded they should stamp down hard on the protesters to pursue economic reforms. The result was political repression and an economic miracle - as Deng Xiao Ping said, To Get Rich is Glorious.

But what now? Do the people of China accept that a lack of political freedom is a price worth paying for economic good times? Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reported from Beijing 15 years on.

RUPERT WINGFIELD-HAYES:
It was a movement that rocked China and the world. For two months in the spring of 1989, millions took to the streets of Beijing. They were young and full of hope that China could change. But those hopes were dashed among the bullets and blood of June 4th. 15 years on, Qi Zhi Yong is one of the few in China still willing to speak out about what happened in Tiananmen Square. His life was changed forever that night, his left leg shattered by a bullet fired randomly into the crowd.

QI ZHI YONG:
[TRANSLATION]
An army truck had just gone past. Suddenly we heard the sound of shooting... rat a tat tat. We wanted to run, we were too shocked to move. No-one could believe the government would use live bullets on their own people. But suddenly I was hit. I collapsed to the ground.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
Qi Zhi Yong's physical injuries were only the start of his problems. He lost his job, his house is constantly watched by the police, his friends told to keep away from him. This church is one of his few escapes from isolation. And even today, 15 years on, he is under constant pressure to deny what happened to him.

QI ZHI YONG:
[TRANSLATION]
To get compensation I had to fill in a form saying what happened. I wrote I lost my leg on June 4th 1989 when I was shot by a soldier. They said, "You can't write that." You must write that you lost your leg in an accident.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
China's government has set out remorselessly to erase images like these from the collective memory. And on the surface at least, it has succeeded. Beijing today is a prosperous, modern city, preparing to host the Olympics. The Communist Party's rule here has never looked more secure. Its decision to crush the students looks increasingly vindicated. China's Communist rulers would like to believe that what happened here 15 years ago is now part of history, that most people have simply forgotten. And perhaps they're right. A whole generation has grown up in the aftermath of Tiananmen, and those young people know virtually nothing about what really happened here. A handful of brave women do continue the fight to make sure China does not forget what happened. This happy family photo was shattered by the June 4th massacre. The 17-year-old boy in the middle killed by a bullet in the back. His mother is determined to make sure her son, and all the other young democracy activists killed, did not die in vein.

DING ZILIN, TIANANMEN MOTHERS:
[TRANSLATION]
Our children are gone, they are dead. So it is up to us, the mothers, to carry on their lives. To continue to fight their cause.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
But that cause is hard to define. What were the masses on Tiananmen Square calling for? Democracy? The overthrow of the Communist Party? For the most part, their demands for reform were much more limited.

UNNAMED MAN, MAY 1989:
A lot of students tried to ask for legalisation of the country. The country should not be governed by a single person but by the law.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
Above all, the Tiananmen demonstrations were a mass outpouring of hope, that for the first time Chinese people could express their opinions, challenge the government, take part in the political process.

PROFESSOR WU GUOGUANG
CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG:
This is the first time people went to the street to express their real feeling, and they said whatever they wanted to say...

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
In the late 1980s, Wu Guoguang was a young reformer working as an adviser to the Chinese government. He says, at the time, the Communist government itself accepted that reform was unavoidable.

GUOGUANG:
Even Deng Xiao Ping himself realised that political reform was necessary, even just for economic reform. Without political reform, economic reform was impossible, according to Deng Xiao Ping himself.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
That's very different from what the Chinese government says now. Today, it claims exactly the opposite, but if the students' demand for political change had succeeded, China's economic reforms would have come to a grinding halt.

WEN JIABAO, CHINESE PRIME MINISTER:
[TRANSLATION]
At that time, the Party Central Committee closely rallied the whole Party and all the Chinese people together. We adhered to the lines and the policies adopted since the third plenary session of the 11th Party Central Committee and we successfully stabilised the general situation of reform and opening up in China. 15 years have passed. During this time, tremendous achievements were made in China's reform, opening up and socialist modernisation. These achievements are self-evident to all.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
The Premier's turgid rhetoric aside, it's an argument that many in China's new consumer-driven society will buy into. Apple, Amanda, Beech and Candy are all thoroughly modern university students, even adopting English nicknames. These students have little in common with their predecessors, who took on the government just a few metres away from where we sit.

'APPLE', UNIVERSITY STUDENT:
[TRANSLATION]
We cannot have democracy now. There are still 900 million peasant farmers in China. It's impossible for all of them to vote. How can someone who ploughs the fields all day choose the President of China?

'BEECH', UNIVERSITY STUDENT:
[TRANSLATION]
We must have a stable and peaceful environment to allow China's economy to grow. If those protests in Tiananmen Square had brought down the government, then there would have been political chaos. They would have jeopardised all China's economic progress.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
Post-Tiananmen, the Chinese government has made a paternalistic deal with its own people. "Challenge us and we'll stamp on you. Trust us and we'll make you rich." It's a high-risk strategy.

GUOGUANG:
The legitimacy is only based on good economic achievement. Because the government can give some space to citizens, "OK, you can make money. Don't think anything else, just make money." One day, when the economy is not so good, so the legitimacy of the government could collapse. It is not good for the government. If the government collapses in such a huge country, that's a disaster.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
It's not an outcome anybody wants, not even veterans of the '89 protests like Qi Zhi Yong. But nor does he believe the Chinese people can be intimidated and bought off forever. Below the surface, he says the desire for change is undimmed.

QI ZHI YONG:
[TRANSLATION]
Chinese people understand, they haven't forgotten. Even though people don't talk about politics, if there was another movement like the Tiananmen demonstration, I don't believe people would refuse to take part.

WINGFIELD-HAYES:
The Chinese have an expression. "You kill the chicken to scare the monkey." For 15 years, Chinese people have gone in fear of what happened on June 4th, but they still remember and they still dream that, one day, China will change.

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This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.