'China must go forward; you shouldn't dwell on what's past,' an American told me in Beijing last summer. He had decades of experience in China, and I could see what he meant, from a Chinese point of view. But from a Western one, Tiananmen does need to be revisited. If the bookstalls in Beijing offer only grossly biased accounts of 'the Beijing turmoil', at least few read them and fewer still believe them: the Chinese press is government-controlled. Western accounts of 'the Tiananmen massacre' are also biased and even more inaccurate, but many read them and most believe them: the British press is 'free'.

LRB 19 November 1992 | PDF Download