But there is another obstacle to that process: whenever the party decides to re-evaluate Tiananmen, it also has to re-evaluate the idea that the ruling party does not (have a) dialogue with independent social forces. To reopen that question is quite dangerous. And so, they will probably avoid doing so as long as possible.
What will it take for the Communist Party to acknowledge that it was wrong on Tiananmen?
There are all kinds of possibilities, but it might take some kind of a crisis in state-society relations — or a power struggle within the leadership. Something that will give a positive incentive for a faction in the leadership to do it. They won't do it just because of their interest in historical accuracy. They will have to do it at a political moment when somebody sees an advantage in reopening it.
Late last year, pro-democracyactivists in China initiated a campaign seeking an end to one-party rule and the introduction of multi-party elections. What does the Communist Party's response to the so-called 'Charter 08' movement say about how far the party has come since Tiananmen?
I would say it's the same response as with Tiananmen: they have bottled it up and made it invisible. It took a few weeks to do that, but they were able to break it down to each individual who had signed the Charter 08 petition, visit those persons and intimidate them, and keep the news of it from circulating even on the internet. So, it has pretty much disappeared within China. It was not as big a challenge as the student demonstrators demonstrating in public, so it didn't require the same kind of responses, but I would say they have effectively responded to it.
There has been speculation over the years over one particular aspect of The Tiananmen Papers: the identity of Zhang Liang, the compiler who made available the top-secret documents. Have you disclosed his identity — and will you ever?
No, I have never disclosed his identity, and I don't think I will — not unless he asks me to do so. It's up to him, whether he wants his identity to be revealed. I don't see any particular reason why he would want to reveal his identity now or at any particular time. From what I know, I don't think he is going to do so.
There were media reports immediately after The Tiananmen Papers came out that the Chinese government had arrested several persons it suspected might have been behind the leak of the documents. How big a burden was it for you as an editor to bear the secret of the compiler’s identity, knowing that others were being persecuted?
I am not aware of people being arrested and prosecuted for involvement in the project. I remember there were reports at that time, but I don't think they were correct. I don't have information that anybody was arrested.
So, you felt no burden from bearing that secret?
I feel good about what I did. I don't feel any moral ambivalence. Subsequent to the publication of The Tiananmen Papers, I haven't been able to get a visa to go to China. So this is a loss for me. I'm sorry that I can't go to China; I would like to go. But, again, I don't feel any psychic pain about that. I knew when I did this project that that would happen. I feel okay about it. I am paying the price knowingly and willingly.
The Chinese government initially dismissed the documents that form the core of the book as fabricated. Other scholars, too, challenged the authenticity of the documents. You engaged them on that. After all these years, have you had any occasion to doubt the authenticity of the documents?
No. When the government said it was a fabrication, it was in a tight spot at that moment: the book had just come out in English. The government responded immediately and I don't think they had even seen the book, so they had no way to validate the authenticity of it. They put out a statement saying, 'Any attempt to fabricate documents and damage us would come to no good.' They didn't really base their comments on the book. They had no way to do so. Subsequently they haven't made another comment.
In my understanding, the authenticity has only been challenged by one scholar, and I answered him. In these 20 years, I have never doubted the authenticity of the documents; in fact I have occasionally encountered further evidence that continued to confirm for me that the documents were authentic. And that's been accepted increasingly by the academic community. For example, the preface to the new Zhao Ziyang memoirs cites The Tiananmen Papers as an authentic source.
If you were editing the book today, would you do it any other way?
I am happy with the way we did it. There were two big decisions that I had to make. The first was whether or not to do the project. And I am glad I did it. I believe the book has scholarly value, and it is an important project.
The second decision we made had to do with how we would structure the English edition. The Chinese edition is what it is: that's the thing I worked from. It was published exactly the way I had it. And that was none of my business; that was done by the compiler in a way he wanted to do that. The way that we turned that into the English edition was by cutting out some material.
You whittled down thousands of pages of documents while editing the book. How much of history fell through the cracks in this process, and were there any nuances that were lost?
I don't think anything important fell through the cracks. And it wasn't difficult to know which were the most important documents: Politburo meetings and stuff like that were the most important. I think we put into the English-language edition the material that was most dramatic and the most important.
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