A RESOUNDING TRAGEDY

The period from 1989-1991 was a historically significant time that continues to shape the world we live in today. Bookending it were the Tiananmen Square protests, the subject of former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to China Vijay Gokhale’s book. The critical months of April-June 1989 in China have sometimes been overlooked, but Gokhale makes a convincing case that it is crucial to understand the developments around the protests because they shaped the China that India and other countries face today.

- Tanvi Madan

TIANANMEN SQUARE: THE MAKING OF A PROTEST

by Vijay Gokhale

HARPERCOLLINS INDIA

From his vantage point then as a young diplomat at the Indian Embassy in Beijing, Gokhale describes China’s political and geopolitical landscape leading up to the protests, the regime’s response to them and the immediate and long-term implications. In a vividly written and eminently readable account, he gives the reader a glimpse of the China of the 1980s. He particularly breaks down the black box—or perhaps more appropriately, the red box—that is Zhongnanhai (the Chinese leadership complex). Gokhale shows that the Chinese Communist Party leadership was not monolithic, and argues that a power struggle was a—if not the—crucial factor in how the events in 1989 unfolded. He describes the protagonists involved, as well as the dynamics between them. While the book is more an analytical assessment than a memoir, it also offers insight into how foreign officials try to assess and interact with the relatively opaque regime in China.

In addition, the book broaches a contemporary question: why does Beijing do what it does? Gokhale argues that a critical part of the answer lies in the fact that, for all its internal differences, the Chinese Communist Party then and now has one overarching priority—regime preservation—that shapes its domestic and foreign policy thinking. And he outlines how and why the Tiananmen protests only reinforced that instinct. He does not say that the Chinese leadership today is the same (for instance, he argues that over time the ideology driving it has changed from communism to power and money). But he does imply that one cannot fully comprehend it without returning to that moment in 1989.