Tiananmen Square memoir claims China decided to 'spill some blood'

China decided that it had no choice but to "spill some blood" during the Tiananmen Square massacre in order to preserve stability, a new memoir by a top leader of the time has claimed.

 
An estimated 50,000 people, many of them students, gather in Hong Kong's Victoria Park for the annual candlelit vigil to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Photo: AP

The phrase, attributed to China's then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, appears in a previously suppressed diary which publishers say will lift the veil of secrecy over how the decision was made to send in the tanks on the night of June 3-4.

Leaked extracts of the diary said to be by Li Peng, the hardline former head of China's government in 1989 who is most deeply associated with the bloody crackdown, appeared yesterday as dissidents commemorated the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square.

"The measures for martial law must be steady-handed, and we must minimise harm, but we must prepare to spill some blood," Deng told officials on May 19 1989, according to a copy of the manuscript.

Mr Li, now 81 and reportedly in frail health, is said to have written his diary to justify his own role in the killings and to counter long-standing beliefs in China that it he pressured Deng Xiaoping into ordering the use of lethal force.

"From the beginning of the turmoil, I have prepared for the worst," Mr Li is quoted as saying.

"I would rather sacrifice my own life and that of my family to prevent China from going through a tragedy like the Cultural Revolution," he added, referring to a period of bitter political in-fighting in China from 1966-76.

The memoirs come a year after the publication of the secret memoirs of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party general secretary, who Premier Li helped push from office for seeking to negotiate with the protestors.

The publishers say they taken every possible to assess the authenticity of the memoirs which were passed to them through a middle-man, but admit that some doubts remain which will set out in a footnote to the book that will come out later this month.

Read more at The Telepraph