Tiananmen book set to cause shockwaves in Beijing

The book based on secret party documents, author

In this story: Authenticity debate Difficult to fake RELATED SITES

By Rose Tang
CNN Writer

HONG KONG, China -- The publisher of the Chinese edition of the Tiananmen Papers has predicted that its release will send shockwaves around Beijing.

The 1,000-page book, entitled 'June Fourth: The True Story', purports to depict how senior Chinese leaders came to send in troops and tanks to crush pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

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The book was launched Sunday in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, North America and Europe, to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the death of party secretary Hu Yaobang, widely seen as the spark that ignited the 1989 protests

More than 10,000 copies have already been sold, according to Ho Pin, founder of the New York-based publisher, Mirror Books.

Mainland China-affiliated bookstores in Hong Kong have refused to sell the book, and the English translation, published in January, was quickly denounced by Beijing as "sheer fabrication".

Authenticity debate

The author, using the pseudonym of Zhang Liang, says the book contains extracts from thousands of secret documents of telephone conversations, meetings, faxes, telegrams and speeches he smuggled from China to the United States a few years ago.

The publication of the English version of the book, containing edited extracts of the papers, sparked a fierce debate on their authenticity. No pictures or copies of the original documents have been made available, nor has Zhang appeared in public.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has labeled the publication of the book as a plot to "create chaos in China".

Publisher Ho told CNN that the release of the book would send shockwaves through the upper echelons of China's leadership, including President Jiang Zemin and Li Peng, head of the standing committee of the National People's Congress.

"The legitimacy of the leadership of Jiang and Li will be challenged, because they gained power from the crackdown," Ho said.

The Chinese government has been tightening up customs control at airports and border points to stop the book being brought into the country, according to sources based in Hong Kong and Beijing.

However, Jin Zhong, editor of prominent Hong Kong-based political magazine Open, says the impact on the top Chinese leadership shouldn't be overestimated.

Difficult to fake

Jin, who says he has read some original copies of documents Zhang took out of Beijing, says Jiang and Li have both stabilized their positions over the years since the 1989 crackdown.

He added that most documents he has seen matched conclusions from his own investigation.

"It would be very difficult to create fake documents of such big volumes on so many details."

"It's natural that Beijing is taking preventative measures against the book, because the English edition has made such a hype in its massive publicity campaign," Jin said.

Wu'er Kaixi, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen protests who now lives in exile, told CNN that the book had offered "no surprises" as it "provided tremendous amount of details, but details only".

"The factual description has high accuracy," said Wu'er, who now runs an Internet consultancy firm in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.

"But it provides no new evidence to override what we have known about the 1989 incident."

"The reason why the Chinese government is so disturbed is that the book is saying what we have said over the last 12 years."

"I hope the book will stimulate people to garner their thoughts (about the incident) and face the harsh political environment in China, after many years of silence," Wu'er said.

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