The East German people are now strengthening their unity under the leadership of the party." So declared China's Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, in October 1989. A month later the Berlin Wall fell. Even today, China's leaders find the memory painful.

China's state-owned media have mostly avoided the subject, as they have also stayed silent about the anniversary in June of China's own pro-democracy upheaval of 1989 — tumult that was witnessed by Mikhail Gorbachev, Russia's leader, and which was bloodily suppressed only when he had gone home. They are probably obeying instructions from the Central Propaganda Department of the party. The party's keen interest in the cause of national unification (in its case, reclaiming Taiwan) has not helped ease its qualms about the fate of East Germany.

Yet China's ruling party has devoted considerable energy to dissecting the causes of communism's collapse in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Official publishing houses have produced several works analysing them and drawing lessons from them. The first shock over, the party was quick not only to cement ties with eastern Europe's new democracies but also to develop strategies for avoiding their predecessors' fate.

In late 1989 China's anxiety was so profound and its diplomacy in such confusion that it was difficult to imagine it would ever come to terms with the new world order. Fresh unrest seemed unavoidable. It was far from certain that Jiang Zemin, a little known leader who had been appointed party chief in the wake of the Tiananmen Square unrest, was on firm ground.

... contd.