Whatever the Western world might have to say on the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown this week, the Chinese Communist Party would want to make sure that June 4 remains uneventful.

Reports from Beijing point to massive security precautions across China. Tested by the unexpected disturbances in Tibet last year and having seen through the Olympic Games without a major incident, the CCP leadership is determined to exercise full control over events this week.

The focus of the Chinese security agencies is not limited to preventing physical protests in public places. They are closely monitoring and blocking all hostile websites and trying to outsmart political opponents in the blogosphere.

Censorship has a long tradition in modern China, but the sheer volume of the Internet traffic makes it difficult to stamp out all undesirable activity. There will be a bit of the cat and mouse game on the web, but nothing that might shake Zhongnanhai, the sprawling campus in central Beijing where the Chinese leadership lives.

Meanwhile, there is some talk of ‘silent’ protests, but no one is betting on their making a big impression. Activists have reportedly urged Chinese to wear white — the traditional colour of mourning — onThursday in a gesture of respect for those who died in the pro-democracy protests in 1989.

Power balance

If rising levels of prosperity have mitigated the demands for political reform and democratisation at home, Beijing’s growing economic weight in the international system has made it a lot easier for the CCP to confidently ride through the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen.

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