Today, China is in grave danger of los- ing its past. Like a snail robbed of its shell, it has nothing to pull back into, little to carry forward with certainty. The mass movement for democracy in the spring of 1989 already did not happen. The govern- ment claims it was nothing but "counter- revolutionary turmoil" instigated by a handful of "hooligans." The students and ordinary citizens killed in Beijing may not be mourned publicly. Remembrance of the dead-long the anchor...