At a press conference held in Beijing in June 1999, a Hong Kong journalist sought the view of Zhu Rongji, then premier, in regard to the 10th anniversary of the June 4 massacre. Zhu, ever so cool and steady, uttered, 'I have completely forgotten it.'

Needless to say, all those present were seasoned enough to not pursue the issue further.

Did the bloody incident that took place in the summer of 1989 in the heart of the Chinese capital truly escape Zhu? I think not. Most likely, he did what other leaders of the Party Central would do, that was to forcibly pluck the people from the bloody memory of the Chinese nation in the most recent past, all under the canonical principle of 'stability above all else'.

Maurice Halbwachs, a French sociologist, stresses strongly that social processes influence not only people's personal memories of their own lifetimes, but also a community's shared memories of the past. To say that social processes have contributed tremendously to fostering the shared memories is hence an understatement. For a society, nation or state to continue in existence, a cautious and conscious selection of memory reins supreme.

It would appear that Halbwachs values social memory more than history. As far as he sees it, the collective memory of the past is a resource shared by the entire community, while history remains a domain exclusive to historians and scholars. What Halbwachs may have failed to realise is the horrible power of the regime to manipulate social memories as well as to concoct historiographies.

Historical discourse is essential to the survival of a regime. Even when the history is recorded, the memory can still be diluted or even whitewashed. Post-WWII Japan, for one, worked strenuously to rebuild the nation. In tandem with the nation's growing and burgeoning economy of the 1970s and 80s, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government began an effort to 'revise' the history, with a view to presenting a reborn Japanese nation, but also to consolidating the LDP's legitimacy.