BEIJING — It was my second attempt in as many days to visit Tiananmen Square, and it didn’t look good.

When I tried the day before, a guard said I needed an online appointment – and, no, I couldn’t make a same-day reservation. So, I scanned a QR code, entered my name and passport number, and came back the next day.

Now, I was in front of a line of dozens of people trying to get into the world’s largest public square.

Just getting here was a process: there was a police check to get out of the nearby metro station. It’s another to stand in line on the sidewalk. A third while standing in line. And now, there was a fourth final inspection, by a towering police officer standing in front of a bench of metal detectors and X-ray machines.

My journalist visa caught his eye. He told me to step aside and radioed his boss.

Another policeman arrived. Foreign reporters, he said apologetically, need special permission. And I didn’t have it.

Seventy-five years ago last month, Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People’s Republic from the top of Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Located on the southern edge of the imperial Forbidden City, few symbols of power in China rival it.

The vast square that unfolds at his feet is another symbol of power, which over the decades has oscillated between the people—and the state.

A tradition of protest took root in Tiananmen Square more than 100 years ago, when students marched through the square in 1919 – the May 4th Movement. They were protesting the terms of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War.

After the Communist Party took power in 1949, it expanded the market. The party installed two huge buildings on its eastern and western flanks – and placed a monument to the heroes of the revolution in the middle.

“Everything happened in the 1950s, basically to prepare for 1959, which was the 10th anniversary,” says Yu Shuishan, an expert on Beijing’s urban architecture at Northeastern University.

And the party had a pattern in mind. “Basically, copying Moscow,” says Yu.

The square was to be a grand public place, like the Soviet Union’s Red Square, for parades and mass gatherings.

State power

In the 1960s and 1970s, Mao brought thousands of young Red Guards to Tiananmen Square to sing his praises during the Cultural Revolution.

There have been military parades for important anniversaries of the country’s founding and celebrations for other major events, including the centenary in 2021 of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

Those great displays of state power fought against other things going on in the marketplace. In 1976, thousands of people spontaneously gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of the prime minister Zhou Enlai.

There were protests there in the 1980s — and in 1989, students took over the square for months — until the army crushed the movement.

Those protests and crackdown, broadcast around the world, brought more attention to the market – and increased its significance and sensitivity.

Xinhua/AFP via Getty Images

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AFP via Getty Images

Security in Tiananmen Square has been increased. But it was still possible to stay there. People flew kites in the square. You could ride a bike or skateboard there.

Sporadic demonstrations still took place in the 1990s and 2000s. Most were small and quickly ended in a swarm of plainclothes and uniformed police patrolling the square.

I saw petitioners throwing leaflets into the air at Tiananmen and unfurling banners. Rep. Nancy Pelosi even he did it in 1991 to commemorate the protesters killed in 1989.

People they lit it on fire in Tiananmen Square in apparent protest.

And in 2013, extremists the government said were linked to a separatist movement drove an SUV through the crowdleaving several people dead in front of Tiananmen Gate.

Security has been increased again. Metal detectors and X-ray machines came in. During the coronavirus pandemic, authorities added a digital reservation system to enter — requiring IDs or passports and controlling the number of people entering the market, ostensibly in the name of public health .

STR / AFP via Getty Images

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AFP via Getty Images

The reservation system remained in effect.

“In the past, you could do anything there,” says a 69-year-old man surnamed Liu, who has lived around the corner all his life. He declined to give NPR his full name out of concern that he was speaking candidly to a foreign reporter.

“Now, there is absolutely nothing you can do.”

Elizabeth Perry, an expert on Chinese politics and protests at Harvard University, says the heightened security reflects the insecurities of the current leadership.

Chinese President Xi Jinping “is very insecure,” she says.

“Not that the party ever welcomed popular protest, but it could live with it. But I think that meaning has now disappeared and that any kind of protest, even if it is very limited demographically and geographically, is seen as potentially dangerous by the party. “, she adds.

Perry says that may have to do with the way Xi has governed — destroying rivals with a anti-corruption campaignconsolidation of power, abolition term limits and putting Communist Party back to the center of everyday life. Security has been tightened everywhere. At the same time, the economy faltered.

“There seems to be a sort of collective condemnation that the current leadership could be in place for a very long time and there is no longer any institutionalized mechanism for leadership succession,” she says.

Tourists don’t seem bothered by the extra security in Tiananmen Square, which travelers consider a “must-see” in Beijing.

Xie Bin came from Hangzhou city to see the market with her children, who were dressed in red stickers and Chinese flags. She says it was a good experience.

“(The authorities) have their own considerations to make these restrictions, and as visitors we just have to respect the decision,” she says on a nearby street.

In September, I tried to visit Tiananmen Square again, hoping that the third time would be a charm.

NPR sought permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which contacted a government office that manages the market and the area around it. After waiting for almost a week, on a glorious early autumn day, the request was granted.

I had been to the market countless times, as a tourist and as a student. In recent years, I have visited as a journalist when foreign leaders were welcomed to China or when the square was transformed into a huge parking lot for party conclaves or parliament sessions.

Years ago, it felt like an open, organic part of Beijing. Now, it feels like consecrated ground.

A group of tourists from northeastern China invited me to join them for a photo, with the famous portrait of Mao in the background.

I was obliged, but I did not speak. A government official and a police officer accompanied me on my visit to the market. And I was told that interviews are forbidden.

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