The other day I told a Chinese linguist, who was one of the student protesters in Tiananmen square in 1989, that President Clinton had agreed to attend an official welcoming ceremony in the square when he comes to Beijing on June 26th. Critics have said this means the victims had been forgotten and the perpetrators forgiven, so I was surprised by his reaction. He slapped a fist in his palm delightedly and said: "Yes!"
His views turned out to be commonly held. Beijing people, it appears, feel that whatever their outrage nine years ago, the coming of the President of the US is a momentous occasion for their country, and that, despite being sacred ground, Tiananmen Square is the proper place to welcome him. It is after all the site of the Monument to the People's Heroes and of many major events in Chinese history. They believe China has moved on since June 4th, 1989.
The warm approval of the visit in the official Chinese media - full of anti-American rhetoric not so long ago - is an important sign to the post-Tiananmen generation that China is opening up (in their enthusiasm, authorities have even banned a Beijing magazine detailing Clinton sleaze allegations, an act of censorship unlikely to find any critics in the White House). Appearing in the square could even provide an occasion for expressing disapproval of the crackdown.
There are no speeches planned for the 21gun-salute welcome at the steps leading up to the Great Hall of the People on the western edge of the square, but Mr Clinton is a master at conveying concern, awareness, outrage, disapprobation, displeasure, disapproval or disquiet (sometimes all at once) by grinding his jaw bones, as undoubtedly he will.
The poet Liao Yiwu, imprisoned for four years for memorialising the 1989 victims, suggested that Mr Clinton take his cue from the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech of President John F. Kennedy and say, "Wo shi Beijing ren" - "I am a Beijinger."
The decision to go to Tiananmen was dictated by the inescapable fact that this is where world leaders are officially welcomed in China, said a senior European diplomat. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, could find himself being received there when he comes in September, and President McAleese most certainly will when she arrives in China at a later date. It was here that the then-President of the Soviet Union, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, was to be welcomed in 1989 three weeks before the carnage, though the ceremony was held at the airport instead because the square was full of uninvited guests in white headbands making speeches. "You either accept it as part of the protocol or don't come," the diplomat said bluntly.
However, Mr Bao Tong, a former top Communist Party official who was jailed for seven years for supporting the students, said the decision was something only Mr Clinton could make.
The White House did in fact try to persuade Beijing to change the venue. The spokesman, Mr Mike McCurry, confirmed that the issue was on the agenda when the US National Security Adviser, Mr Sandy Berger, came to Beijing two weeks ago to discuss the President's itinerary. Mr Berger got nowhere.
Mr Clinton, in a major speech on China last week, made the best of it. He said he would take part in the official greeting ceremony in front of the Great Hall of the People, "because that is where the Chinese government receives visiting heads of state and government - including President Chirac of France, and most recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel."
Those who suggested that this would absolve the Chinese government or that America was no longer concerned were wrong, he insisted, as protocol should not be confused with principle. He still maintained that China's leaders could only move beyond the events of June 1989 "when they recognise the reality that what the government did was wrong".
Mr Clinton will have an opportunity to speak out on human rights to students in Beijing University during his eight-day visit, and when he appears live on Chinese television at a town hall meeting and as a guest on a phone-in radio show. The US President could also take a lead from the Italian President, Mr Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who privately visited Tiananmen Square last week after his official welcome, "to pray and meditate to remember all those who fell".
Mrs Ding Zilin, mother of Jiang Lielian, a 17-year-old student killed in 1989, said she hoped Mr Clinton would make a similar gesture. An associate professor of philosophy at the People's University in Beijing, Mrs Ding and her husband, Mr Jiang Peikun, are among those who oppose the planned pomp and ceremony in Tiananmen Square, as "the red carpet is dyed with the blood of our relatives who have fallen".
It offends the memory of the dead, they said in a letter to the White House and to the US Congress, where the House of Representatives voted 304-106 that Mr Clinton should stay away. In it the couple also urged Mr Clinton to press Chinese leaders to reassess the official verdict that the Tiananmen protests were "counter-revolutionary turmoil".
The debate over the welcoming ceremony illustrates how China has become a minefield for the President, who will be dogged during his trip by allegations of Chinese involvement in Democratic Party fundraising and the alleged leaking of missile technology to Beijing.
In an exercise in damage limitation, and in the interests of an image which the China scholar Mr David Shambaugh describes as the "single greatest, most important element of President Clinton's visit", the President will start his tour, not in Beijing, but at the ancient capital of Xi'an. This is the site of the army of terracotta warriors, whose role in history today apparently is to provide a convenient photo-op for a US president anxious about the first impressions television viewers back home will get of his historic visit to the Middle Kingdom.