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The Chinese authorities were heavy-handed in their reaction to the events in Tiananmen Square in the Spring of 1989 Photo: AP Photo/Jeff Widener

In confidential embassy memos Canadian diplomats describe China’s rulers as “a group of vicious elderly generals” who tried to sneak money out of the country

As the 1989 Tiananmen protests shook Beijing, top Communist Party leaders approached Swiss diplomats about sending “very significant amounts of money” to bank accounts in their country, it has been claimed.

The claim appears in a trove of confidential diplomatic cables from the Canadian embassy in Beijing that has been published nearly 26 years after the deadly crackdown on protesters on June 4 1989.

The messages were obtained from Canada’s national archives by Tom Korski, a former Beijing correspondent for the South China Morning Post newspaper.

One of the most explosive allegations in “thousands” of pages of documents is that, as unrest gripped the Chinese capital in 1989, top Communist Party leaders explored ways of sending large sums of money to Switzerland.

The new claims suggest greater fears for the government’s stability at the heart of the Communist Party than previously thought.

“The Swiss Ambassador, himself an ‘Old China Hand’, told us that over the past few months every member of the Politburo Standing Committee has approached him about transferring very significant amounts of money to Swiss bank accounts,” one cable claims, according to Mr Korski’s report. “For obvious reasons, he has urged us to guard this information with the utmost care.”

The dispatches paint a bleak and bloody picture of events in Beijing during and after the military offensive against thousands of protesters who had spent weeks occupying Tiananmen Square in the Spring of 1989.

“An old woman knelt in front of soldiers pleading for students; soldiers killed her,” reads one excerpt from a description of the “savage” crackdown, according to Mr Korski.

“A boy was seen trying to escape holding a woman with a two-year old child in a stroller, and was run over by a tank,” says another.

Elsewhere the cables mention unconfirmed reports of the corpses of “garrotted” soldiers being found in a canal and rumours of public executions. “Chinese we talk to despair about the future of their country,” one diplomat writes.

A message sent from the Canadian embassy to Ottawa 11 days after troops advanced in on Tiananmen Square reportedly reads: “The country is now being controlled by a group of vicious elderly generals and the government is run by people who will blindly follow their orders. The situation looks grim at best.”

Diplomats correctly predicted that China’s leaders would attempt to cover-up the bloodshed unleashed on their nation’s capital.

“It may be years before the true story is known,” says one message. “The era of darkness may be long.”

Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown yet victims’ families have yet to receive any explanation as to how their loved-ones died.

The Tiananmen Papers, a 2001 compilation of leaked internal Party documents, claimed that on June 2 1989 senior leaders met in Beijing and decided to order troops to clear the streets.

“We’ve got to do it or the common people will rebel,” Wang Zhen, the then president, is quoted as saying. “Anybody who tries to overthrow the Communist Party deserves death and no burial.”

Hundreds or even thousands of people, including many young students, are thought to have died but no official death toll or investigation has even been published.

In an interview last year, Song Xiuling, the mother of one student victim, said Beijing’s attempts to hide the slaughter would fail. “You have tried to cover up the facts but we are here to tell the truth,” she said.

“The Communist Party still dares not publish the truth,” said Wu Dingfu, whose 20-year-old son, Wu Guofeng, was shot and stabbed by soldiers as he tried to take photographs of the crackdown. “But one day it will emerge.”