Imagine this scenario unfolding in Germany. A German American, via a Berlin auction house, is trying to sell a rare portrait of Hitler. It sparks an outcry. The portrait shouldn’t be sold, many people think, not because of the simple fact that Hitler was a murderous monster but because it’s a national treasure. Newspapers reported some of the sentiment of the public: “the portrait is the most important memorabilia from a specific period in history,” “we’re young at the time and cherished a great passion for the Fuhrer” and “it bears the spirits of all Germans and is of countless historical value for Germany.”

This doesn’t happen in Germany, of course. But if you substitute anything German with Chinese and “Fuhrer” with “Chairman” in the above paragraph, then this episode is seriously taking place in China. The portrait at issue, an original one of Mao Zedong, served as a model for reproductions of the image of the founder of the People’s Republic of China. “Today, Mao’s portrait and his corpse still dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart of the Chinese capital,” Jung Chang and Jon Halliday write in the epilogue to their ground-breaking book, “Mao: The Unknown Story.”

“Unlike the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler, the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, and the Democratic Kampuchea of Pol Pot, the People’s Republic of China of Mao Zedong survives to the present day, its ruling party intact, its system of government largely unchanged,” says the president of the Population Research Institute, Steven Mosher, who is among the handful of China “experts” who actually know what they’re talking about.

Gaining a proper understanding of China nowadays and thus formulating correct policies in dealing with the rising red dragon starts squarely with examining the legacy of Mao. Unfortunately, forced amnesia in China and selective memory in the West prevents any honest assessment of the “Helmsman” from happening.

Any meaningful discussion of the man who was judged by his successor Deng Xiaoping as “70 percent good, 30 percent bad” remains a taboo in China. So much so that when the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, one of the greatest barbarisms of the last century orchestrated by Mao and an event falling into his 30% category by official account, marked its 40th anniversary on May 16, not a single word on it was allowed in public by the regime.

The West is doing a disservice by keeping alive the legacy of the No. 1 mass murderer of modern times in a wrong way. For one thing, it’s still fashionable, literally, to wear Mao on one’s sleeve, especially in “progressive” quarters. Commenting on decorating one’s bedroom with Andy Warhol’s silk-screen portrait of Mao, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said it wouldn’t have worked with Hitler or another thug of the political right. “But leftist thugs are a different matter,” he wrote last July.

The same official amnesia applies to the Tiananmen Massacre, which took place this coming Sunday 17 years ago. With a fresher scar than that of the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen hits even a rawer nerve. The “incident,” Beijing would say, has a foregone conclusion already so there’s no point in talking about it. With the solitary exception of Hong Kong, where a candlelight vigil will take place as it has the previous 16 years, Tiananmen simply doesn’t exist in the rest of China.

Again, some in the West are learning wrong lessons from Tiananmen. Jacques Chirac, France’s president, to name one, was the leading advocate for lifting the EU arms embargo on China, imposed after the killings. Mr. Chirac called Tiananmen was “another time.” Another infamous example is Ken Livingstone. When asked about what he felt visiting the site of the massacre in April, the mayor of London compared the massacre to London’s poll tax riot in 1990. Looking out over the Beijing square, Mr. Livingston said “In the same way that Trafalgar Square has had an interesting history, not always a peaceful one, there’s a very clear parallel.”

The U.S. can do a few things to keep the flame of the Tiananmen protesters alive. On a symbolic level, Congress can pass H. Res. 794, co-sponsored by Rep. Christopher Smith, a Republican of New Jersey, and others, to recognize the 17th anniversary of the massacre. On a concrete level, the Bush administration must not ease the export controls imposed on China in response to Tiananmen. The undersecretary of commerce for industry and security, David McCormick, said in Beijing last week that the regulations on technology transfer shouldn’t “discourage civilian technology trade.” Wait until China has a genuine “civilian” technology trade, then.

President Bush, after a low-key unprecedented reception of three Christian human rights activists from China at the White House on May 11, can invite some family members of the massacre victims, who are not difficult to locate in this country, over to the White House on June 4 to show solidarity with the people of China.

Mr. Liu, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association and general manager of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, is a Washington-based columnist.