BEIJING - CHINA'S Foreign Ministry on Tuesday defended the brutal quelling of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, while ignoring questions about a new memoir by a former Communist Party leader ousted for opposing the crackdown.

The student-led demonstrations centered around calls for more political freedom and an end to corruption.

On June 3-4, 1989, the military crushed the dissent, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of people. China has never given a full accounting of the crackdown.

Spokesman Ma Zhaoxu reiterated the official view that the movement's crushing paved the way for China's economic success in the two decades that followed what he called 'the political incident.'

'Facts have proven that the socialist path with Chinese characteristics that we've pursued is in the fundamental interest of our people and it reflects the aspirations of the entire nation,' he said when asked to comment on the release of a posthumous memoir by Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese leader who was deposed for supporting the protests.

In his answer, Mr Ma did not mention directly either Zhao or the book, titled 'Prisoner of the State.'

Zhao, a protege of the then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, helped launch China's economic boom in the 1980s through bold reform, but refused to condemn the protests and was purged on June 24, 1989.

The memoir is based on nearly 30 hours of audiotapes Zhao managed to make while under tight surveillance.

The book is scheduled for worldwide release Tuesday. A Chinese version will be published later this month. Neither will be sold on the mainland.

Zhao lived under tightly monitored house arrest for 15 years before dying in 2005 at age 85. -- AP