Today marks the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China.
June 4, 1989 and the events leading up to that moment are forbidden discussion in China. 37-years later the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will still target and seek the arrest of anyone who recognizes this monumental date in modern Chinese history. As a few readers will remember, this date also personal to me.
[New Photographs Here]
Through the years CTH has remembered this date, noting the importance of that moment not only in China but also in the rest of the world who were watching events, trying to understand the student protest issues and also learning about the country that was beginning to break into a much larger modern world from the other side of the Pacific.
Part of the interest in communist China was driven by watching what was taking place in Eastern Europe, the collapse of communism. Just five months after Tiananmen, in November 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, signaling the end to communism in Europe. These months were fascinating for curious American Gen Xers who were witnessing an inflection point in history between two generations – and they could sense it.
For myself, June 4, 1989, also represented an awakening as I listened to several media broadcasts talk about the Chinese government response to Tiananmen as a “hard-right crackdown.” No, that didn’t make sense. On the left is bigger government, totalitarianism. On the political right is smaller government. If the government was shutting down freedom and liberty protests, that’s bigger government – not smaller.
So, in reality, what I was witnessing was a “hard-left crackdown.”
…. But the media kept repeating, “hard right,” as if repeating it over and over was going to make reality bend in a different direction. They said it so much it was almost like they were trying to convince themselves. I began thinking about things. I kept my mouth shut and my ears open. I began questioning things that were presented to me. Suffice to say, I began waking up.
