20th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square

In the spring of 1989, thousands of protesters, many of them students, congregated in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, calling for an end to repressive domestic measures by the government of the People’s Republic of China. On June 4th, that government sent infantry troops and tanks to the historic site, killing and injuring thousands of Chinese citizens.

The massive show of military force cleared the square. A day later, a lone protester confronted a column of tanks along the ironically-named Avenue of Eternal Peace. Tank Man (the Unknown Rebel) captured the world’s imagination, but little seems to have changed in twenty years. The names of the dead and injured are still not known (even the numbers are disputed) and the event has been deleted from official Chinese histories. The PRC just blocked foreign video news broadcasts and unhooked Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites to inhibit memorial protests on the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

In other news, a Chinese company is buying the Hummer division of America’s General Motors.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Tags: Tiananmen Square