On this episode of China Uncensored,
the real reason the Chinese Communist Party
silences discussion of Tiananmen Square.
Hello and welcome to China Uncensored.
I'm your host, Chris Chappell.
Yesterday was the 28th anniversary
of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing.
In Chinese,
they call it the June 4th Incident.
Which is like calling Mao's Great Famine
the time that everyone skipped dinner.
The massacre was the Chinese Communist Party's
final, crushing response
to 6 weeks of protests
led by students demanding change
from the Party:
political reform,
less corruption,
freedom of speech and the press,
and eventually, even the D-word.
Democracy.
Within the benevolent one-party rule
of the communist state of course.
Those students weren't crazy.
The Tiananmen Square massacre
is still commemorated today by Chinese
outside mainland China.
Like with an annual candlelight vigil
in Hong Kong,
the only part of China
where people are allowed to acknowledge
that the massacre happened at all.
Inside mainland China, well,
the Communist Party called the protests
a "counterrevolutionary riot."
And they said that if anyone,
you know,
inadvertently stepped into the path
of a stray bullet,
it was only because the poor soldiers
were forced to defend themselves
against these criminal elements
who were viciously attacking them.
With their protest signs.
And bicycles.
What's a guy in a tank to do? And then after shutting down or destroying
anything that could poke holes
in the official narrative,
over the next 28 years,
the Party implemented a top-down,
state-sponsored amnesia.
Kind of like if Neo managed to wake everyone up
from the Matrix,
but then the Matrix put everyone back to sleep.
Don't worry, everyone.
Zion was just a bad dream.
Here to talk about
how the Tiananmen Square protests are remembered
is China Uncensored's resident Chinese person,
Shelley Zhang.
Chris.
Shelley, why do we still remember
the Tiananmen Square massacre so well?
At least, outside mainland China?
Well Chris,
there was a lot of media coverage
of the protests.
Partly because of a big coincidence.
There was an unusually large number
of foreign reporters in Beijing
to cover a historic summit
between China and the Soviet Union,
and the protests broke out
just before it happened.
Which is why you have a BBC reporter
experiencing this on the night of the massacre:
"The young man in front of me
fell dead.
I fell over him.
Two others were killed yards away.
Two more people lay wounded
on the ground near me."
Wow, that is intense.
So you're saying it's well remembered now
because it was well documented then?
Pretty well documented, yes.
As for well remembered...
we went to Times Square
to see if people would recognize
any of the iconic images
from the Tiananmen protests.
We showed them these photos
of people marching down Chang'an Avenue.
The Goddess of Democracy.
Tank Man.
And this Time Magazine cover.
Oh no.
Oh yes.
"It looks like 5th ave."
"That looks like the statue of liberty."
"I would say like maybe Chinatown."
“Okay, I just taught this.
Hold on.
I used to know this.”
"Asia somewhere."
"It's either Korea or Russia."
"How is this comedy?"
What?
Fifth avenue?
The Statue of Liberty?
New Yorkers think everything
is about them.
I like the Fifth Avenue guy.
If you can look at a photo of Chinese people
marching down a street holding Chinese signs
and think that's Fifth Avenue,
that says something great about America.
Did people at least recognize Tank Man?
Well, about half the people
recognized the photo.
They weren't all able to connect him
to the Tiananmen Square massacre, though.
But in general, people responded
more to the photos of the massacre
than the photos of the protest.
And I think that's because
we remember the massacre
more than the protests.
We're not remembering the whole story.
Take these protest photos.
Are those the ones published by the New York Times
that haven't been seen for 28 years?
Actually, they're my uncle's photos
that hadn't been seen for 25 years.
I found them in a shoebox
three years ago.
I don't get the joke.
I'm not kidding.
My uncle was a student in Beijing in 1989.
He took these black-and-white photos of the protests,
and somehow smuggled the negatives
out to my parents.
And then I found them in a shoebox.
What?
And your parents never told you about them?
I don't know why, Chris.
But don't underestimate the lengths
the Communist Party went to
in order to erase the memory of Tiananmen.
When my mother went to China in 1993,
relatives in Beijing took her aside
and whispered that what the Party was saying
about Tiananmen Square wasn't true.
She had to tell them
that the rest of the world already knew that.
Imagine if there hadn't been foreign media
in Beijing.
In her book about the Tiananmen protests,
The People's Republic of Amnesia,
journalist Louisa Lim uncovered another massacre
that happened in Chengdu,
in the days after June 4th.
Wait, another massacre?!
Yes!
But almost no one had reported on it
in over 20 years.
When she was writing her book,
she used a computer that was never
connected to the internet,
and did not tell anyone
what she was writing about,
because she was pretty sure her apartment
was bugged.
That's how dangerous Tiananmen still is.
Wow.
We've talked before about how the protests
weren't just in Beijing,
that happened all over the country,
but it's crazy that the Party
was able to cover up a whole other massacre.
So is that why Communist Party
is still so intent on silencing
the memory of the protests?
They don't want to remind people
of their brutality?
That's definitely part of it.
In the aftermath of the crackdown,
China was seen by other countries
kind of the way we see North Korea today.
And overseas Chinese were also
hugely critical of the Party.
They protested in front of Chinese embassies
around the world.
My father,
a very nonpolitical grad student,
took me to march with other Chinese students
and their families.
But it wasn't just that.
You know, finding my uncle's photos
really changed the way I thought of
the Tiananmen protests.
Look at this girl's face.
We forget that there was
this hope and optimism.
That the protesters thought
they were going to make a difference.
That they could make the Party change.
People making the Party change?
That is dangerous.
Right?
In a way,
these protest photos are even more powerful
than the photos of the massacre.
When the protests reached their peak,
it wasn't just students marching.
Look at this sign;
it's from the police.
And there are so many kids in these photos.
These parents are taking their daughter
in her best dress
to see the Goddess of Democracy.
People were dancing and singing
in Tiananmen Square.
This is what the Communist Party
wants people to forget.
That Chinese people once believed
they could change the government,
convince the Party to reform.
That so many people across the country
supported something like that.
That they had that kind of hope.
That's what the Party killed in Tiananmen Square.
Yeah, that goes back to the unspoken bargain
they made with people after Tiananmen.
Never question our authority,
and you can have a better life.
And by doing that,
they turned remembering
into an act of defiance against the Party.
Look at this photo.
That big sign on the Monument to the People’s Heroes says,
"The people will not forget 1989."
Well, maybe we can help them remember.
Thanks, Shelley.
And thank you for watching
this episode of China Uncensored.
If you want to help people remember,
share this episode with the hastag,
#IRememberTiananmen.
We've put some links in the description below
if you're interested in learning more
about the Tiananmen protests,
and if you want to see more of Shelley's photos.
Once again,
I'm your host, Chris Chappell.
See you next time.