【Original June 4, 2024】
Thirty-five years have passed since the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, in which students who appealed for democracy in China were suppressed by the military. The students had gathered in Tiananmen Square, where the Statue of Liberty had been placed, when they were raided early in the morning of June 4, 1989, by martial law troops with sniper rifles accompanied by tanks, resulting in numerous casualties.
A Sense of Stagnation Intensifies under the Xi Administration
The Chinese authorities announced the number of fatalities as “319.” However, the reality far exceeds this figure, with some foreign reports analyzing it to be thousands or even ten thousands. What is puzzling about the Tiananmen Square incident is that the truth of the incident has yet to be revealed. The young man who stood in front of the tank at the time of the incident and the driver of the tank who hesitated to go straight are still missing.
On the contrary, in China, the very existence of the incident is being erased from history. In China, you cannot search for “Tiananmen Square incident and massacre” or “June 4th” on the internet. It is said that if you try to search for them, you may be regarded as a dissident, and a virus may be sent to your computer, rendering it unusable.
Therefore, many of the post-6/4 generation did not learn about the Tiananmen Square incident in school and remain unaware of the incident itself. It is not unusual for them to know about it only after going abroad to study.
China has often said in its negotiations with Japan, “Take history as a mirror.” This was intended to strengthen its bargaining power by demanding that Japan reflect on the previous World War.
The opportunism of putting themselves on the shelf is not sincere. At any rate, this foolish policy of “don’t let them know” will eventually cause distrust of the Communist government and they should be prepared to suffer the repercussions.
Under the Xi Jinping administration, which has shifted from Deng Xiaoping’s reform and open-door policy to more authoritarian rule, restrictions on speech have only intensified, and many human rights lawyers and activists have either fled the country, been imprisoned, or been forced to remain silent. China, 35 years after the Tiananmen Square protests, is not being reevaluated, but is instead enveloped in an even greater sense of entrapment than then.
While China has surpassed Japan and Germany to become the world’s second-largest economy, it has also usurped the freedom of Hong Kong, where British-style democracy with freedom of speech and assembly had taken root, by imposing the National Security Law. In order to further promote annexation, China has intensified its armed coercion against Taiwan. What cannot be overlooked is that the Xi administration is accelerating its clampdown not only on dissidents but also on ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs.
China has landed its Chang’e-6 probe on the far side of the moon. If it brings back samples, it will be the first time a human being has done so, but this is not something to rejoice over. This is because of concerns about the militarization of space and the strengthening of surveillance networks from space.
Origin of “Rule by Force”
The “rule by force” of the Xi’s unrelenting administration is becoming clearer, but its origin lies in the Tiananmen Square incident, in which democracy was forcibly eliminated as a plot by Western powers. The Tiananmen Square incident, in which the Communist regime’s groundwork of pointing a gun at the people emerged, must not be buried in history or allowed to fade away.
