Newspaper Article

China suffers from past success

Simons, Lewis M

2012

Overview

Ultimately, though, today's unrest is fed by China's own stunning successes over the past two decades. In the period before the 1989 massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square, dissenters recognized that to step forward and complain was to put one's life on the line. That April, students from the elite Beijing University dared march off campus one day -- and met only token resistance. Emboldened, they tragically miscalculated. Hundreds of thousands camped for nearly two months in the square, loudly demanding freedom. On the night of June 3-4, tanks of the People's Liberation Army invaded Tiananmen, crushing impromptu shelters and students beneath their tracks. The tanks and armed troops killed perhaps 700 demonstrators. Hours before the assault, I interviewed a senior U.S. diplomat who assured me that the PLA would \"never\" attack the square. Most of those ensconced there shared that optimistic view. When the lights suddenly went black that night, I was standing on the broad base of the Monument to the People's Heroes, in the center of the square. Before me spread shambles of blue and white plastic tents and, beyond, the broad swath of Chang'an Avenue, where rumbling tank engines began filling the warm air with thick diesel fumes.

• Publisher: USA Today, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, Inc
• Subject: Simons, Lewis M