Tiananmen Revisited

Why China’s Rulers Fear Democracy

April 19, 2024 issue

After the Massacres

April 19, 2024 issue

The Empire Strikes Back

April 19, 2024 issue

The Chinese Amnesia

Under the Chinese Communist policy of “Forgetting History,” about once each decade the true face of history is thoroughly erased from the memory of Chinese society.

April 19, 2024 issue

The Anatomy of Collapse

April 19, 2024 issue

Living in Truth

April 19, 2024 issue

‘June Fourth’ Seventeen Years Later: How I Kept a Promise

Every year on the evening of June 3, I have come back to Tiananmen to linger for a while. My wife, our son, and I join a few good friends to gather at the base of the Martyrs’ Monument and spend some time in reflection.

April 19, 2024 issue

China’s Dictators at Work: The Secret Story

April 19, 2024 issue

The Past and the Future

April 19, 2024 issue

Censorship After Tiananmen

I felt a shudder of déjà vu watching the mounting protests inside China this week of the Communist Party for censoring an editorial in Southern Weekend, a well-known liberal newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou.

January 8, 2013

Tiananmen: Money vs. Ideas

The Chinese government’s use of lethal force against protesters in Tiananmen Square was a choice, and from the regime’s point of view the correct choice. But the massacre, as if having a will of its own, seems to come back to undermine whatever the regime claims as its legitimacy.

March 31, 2014

Wrong About Tiananmen

I may have been inadvertently right in May 1989 when I said China would “never be the same again” after the Tiananmen protests.

May 20, 2014

Tiananmen's Ghosts

Two new books investigate how Tiananmen has come to shape Chinese society

April 19, 2024 issue

Hu Jia: Tiananmen at Twenty-Five

Hu Jia spent three and a half years in prison in China for “inciting subversion of state power” and currently is under house arrest for having launched a commemoration of the June Fourth massacre earlier this year.

June 2, 2014

The Tanks and the People

Twenty-five years ago, before the Tiananmen massacre, my father told me: “Son, be good and stay at home, never provoke the Communist Party.” My father knew what he was talking about.

June 3, 2014