Word: spasms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Tiananmen Square. The whole affair, in fact, had developed the aura of a surrealistic ritual, with both sides' forces stepping in circles as if they were performing some stately, stylized pavane. Violence, it seemed, was out of the question. And then, early Sunday morning, the dance ended in a spasm of fury, the worst day of bloodshed in Communist China's history...
...spasm of mudslinging was painful and messy, and certainly contained a measure of revenge for the earlier Democratic assaults on such Republicans as John Tower and Ronald Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese. The atmosphere also suffered from the fact that minority whip Gingrich was leading the ethics charge. Gingrich early on admitted that an investigation of the Speaker was the G.O.P.'s chance to undo three decades of Democratic dominance in Congress...
...Anyi and his wife Li Lanting, the street scenes in Beijing last week seemed eerily reminiscent of another spasm of unrest that began to rock China 23 years ago. Then, as now, students marched in the streets by the hundreds of thousands, waving red flags and chanting slogans defying an entrenched political establishment. Destination: Tiananmen Square. Then, as now, the demonstrators vilified aging national leaders -- including, as he must have recalled bitterly last week, Deng Xiaoping, then Communist Party General Secretary, who at one point was paraded around Beijing wearing a dunce...
...strange week of unrest is why the authoritarian leadership permitted it to get started. One possibility is that with Mikhail Gorbachev due in Beijing on May 15, China's rulers were loath to set the stage with a crackdown. Some cynics speculated that conservatives plan to use the spasm of protest to claim a new liberal victim, possibly Hu's successor, Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. But a Western diplomat in Beijing disagreed, suggesting that the era of fall-guy politics has ended. Said he: "Can they let another guy go down the tubes, given the growing cynicism...
...spasm was yet another manifestation of ethnic tensions that confront General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev with a formidable challenge. The Nagorno- Karabakh dispute has revived the historic hostility between Armenians, who are largely Christians, and Azerbaijanis, who are mainly Muslims. Armenia's call for restoration of the enclave and its 160,000 people to Armenian control has been rebuffed by the central government, which fears that any such adjustment might trigger territorial demands elsewhere...