Word: tiananmen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most famous man in China this summer seems to be Xiao Bing, the "rumormonger" who was sentenced to ten years in prison for "exaggerating" the Tiananmen death toll in an interview with ABC News (he said 20,000 had died). Absolutely everyone knows the tale of Xiao. "Xiao Bing makes a point about the future," says an economics professor in Chengdu. "The people in Beijing were there -- and so may be very willing to take to the streets again. But we elsewhere are more cautious. It's not that the propaganda campaign is working. Most of us know full well...
Nonetheless, the professor wants to make one final point. What resonates for most Chinese, he says, "is when Deng and the others argue that permitting Tiananmen to run its course could have led to chaos and disorder, to another Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution is the benchmark against which everything looks better, the one thing above all that we do not want again...
Forty years ago this Sunday, Mao Zedong stood on a balcony overlooking Tiananmen Square and said, "The Chinese people have stood up, and the future of our nation is infinitely brighter." Infinitely messier is closer to the mark today. The economy's course is uncertain. Provincial and municipal governments will surely pursue their own interests despite efforts to restrain them. The party, with its ideology bankrupt, offers only order and is begging for faith -- and not getting it. How long can a government like that retain control and stay in power? "A regime that . . . is forced to fire...
...mother of the groom. "This is their wedding day. I don't want to hear anymore. Let us leave quietly." Then, apropos of nothing more than the increasingly common disdain many Chinese appear to feel for the army they saw as their great protector before it marched on Tiananmen, this small, fine-boned woman with searing brown eyes and a complexion Margaret Thatcher would compare to a rose recites some lines of Du Fu, the 8th century poet famous for decrying the gulf between ruled and ruler in China: "So it is better to abandon a daughter at birth than...
...Like in Tiananmen," says the student. "Deng wasn't actually there, right? He didn't actually kill any of us himself. But he gave the orders to have us killed. He caused...