With the anniversary of June 4th now passed, relatively without incident, I was hoping to move on to other topics, but I came across this op-ed piece in the New York Times and, well, here we are.
In it, Nicholas Kristof (the Times’s Beijing Bureau Chief in 1989) recounts his experiences in Beijing on the [...]
Not Everything is About Democracy
Jun 6th, 2009
“Before 1989″
Jun 3rd, 2009
At that time, everyone was fired up and wanted to be heroes. It seemed like we had reached a stage in history where we were so close to having the China that we wanted, all we had to do was put in a little hard work and a beautiful country would emerge. Of course, life is never that simple.
With Twitter blocked and his Fanfou apparently censored already*, it’s been a rough couple of days for Ai Weiwei, but the new blog remains free. Today, he posted this piece. It’s very short, and very, very poignant. Please, please read this.
Translation
Let us forget about June 4th, forget this ordinary day. Life has taught us, [...]
…and the government is preempting it by blocking everything and arresting some people. Among the victims are Wu Gaoxing, a “prominent dissident”, as well as websites Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, and Microsoft’s new search engine Bing (how did anyone even notice this was blocked?). You might already be aware, as there are more than a [...]
I Think You Forgot to Mention Tiananmen…
May 23rd, 2009
I have always considered it rather unfortunate that the one part of Chinese history most Americans know something about — the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 — happens to be a part that many Chinese know little about. Granted, American knowledge doesn’t tend run very deep, people just know that students were killed, and they [...]
Hong Kong and the Legacy of June Fourth
May 20th, 2009
Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang recently learned the hard way that economic happiness and stability cannot erase a people’s historical memory entirely. According to Learning Cantonese, a recent question and answer section he participated in went something like this:
Margaret Ng (a HK legislator): “On the 20th anniversary of the 1989 incident, many Hong Kong [...]
In Memory of Hu Yaobang
Apr 15th, 2009
Twenty years ago today, April 15th, Hu Yaobang died, and in response, China exploded.
Hu Yaobang was a CCP leader, and the General Secretary of the Party from 1980 until 1987, when he was forced out by socialist hard-liners for advocating bourgeois liberalization. He was forced to write a self-criticism, and when he died two years [...]
There Will Never Be Another Tiananmen 1989
Jan 29th, 2009
2009 has the potential to be a volatile year for China. The economy is slowing, Charter 08 is reportedly gaining some momentum (Also see ChinaGeeks’ guide to Charter 08), and the year brings two inauspicious anniversaries: the fiftieth anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising in 1959 and the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. [...]
With its economy seemingly heading the same direction as America’s, China is taking steps to ensure that its jobless university graduates can, you know, get jobs. Reportedly, they will be offering training and giving loans to companies that hire them, as well as offering smaller loans to graduates who want to start their own businesses. [...]
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