The Tiananmen Papers
To understand the new Cold War with China, we begin with the true and hidden story of Tiananmen Square.
In June of 1989, authorities in Beijing shocked the world by ordering the Chinese military to remove by force students who for weeks had occupied the square calling for economic and political reform. The bloody clearing of Beijing streets would cast a long shadow over China’s relations with governments around the world. But as Nathan made clear 12 years later, the decision to order troops to move on student protesters was not inevitable; rather, it was the product of factional political debate among a handful of CCP elders and authorities.
Using materials smuggled out of China by a reformist sympathizer, Nathan provides a “revealing and potentially explosive view of decision-making at the highest levels of the government” and the “battles between hard-liners and reformers” over how to handle the protests. For weeks, authorities met in a mansion in the heart of Beijing, receiving classified reports including on the state of mind of students, farmers, street peddlers, and millions of others across the country, and evaluated the threat to their rule. The students, Nathan argued, had not “set out to pose a mortal challenge to what they knew was a dangerous regime,” and authorities “did not relish” the use of force against them. But the hard-liners in government ultimately gained the upper hand. “Those favoring political reform lost out and their cause has been in the deep freeze ever since.”
Had the more conciliatory faction won out, Nathan lamented, “China’s recent history and its relations with the West would have been very different. Dialogue with the students would have tipped the balance toward political reform.” Instead, “China has experienced more than a decade of political stasis at home and strained relations with the West”—and Beijing “believes it has learned from Tiananmen that democratization is not an irresistible force.” For them, Nathan wrote, “the lesson of Tiananmen is that at its core, politics is about force.”
Read the full account of what really happened by clicking here
On June 4, 1989, Chinese troops expelled thousands of demonstrators from Tiananmen Square, killing an unknown number. One day later, a lone protester stood his ground before a column of tanks. The iconic image of the Tank Man, captured by Western photographers, was one China never wanted the world to see. In 2006, FRONTLINE investigated the mystery of the Tank Man — his identity, his fate, and his significance.
Watch Frontlines TANK MAN by clicking here
Behind the paywall: An unclassified NSA/CIA documentary about China China: The Roots of Madness (1967)
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