"Tiananmen Square: 25 Years Since a Failed Revolt for Democracy in China"

SOURCE: Frontpage Mag

By George Jochnowitz

Tian (heaven). An (peace). Men(gate). The Gate of Heavenly Peace is the entrance to the Forbidden City, where China’s emperors lived and where the movie The Last Emperor was filmed. Tiananmen Square, the front yard of the Forbidden City, was enlarged by Chairman Mao into the largest public space in the world, so that he could organize mass demonstrations of his supporters. Irony of ironies. Twenty-five years ago, the square was the scene of the biggest spontaneous demonstration is history, part of a movement that almost brought down the regime Mao had created. I was there on May 13, when the hunger strike began; on May 19, when the students prepared for an invasion by the People’s Liberation Army that was turned back before it ever got near the Square, and on June 2, when the Goddess of Democracy had been erected but a sense of doom pervaded the atmosphere.

The Beijing Spring Movement was a relatively rare phenomenon in human history: a struggle between good and evil. Mao Zedong had created a vicious regime, which taught people to betray their friends and relatives, which launched mad policies (ordering farmers to melt their tools in order to manufacture steel in backyard furnaces) that led to the most catastrophic famine in human history, and which continued to export grain during that famine.

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