Little-Acorn
Gold Member
On June 3, 1989 (called June 4 in Beijing, China), Chinese authorities cracked down on a huge group of students staging protests in Tian An Men Square, the central square of Beijing, and in other locations around China. More than 300,000 troops were mobilized. Thousands of students and other protesters were killed, and as many as 10,000 injured.
The next day, as a column of tanks started to spread out from Tian An Men Square to attack nearby locations, a single man with a briefcase stepped out and stood in front of the lead tank. It did not run over him, but tried to drive around him, and he kept moving to remain in front of it. Video footage of the incident went viral, and is today most known as an iconic image of protest against the government. (The man spent most of the rest of his life in various Chinese prisons.)
The crackdowns were ordered by then-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Deng Xiaoping - the same man who had introduced capitalist-style reforms that allowed the Chinese economy to explode into more prosperity than the country had ever known in its 5,000-year history, along with the inevitable growing pains (overcrowding in cities, pollution etc.). Soon after, Deng fell from power.
Censorship of the media coverage clamped down. Today, though most of the world instantly recognizes the pictures of "Tank Man" standing down the tanks, most Chinese citizens have never seen or heard of him. When shown the picture, even well-educated Chinese respond with a blank stare and a question about when it happened, and in what country.
Most Chinese people refer to the series of crackdowns as the "June 4th incident". When some do internet searches trying to find information about the crackdowns, even today Chinese government censorship filters out all references to them. So some Chinese use alternate designations to get around the censorship, such as "May 35", "64" (for June 4), "8-squared" etc.
The next day, as a column of tanks started to spread out from Tian An Men Square to attack nearby locations, a single man with a briefcase stepped out and stood in front of the lead tank. It did not run over him, but tried to drive around him, and he kept moving to remain in front of it. Video footage of the incident went viral, and is today most known as an iconic image of protest against the government. (The man spent most of the rest of his life in various Chinese prisons.)
The crackdowns were ordered by then-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Deng Xiaoping - the same man who had introduced capitalist-style reforms that allowed the Chinese economy to explode into more prosperity than the country had ever known in its 5,000-year history, along with the inevitable growing pains (overcrowding in cities, pollution etc.). Soon after, Deng fell from power.
Censorship of the media coverage clamped down. Today, though most of the world instantly recognizes the pictures of "Tank Man" standing down the tanks, most Chinese citizens have never seen or heard of him. When shown the picture, even well-educated Chinese respond with a blank stare and a question about when it happened, and in what country.
Most Chinese people refer to the series of crackdowns as the "June 4th incident". When some do internet searches trying to find information about the crackdowns, even today Chinese government censorship filters out all references to them. So some Chinese use alternate designations to get around the censorship, such as "May 35", "64" (for June 4), "8-squared" etc.
