The Tiananmen generation

Out of post-massacre despair, Chinese demonstrators learned not only that communism is crushing but that democracy alone cannot save | Jamie Dean

Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty Images

Type "Tiananmen Square massacre" into the Chinese-language version of the popular Chinese search engine Baidu, and the first link leads to a video with this title: "The Myth of Tiananmen Massacre." A subhead describes the massacre as "a popular Western myth," and the video features a Chinese man claiming he saw no government violence against civilians in Tiananmen Square on the morning of June 4, 1989. Zhou Fengsuo tells a different story. The Chinese activist now lives in San Francisco, but he remembers the night he spent in Tiananmen Square with thousands of other university students gathered to demand freedom from Communist oppression during the spring of 1989.

With the 20th anniversary of the student uprising, Zhou soberly recounts the gunfire, tanks, and blood in the early morning hours of June 4 as the government-led People's Liberation Army flooded Tiananmen Square and opened fire on thousands of unarmed students. The attacks by government soldiers killed unnumbered thousands and left thousands more injured.