Post-Tiananmen Narratives and the New China

Abstract

In the late twentieth century, student protest movements sparked massive campaigns for human rights across the world. None, however, would eclipse the June 4 Movement in China. In terms of sheer numbers alone, the event was monumental.

No one who has suppressed a student movement ever came to a good end.

—Mao Zedong

The whole Democracy Movement is the key to understanding China today. The government showed they have no legitimacy except brute force. Everything they do now is designed to reestablish legitimacy.

—Xiao Qiang, New York director of Human Rights in China

For many Chinese writers and thinkers, coming to terms with such concepts as democracy and personal freedom (whether expressed through fiction, poetry or essays) is tantamount to a struggle to be released from Mao’s hold over them.

—Geremie Barmé and Linda Jaivin, New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices