.png)
There is a photograph taken on the morning of May 19, 1989 — just days before the tanks rolled in — of a grey-haired man standing in Tiananmen Square with tears on his face. He was Zhao Ziyang, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and he had come to speak to the students.
“We came too late,” he told them, voice breaking. It was the last time he appeared in public. He was placed under house arrest and spent the remaining sixteen years of his life confined to his Beijing home, erased from official history.
That moment, more than almost any other, captures what Tiananmen really was: not just a confrontation between protesters and the state, but a battle within the state itself — one that the reformers lost.
It had begun, as so many ruptures do, with a death. When former Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang died in April 1989, students reacted strongly, most believing his death was connected to his forced resignation. Hu had stood for somet...
 (1).jpg)
 (1).jpg)
 (1).jpg)
 (1).jpg)
 (1).jpg)
