Opinion - When even remembering is a crime: China's Tiananmen Square massacre, 36 years on

Yahoo

7 days ago

An open hand with a bullet wound in the middle probably lies somewhere in the dark security storage of the Sanhe Public Security Bureau.
The hand — a painting, not literal rotting flesh — is the artwork of the Gao Brothers titled, 'Memory 1989' or 'Pierced Memory,' a memorial honoring the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre that took place 36 years ago today.
Like that piece of art, Gao Zhen, one half of the artist duo, sits locked away in a prison cell in Beijing, awaiting sentencing on charges of 'slandering China's heroes and martyrs.' All for drawing attention through art to what Beijing has been trying to erase from history for nearly four decades — the moment when those who fought for freedom were shot down by state bullets.
On June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party answered a generation's call for reform, first with silence, then steel, crushing not just bodies but the very idea of political possibility. What began as a tribute to reformist leader Hu Yaobang's death blossomed into a peaceful student-led movement calling for dialogue: press freedom, transparency, anti-corruption measures, and modest democratic reforms.
It became one of the largest acts of civil resistance in modern Chinese history, reverberating across 400 cities. At the heart of it all, more than a million people filled Tiananmen Square, their hunger strikes, banners, and speeches illuminating a fragile hope that the system might bend.
Instead, the system broke them. Martial law was declared at midnight.
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, some Chinese leaders feared Tiananmen would leave an indelible blemish on the country's history, a lasting memory of the free world that would exclude China from the global order. The fear of isolation never really materialized. At the time, many Western policymakers believed that market reforms would eventually usher in political liberalization.
In the years since, the Chinese Communist Party has been debunking the assumption that capitalism necessarily breeds democracy. It has carved out a space on the global stage to accommodate its 'China model' and infiltrate democratic institutions. Far from being a red line others dare to cross, Tiananmen revealed just how much the world was willing to overlook in exchange for market access and profit. Authoritarian regimes have learned they don't need to come out with tanks and guns blazing to debilitate national movements of resistance.
The Chinese Communists do it more 'discreetly' now. Like taking quiet but great measures to suppress creative dissent, a form of speech that is filled with illusion and thus difficult to censor, and powerfully evocative, and thus difficult to sanitize.
Sanmu Chan, a performance artist and friend of Gao who has continuously posted on Facebook each day since his friend was detained, has faced massive censorship in Hong Kong. In 2024, he was detained for writing '8964' in the air and miming the act of pouring wine onto the ground to symbolize mourning for those massacred during the Tiananmen Square protests.
In Hong Kong, Beijing has deployed legal instruments in place of tanks, replacing open violence with legal warfare. What was once a sanctuary for memory is now a place of fear and enforced silence. The annual June 4 vigil at Victoria Park, once the world's largest public remembrance of Tiananmen, has been outlawed and its organizers imprisoned.
From Tehran to Moscow, authoritarian leaders across the globe have increasingly employed vaguely worded laws to erase inconvenient history. In Russia, 'memory laws' ban criticism of the Soviet past. In Bangladesh, the rebranded Digital Security Act continues to jail critics for 'hurting national sentiment.' And in Iran, mourning itself became rebellion: on the anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini's death, her father was detained to prevent a graveside vigil; families of other slain protesters were arrested under vague charges of 'propaganda against the state.'
On the other hand, authoritarian states are keen to dictate what should be remembered. Indonesia's government introduced a proposal to name the country's former dictator, Suharto, a national hero despite his record of anti-communist purges that left more than 500,000 dead.
The lesson from Tiananmen hasn't been caution, it's coordination. Mass repression, they've realized, need not isolate a regime; it can consolidate alliances.
They saw China suffer no lasting consequences for slaughtering its people and how quickly the world resumed business. Now, they are doubling down: partnering not only in repression, but in its global legitimation, so that the next Tiananmen elicits not outrage but a shrug. From voting down a United Nations debate on the Uyghur genocide to shielding Iran from accountability over its crackdown on women protesters from marshalling authoritarian allies to pass Human Rights Council resolutions that shift focus away from civil liberties to advancing the 'non-interference' doctrine, the world's dictatorial regimes are coordinating to resist democratic norms and deflect any scrutiny of their abuses.
With Beijing's shift from authoritarian apprentice to global enabler, autocrats are now proactively offering to enforce one another's repressive techniques.
However, behind the projection of strength lies a quieter truth: authoritarians govern with deep paranoia. Authoritarianism lacks the feedback loops that allow it to democratically correct itself in open societies. Without the ability to trust its citizens or to distinguish loyalty with silence, it relies on excessive surveillance to preempt any challenges to its rule, and even then, it's failing. The sudden eruption of the White Paper protests during mainland China's zero-COVID era and the unexpected unfurling of pro-democracy banners in Chengdu show that dissent is still possible, even under extreme restrictions. This overreliance on mass surveillance will blind the Chinese Communist Party to genuine social undercurrents that will disrupt its legitimacy as a ruling party.
While the regime refines repression, people refine resistance. There is a limit to what software can suppress — and suppression breeds creativity. When authorities silenced slogans, protesters raised blank signs; when images of state violence were scrubbed from the Internet, diaspora artists, technologists, and archivists reassembled them through AI, immersive installations, and blockchain repositories.
While the streets of Hong Kong may now fall silent on June 4, Tiananmen's memory has not vanished — it has gone global. From candlelight vigils in Taipei and Vancouver to art installations in Berlin and blockchain memorials hosted on GitHub and IPFS, young members of the diaspora are transforming remembrance into resistance. Even under erasure, memory adapts, resisting disappearance not through defiance alone, but through reinvention. What drove the protesters of 1989 — the demand for dignity, truth, and political voice — now pulses through a generation born after the massacre but unwilling to let it be buried.
Attitudes are changing, and the youth are watching.
Elisha Maldonado is the director of communications at the Human Rights Foundation.
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