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  • Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989, is a date etched in history.

  • The Chinese Communist party's massacre

  • of its own people on the streets of Beijing shocked the world.

  • And the repercussions are still being felt 30 years on.

  • In 1989 I was a young reporter who,

  • along with hundreds of other foreign journalists in Beijing,

  • covered the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

  • My mobile phone at that time was the size of a brick.

  • And my job was to interview the student leaders

  • and then phone their quotations back to our news bureau.

  • It was like a festival in the square.

  • The mood was infused with the young and, as it turned out,

  • naive hope that China could become

  • a more democratic country.

  • For a while the wider world also bought into those hopes.

  • Few in the square imagined that the soldiers of the People's

  • Liberation Army, backed by tanks,

  • would shoot their way into central Beijing

  • and, in doing so, change the course of history.

  • Three decades later I've been talking

  • to people who were involved to try

  • to put the legacy of Tiananmen into context.

  • Han Dongfang escaped from the square on June the 4th

  • and found himself at the top of China's most wanted list.

  • After a spell in prison he left China and now campaigns

  • for workers' rights.

  • 30 years ago when I started my first speech in the crowd

  • in Tiananmen Square I tried to illustrate what is democracy

  • with my very limited knowledge.

  • And the only thing I could say is democracy, to me,

  • is who decides our salary, whether we

  • have a chance to participate.

  • And at that time, when I talk about that...

  • and I feel kind of ashamed, compared to many other

  • students.

  • They quote blogs and the famous writers.

  • And ironically, today I'm still working on that.

  • The last 25 years I have been travelling nearly on every

  • continent.

  • And one thing I have learned from different trade unions

  • - democracy should start from workplace.

  • If you don't have workplace democracy,

  • if workers don't have rights to bargain.

  • And I doubt that democracy is real or fake.

  • Bao Tong was one of the most senior Chinese officials

  • to be imprisoned because of his support for the student

  • demonstrators.

  • Now 86-years-old, he remains under

  • daily 24-hours surveillance.

  • His son, Bao Pu, says the enduring legacy of Tiananmen

  • is a fundamental deficit of trust.

  • That Tiananmen event divides the PRC history

  • into before and after.

  • And what's before, its people still

  • trusted the Communist party.

  • There were a million people on the streets

  • just enjoying freedom of speech.

  • They thought the party and the Chinese government

  • would not send the tanks and shoot them.

  • And this is before.

  • But after that event that trust has been broken.

  • And that hurts.

  • I asked him whether he thought China's stellar economic record

  • over the past three decades in some way

  • justifies the crackdown.

  • I don't think so.

  • It's like you cut off you know somebody's limb,

  • and he's still surviving.

  • And you cannot say that: oh, he's surviving because you cut

  • off his limb.

  • The person is actually crippled.

  • And that's what China is.

  • China's growing clout in the world

  • has taken its toll on Tiananmen dissidents living overseas.

  • In the initial years after 1989 there

  • were a lot of media reports a lot

  • of donations in the support.

  • But this media attention as well as financial support

  • has been in sharp decline in the past two decades.

  • Western governments tend to avoid antagonising

  • China in the first place.

  • And they probably correctly believe

  • that the reform forces are in mainland China,

  • not outside mainland China.

  • Another expression of China's growing influence

  • is the erosion of people's freedom in Hong Kong,

  • in spite of Beijing's pledges to safeguard the territory's

  • democracy at least until 2047.

  • Hong Kong now understands that the economy

  • is much more dependent on debt in mainland China,

  • rather than the other way around.

  • So therefore China's demands are,

  • in general, accepted by the business community,

  • by the powerful business community

  • who are in no position to alienate and antagonise

  • Beijing.

  • As the Tiananmen massacre fades into memory,

  • the world is facing a very new type of China challenge.

  • Having shut down dissent at home,

  • Beijing is now projecting its authoritarian influence abroad.

  • The events of 1989 should stand as a reminder

  • of how uncompromising the Communist party can be.

Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989, is a date etched in history.

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