Tiananmen Square

One story my father always tells me is about when he was a student protesting during the Tiananmen Square incident. The Tiananmen Square incident took place on June 3rd and 4th, 1989.  In this event, the government cracked down on demonstrations taking place in Tianamen Square in Beijing, China.  With the end of the eighties, new western, more liberal ideas were coming into the country.  The economic growth of the time also allowed for price inflation and corruption in the government, driving people to want economic and political reform. Students were protesting in the square for individual rights and freedoms, surrounding a plaster statue named the "Goddess of Democracy." The protest in Tiananmen Square inspired protests in other cities in China, but the one in Beijing was the most publicized.

The government tolerated these protests for some time, but a shift in Chinese political leaders lead to the decision to attack the protestors. Martial law was declared on Beijing, and army troops dispersed the protesters using force in the forms of opening fire, arrests, and tanks.  Dissenters were pursued for weeks after, and the government's response was highly criticized by other countries around the world.

The government's response to this incident was to downplay the incident; they antagonized the protesters and minimized the casualties of the crackdown.  This denial of the severity of this incident occurs even today, which brings up the question: should the Chinese government acknowledge the severity of this event, or has the damage taken its toll?

Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Tiananmen-Square-incident
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tiananmen-square-massacre-takes-place
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/cron/