30th Anniversary

Inflatable 'Tank Man' appears in Taiwan ahead of Tiananmen Square crackdown anniversary
By Oscar Holland

An inflatable artwork depicting the infamous "Tank Man" incident has appeared in the heart of Taiwan's capital, Taipei, nearly two weeks before the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.
Recreating a widely-known image from China's ill-fated 1989 pro-democracy protests, the provocative sculpture has been installed outside the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, one of Taiwan's most visited tourist attractions.
The sculpture is reportedly the work of Taiwanese multimedia artist Shake, whose previous projects have explored history, identity and geopolitics. 

Her balloon artwork recreates the moment when an unidentified man stood before a row of tanks in a Beijing street following a military crackdown. 

Estimates of the death toll from the crackdown range from several hundred to thousands. 

An official death toll has never been released.

"Tank Man" sculpture installed in front of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

Outside China, "Tank Man" has become one of the 20th century's most iconic images. 

After the initial standoff, famously captured by American photographer Jeff Widener from the balcony of a nearby hotel, the unknown man was filmed climbing up to the tank's turret and speaking to a soldier inside, before dismounting.
The image Widener shot for the Associated Press soon spread around the world, and is now the most recognized symbol of the bloody crackdown. 

It was taken the day after the so-called "June Fourth Incident," in which China's military cleared Tiananmen Square of protesters who had gathered to call for democratic reforms.

American photographer Jeff Widener's famous images was captured from the balcony of a nearby hotel. 

The incident remains a sensitive topic in China, and the "Tank Man" image -- along with recreations and parodies of it -- are regularly subjected to online and media censorship.
Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, named after the defeated leader who fled to the island after the Communist revolution in 1949, is considered one of the city's top tourist sites, attracting, invariably, visitors from the mainland. 

According to statistics from Taiwan's Tourism Bureau, almost 2.7 million visitors arrived on the island from China in 2018.
The monument's grounds have become a popular site for public art. 

Earlier this year, American artist KAWS installed a 36-meter-long (118 feet) inflatable of one of his signature characters, Companion, at the spot.
CNN has reached out to Shake and Taiwan's Ministry of Culture for comment.

30th Anniversary

World marks 30 years since Tiananmen massacre as China censors all mention
By James Griffiths

Hong Kong -- As commemorations for the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre take place worldwide Tuesday, any coverage or discussion of the event will be tightly censored in China.
Hundreds of people were killed on June 4, 1989, as People's Liberation Army troops cracked down on pro-democracy protesters in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Events will be held and speeches made to commemorate the massacre and those who died in cities around the world.
Tiananmen Square massacre: How Beijing turned on its own people

In central Taipei, capital of self-ruled Taiwan, a massive inflatable version of the iconic "Tank Man," who defied the military as they entered Tiananmen Square, has been on display for several weeks.
On Monday, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council called on Beijing to "face up to historical mistakes and apologize as soon as possible for the crackdown."
"In the past 30 years, Beijing lacked the courage to calmly reflect on the historical significance of the June 4th Incident," the council's statement said. 

"Rather, they blocked the information and distorted the truth about it and tried to conceal the crime."

An artwork of Tank Man by Taiwanese artist Shake, inspired by a sketch of dissident Chinese artist Baidiucao, is on display in front of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei on May 21, 2019.

Activists will hold a rally in Washington on Tuesday, with representatives of dozens of human rights groups, including Amnesty International, expected to attend, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Monday that the massacre still stirred the conscience "of freedom-loving people around the world."
"We salute the heroes of the Chinese people who bravely stood up 30 years ago in Tiananmen Square to demand their rights," he said, urging the Chinese government to make a "full, public accounting" of the incident.

Thousands of people hold candles during a candlelight vigil on June 4, 2016 in Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

The biggest event will take place in Hong Kong, the only place on Chinese soil where mass commemorations are held. 

A candlelit vigil has been held in Victoria Park every year since 1990, with hundreds of thousands attending during key anniversaries.
But across the border, the Chinese authorities will be watching attentively for any attempts to remember the massacre.
Tourists were visiting Tiananmen Square as usual on Tuesday, under the close watch of police and subject to frequent security checks.
On Monday, Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times said the massacre had been a"vaccination" against future "political turmoil" in the country, trumpeting China's economic progress in the decades since.
It wasn't the first Chinese comment on the anniversary. 

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Sunday, Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said crushing the protests had been the "correct policy."

Visitors gather around the Monument to the People's Heroes on Tiananmen Square during the 30th anniversary of a bloody crackdown of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing on Tuesday, June 4, 2019.

A day that changed China
For weeks in 1989, hundreds of thousands of students and workers gathered in Tiananmen Square, in the heart of the Chinese capital, to call for greater democracy as well as political and social reforms.

At the height of the protests it seemed like they could be successful, forcing a government that was already pursuing economic reform to also accept limited political liberalization. 

But hardliners won an internal battle within the ruling Communist Party and a crackdown was ordered.
That decision changed China forever, ending hopes of a gradual move towards democracy. 

Today the Communist Party is stronger than ever, with Xi Jinping recently throwing out term limits and clearing his way to serve for life.
Beijing has always defended the crackdown. 

Speaking at an international event Sunday, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe described the Tiananmen protests as "political turmoil that the central government needed to quell."
"The government was decisive in stopping the turbulence, that was the correct policy," he said.

The events of June 4 have been wiped from the history books in China and any discussion of the crackdown is strictly censored and controlled. 

Tiananmen is a prime target of the Great Firewall, China's sprawling online censorship apparatus.
Tuesday will be a major test of that system, which activists have spent years attempting to get past by using coded phrases such as "May 35" or "that year." 

But it's a test that it will likely pass with ease.


Shen Lu 沈璐@shenlulushen
It's that time of the year again. A posting that says "Singapore beats the US to become the world's most competitive economy" had to be manually checked by Sina censors before being published.
21
2:36 PM - Jun 3, 2019


In the lead-up to June 4, internet users in China complained about difficulties accessing virtual private networks, a common method of bypassing the firewall, while posts on Chinese social media have been restricted or deleted as companies ramp up censorship during this sensitive period.
June 4 has been nicknamed "internet maintenance day" for the number of websites that go offline around the anniversary, their owners deciding that being dark is safer than accidentally publishing something which could provoke the ire of the authorities.
On Tuesday, CNN's website was blocked by the Great Firewall. 

While the move is not unprecedented, CNN was available to users in China ahead of the June 4 anniversary, as confirmed by GreatFire.org, an independent site which analyzes internet censorship in China.
The Cyberspace Administration of China, the government body which oversees internet regulation, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

𝕛𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤 𝕘𝕣𝕚𝕗𝕗𝕚𝕥𝕙𝕤
✔@jgriffiths
The majority of readers on our main story were from China ahead of the block: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/03/asia/tiananmen-june-4-china-censorship-intl/index.html …

World marks 30 years since Tiananmen massacre as China censors all mention
As commemorations for the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre take place worldwide Tuesday, any coverage or discussion of the event will be tightly censored in China.edition.cnn.com
Screenshot from @GreatFireChina's analyzer. June 4 is forever internet maintenance day: pic.twitter.com/Mexjs6xwkB
6
4:17 PM - Jun 4, 2019
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Other international media organizations, including the New York Times and the BBC, have long been inaccessible to users inside China, according to GreatFire.org.
Speaking ahead of the anniversary, Mak Hoi-wah, chairman of the June 4 Museum in Hong Kong, said this type of mass censorship was damaging to the country.
"Without understanding the historical facts, we will not be able to move on," Mak said. 

"The Chinese government is trying to suppress it because they don't want their wrong deeds be remembered by the people."

30th Anniversary

The Tiananmen Massacre Is One of China's Most Censored Topics. Here's a Look at What Gets Banned

BY AMY GUNIA / HONG KONG

More than 1,000 posts related to the Tiananmen Square Massacre that were removed from the Internet by Chinese censors were made public on Monday.
The database contains images of 1,056 posts that were deleted from Sina Weibo, a popular micro-blogging site with more than 400 million users, between 2012 and 2018. 

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong collected the posts as part of a project called Weiboscope, which tracks censorship on several Chinese social media networks.
“Over the years we found Chinese netizens consistently continued to post about the Tiananmen Square crackdown in early June,” Dr. King-wa Fu, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong, who leads the project, told TIME.
Nearly thirty years after the crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, it remains one of the most censored topics on the Chinese Internet. 

China’s censorship apparatus, dubbed the Great Firewall, and a army of censors thought to be in the millions, block all mentions of the event. 

Related words and topics are also banned, and authorities have even blocked references to the date — June 4, 1989 — that Chinese tanks rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Squares and left what is believed to be thousands of protesters dead.
But Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese enclave, lies outside the Firewall, and researchers here were able to archive many posts before they were deleted.
Here’s a look at the photos the Chinese government does not want its people to see or share.

Re-enactments of the iconic ‘tank man’ photo
A photo of an anonymous man facing off to a row of tanks entering Tiananmen Square is one of the most well-known photos of event. 

Authorities block any posts that look similar to that photo — even of a swan facing a semi-truck.

Hu Yaobang tributes
Protests in Tiananmen Square started in April 1989 when students gathered to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang — a former Communist Party General Secretary, who was popular with students for his ideas about political and economic reform but was forced to resign by the government. 

Tributes to Hu, who protesters called “The Soul of China” have been widely censored.

Mentions of commemoration ceremonies
Each year in Hong Kong, tens of thousands of people gather to hold a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the event. 

Photos of the ceremony have been widely censored, and even simple photos of candles posted around the date of the event are removed.


Any references to the date on which the massacre occurred
An image of a set of playing cards displaying what could be seen as the year, month and date of the event, and a screenshot of a calendar, attracted the attention of censors.

Other images can be seen on the project’s Instagram account, Pinterest and website. 

“I want the public to understand the extent [to which] people are trying to post, about what kind of message they want to send out,” said Fu.

Tank Man Revisited: More Details Emerge About the Iconic Image

By Patrick Witty

A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Changan Avenue in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

28 years ago, Jeff Widener ran out of film during the most important assignment of his life.
The brutal crackdown at Tiananmen Square was underway and Widener, a photographer for the Associated Press, was sent to the square to capture the scene. 

"I rode a bicycle to the Beijing Hotel," Widener says. 

"Upon my arrival, I had to get past several Chinese security police in the lobby. If they stopped and searched me, they would have found all my gear and film hidden in my clothes." 

But there, in the shadows of the hotel entrance, he saw a long-haired college kid wearing a dirty Rambo t-shirt, shorts and sandals. 

"I yelled out, 'Hi Joe! Where you been?' and then whispered that I was from AP." 

Widener remembers. 

He asked to go to the young man's room. 

"He picked up on it," says Widener, "and out of the corner of my eye I could see the approaching security men turn away, thinking I was a hotel guest."
The young man was an American. 

His name was Kirk Martsen.
Martsen told Widener that he was lucky to arrive when he did. 

Just a few minutes earlier, some hotel guests had been shot by a passing military truck full of Chinese soldiers. 

Martsen said hotel staff members had dragged the bodies back in the hotel and that he had barely escaped with his life. 

From a hotel balcony, Widener was able to take pictures with a long lens—but then he ran out of film. So he sent Martsen on a desperate hunt for more, and Martsen returned with one single roll of Fuji color negative. 

It was on this film that Widener captured one of the most iconic images in history, the lone protester facing down a row of Chinese tanks.
"After I made the image, I asked Kirk if he could smuggle my film out of the hotel on his bicycle to the AP office at the Diplomatic Compound," Widener says. 

"He agreed to do this for me as I had to stay in the hotel and wait for more supplies and could not risk being found out. I watched Kirk from my balcony, which was right over the area where the security was. In what seemed to be an eternity, Kirk unlocked his bike and started to pedal off, although a bit awkwardly because all my film was stashed in his underwear. Five hours later, a call to Mark Avery at the AP office in Beijing confirmed that the film had arrived and been transmitted world-wide. What I did not know until 20 years later was what actually transpired after Kirk pedaled the bicycle away."
On the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, I wrote an article detailing each story behind the four different versions of the iconic scene on the Lens blog of the New York Times. 

At the time of publication, Widener wasn't sure if the young man's name was Kirk or Kurt. 

Soon after, Widener says, that changed: "I was on the computer and that familiar 'You've Got Mail' rang out on AOL. I could not believe who it was from. After 20 years, Kirk had found me because of the article in the New York Times."
Widener discovered that Martsen encountered gunfire and more soldiers after he left with the precious film and that he became lost trying to navigate back streets to find the Associated Press office. 

Martsen went to the U.S. embassy and handed over the film to a U.S. Marine at the entrance, and told the embassy to forward the film to the AP office.
"Kirk risked his life," Widener says. 

"If not for all of his efforts, my pictures may never have been seen."
The next day, the image appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world.

Jeff Widener

Years later, the BBC flew Widener back to China to revisit the Square where he made the iconic photo. 

While walking down Changan Avenue toward the square, Widener met a German teacher sitting on the sidewalk smoking. 

Widener introduced himself and they had lunch. 

They were married in July 2010. 

"If anyone had told me that I would return from that bullet-riddled street 20 years later to meet my future wife, I would have thought them nuts," Widener says. 

"Fate has a strange sense of humor."

Tank Man at 28: Behind the Iconic Tiananmen Square Photo

By Kate Pickert

When Jeff Widener looks at the most important photograph of his career, it makes him think about failure. 

Like most news photographers, Widener is often worried that he will be absent during a critical moment and miss a critical shot. 

And like many of the most important photographs in history, Widener’s Tank Man almost didn’t happen. 

“I don't have it on my wall,” says Widener, “because every time I look at it, it reminds me how close I came to messing it up.”
In 1989, Widener was a picture editor for the Associated Press in Southeast Asia. 

As political turmoil and student protests heated up in Beijing that spring and summer, Widener was dispatched to China to cover the melee. 

Day after day, he would leave the AP bureau inside the U.S. diplomatic compound in Beijing and ride to Tiananmen Square to shoot pictures. 

At first, the assignment seemed relatively safe and straightforward. 

“The square was actually very organized. They had street sweepers. They had sort of a security ring all the way to the top, where they had printing presses. There were long lines of people getting food,” says Widener.
But around June 3, Widener’s job became more dangerous as the chaos and violent clashes in Beijing spilled into the streets. 

In one particularly terrifying encounter, a Chinese man approached Widener and opened his jacket. Inside was a machete dripping with blood. 

On another occasion, Widener was hit in the head with a rock, shattering his camera, causing a concussion and nearly killing him.
Widener’s leftover headache from the incident was still throbbing on the morning of June 5. 

His AP bosses in New York wanted someone from the bureau to go to Tiananmen Square, where government troops initiated a major crackdown on protesters the night before. 

The AP photographers on duty drew straws. Widener got the short one. 

With film stuffed down his pants and camera equipment hidden in his Levi’s jacket, Widener pedaled off in the direction of the Beijing Hotel, which stood at the edge of the square. 

After narrowly evading security in the lobby with the help of a sympathetic American exchange student, Widener made his way to a sixth-floor room.
In between sleeping off his headache, he photographed the events outside from the hotel room’s balcony. 

“There were tanks pushing burnt-out buses. There were people riding around on bicycles,” Widener remembers. 

“Occasionally, there'd be a little tinkle of a bell, and it would be a guy in a cart with a body or somebody dying, blood everywhere.”
Then suddenly, a column of tanks began rolling by and a man carrying shopping bags walked in front of them. 

Widener raised his camera and paused, anticipating the perfect moment to snap the shutter. 

“I waited for the moment that he would get shot, and I waited, and I waited,” says Widener. 

“And he wasn't.” 

Instead, the man waved his arms in front of the lead tank as it tried to proceed around him and eventually, he climbed on top of the hulking metal. 

While this was happening, Widener realized he was armed with the wrong speed film and too far away to get a good picture. 

A piece of equipment to improve the shot was on the hotel room bed, several feet away. 

Should he leave his balcony perch and get it? 

“It was again a huge gamble, and I've always gambled. So I went back to the bed, and I got it,” says Widener.
The result is an iconic picture of defiance in the face of aggression. 

“I was just relieved that I didn't mess up,” says Widener, whose photograph appeared on the front pages of newspapers the next day from New York to London and has been known since as one of the greatest news photographs of all time.
“Here's this guy who is obviously just out shopping, and finally he's just had enough " says Widener. "I assume he thinks he's going to die. But he doesn't care because for whatever reason—either he's lost a loved one or he's just had it with the government, or whatever it is—his statement is more important than his own life."
Tank man was pulled away by several others on bicycles and has never been identified, but, in a sense, he’s been with Widener for the past 25 years. 

“If somebody had a way of checking my brain thoughts, this guy probably goes through every single day. Because he's become a part of me.”

6 Things You Should Know About the Tiananmen Square Massacre

By Noah Rayman

28 years ago Wednesday, Chinese troops violently retook the square in Beijing where pro-democracy protesters had set up camp for weeks. 

The Tiananmen Square massacre left an unknown number dead, with some estimates in the thousands, and smothered a democratic movement. 

But after 28 years — and a thorough attempt by the Chinese government to conceal the events that unfolded that June — our collective memory is sometimes limited to not much more than an image of a man defiantly standing in front of a tank.
So TIME went back in history to pull out the details, context and feelings of those grim days from our own unfolding coverage at the time, including a cover story from the June 12, 1989 issue. 

The articles give color, detail and context that are sometimes lost 25 years later. 

Here are six key facts that may have been buried in time:

1. It wasn’t the only protest
The demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, which at one point had reportedly ballooned to a million people, were not the only pro-democracy protests in the country at the time. 

Demonstrations had spread to hundreds of cities, including Shanghai, China’s largest, and in the days after the military mobilized in Beijing, protesters were putting up blockades in Shanghai.
And to be sure, it wasn’t the first time protesters had filled the Square in Beijing, a space for public protest. 

More than a decade earlier, in what became known as the Tiananmen Incident, a similar if smaller-scale crackdown on protesters spawned outrage and led to a reshuffling of the nation’s top leadership.
In a report on the “Tank Man” several years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, TIME described the Square as:
Tiananmen Square -- the very heart of the Middle Kingdom, where students had demonstrated in 1919 [as part of the “May Fourth Movement”]; where Mao had proclaimed a “People’s Republic” in 1949 on behalf of the Chinese people who had “stood up”; and where leaders customarily inspect their People’s Liberation Army troops — is a virtual monument to People Power in the abstract.

2. Chinese authorities still censor information about the massacre
More than a quarter century after the massacre, the Chinese government’s extensive censorship apparatus—which employs two million online censors — still rigorously blocks information about the protest. 

The ban is so total that not only is the search term “Tiananmen Square” censored, but so too are related words and phrases. 

Authorities have even gone as far as blocking combinations of the numbers 6, 4, 1989 that might obliquely reference the date of the protest, June 4, 1989. 

So for many members of the world’s largest online population, the facts about the bloody crackdown have been erased.

3. Gorbachev entered through the back door
The protests presented an embarrassing pickle for the Chinese government during a visit from the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev, the first visit from a leader of China’s communist peer in 30 years. 

The Chinese had scheduled a state banquet in the Great Hall of the People at the edge of the Square in May, as the protests raged. 

Gorbachev ended up having to go through the back door.

4. When the military opened fire, a lopsided battle ensued
In the early hours of June 4, 50 trucks and as many as 10,000 troops rumbled into the streets, TIME reported just days later. 

The military overwhelmed the civilians and began firing into crowds, but some protesters held fast, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. 

In some cases, they responded with deadly violence: Demonstrators reportedly beat two soldiers to death who had been seen killing a civilian. 

In another instance, protesters covered an armored personnel carrier in banners and then set the vehicle ablaze, trapping the crew of eight or nine soldiers. 

The military continued its onslaught and skirmishes lasted throughout the morning, “but by then the great, peaceful dream for democracy had become a horrible nightmare.” 

A doctor at the time said at least 500 were dead; a radio announcer said 1,000.

5. A goddess lived and died
A few days before the raid on the square, “in a flash of exuberance” as TIME wrote at the time, the protesters erected a “Goddess of Democracy” that partially resembled the Statue of Liberty. 

The 30-foot statue swiftly made from Styrofoam and plaster became a symbolic monument to the pro-democracy movement, and was intended to be large enough to be difficult or at least embarrassing for authorities to take down. 

Tanks crushed her when troops took the square, TIME reported.

6. The Tank Man was and still is anonymous
“Almost certainly he was seen in his moment of self-transcendence by more people than ever laid eyes on Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and James Joyce combined,” essayist Pico Iyer wrote in TIME about Tank Man, the nameless individual who was pictured stopping a column of tanks on June 5, a day after the massacre. 

The man was ultimately hustled to safety by fellow protesters and quite lost to the crowd. 

Only rumors of his identity persist, and when Chinese leader Jiang Zermin was asked a year later if he know what had happened to the young man, he responded: “I think never killed.”

Check out Iyer’s full piece on the “Unknown Rebel” here.
TIME's issue from June 12, 1989 features a cover from the massacre. 

You can read a free preview of the story, which is part of our archive open to subscribers, here.