ABSTRACT
The popular protest in the spring of 1989 was the most forceful bid of popular defiance to the state in the entire history of communist China. The Chinese no-show represents a stark contrast to the astonishing revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as well as a host of others before them, such as those taking place in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran and the Philippines. The chapter discusses that the government persisted in its hardline position in counterframing-a strategy that contributed to the revolution no-show. The Chinese government first demonized protesters with words and then killed with bullets. The document was smuggled by a Chinese official to the United States in 2000 and has been vouched for by China specialists as valuable. The majority of the public outside Beijing believed them partly owing to their internal consistency, and partly the successful media control. This explains the absence of moral outrage among the Chinese public in the wake of the massacre.
