ABSTRACT
June 2019 marked the 30th anniversary of a massive pro-democracy protest that shut down China’s Tiananmen Square for weeks in 1989 before it was bloodily crushed by the Red Army. From exile in Taiwan, a leader of the protest explained their motivation thus: “A lot of people ask me what do we know about democracy, we live in a communist totalitarianism. We didn’t know much, but we did know democracy through a lack of democracy, lack of freedom.” To China’s Communist leaders, such democratic ethos are Western values that can only bring disorder. Confucian values of conformity are superior, they assert. About four years after the uprising, they issued a seven-part formal document that reiterated their commitment to communism. Even then, pro-democracy restiveness continued to surface in various provinces, most notably in semi-autonomous Hong Kong.
