ABSTRACT
Walking across Tiananmen Square in the Center of Beijing nowadays, one sees visitors who have come to wonder at the splendors of the Forbidden City, visit the Mao Zedong Mausoleum, fly kites, and revel in the demonstrations of state power that surround the Square. The track marks of the tanks and the pock-marked bullet holes on the Monument to the People’s Heroes, where the last students huddled, have long been cleaned up. The only sign that a tension still lurks beneath these visions of tranquility, is the extensive presence of plainclothes security agents trained to watch for any indication of unrest or demonstration. It is hard to remember that in the Spring of 1989, the Square had been filled with tens of thousands of student-led demonstrators who demanded a more democratic and transparent political system that was less riddled with official profiteering. The presence of massive numbers of protestors occupying the symbolic center of the Chinese revolution was an affront to many of the older generation of revolutionaries, including the paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping. Thus, in the night of 3-4 June, they sent in the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (plA) to clear the Square and reclaim the “heart of the revolution” for the Chinese Communist Party (ccp). Once again Mao Zedong’s portrait is able to gaze out unimpeded across to his body lying in the Mausoleum without the “Goddess of Democracy” blocking his view. The “Goddess of Democracy” was the students last throw of the dice, erected by the students, dressed in her white robes of plaster and styrofoam, holding the torch of freedom under the old man’s nose as if taunting him to respond.
