Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine and the co-author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, the third edition of which was just published by Oxford University Press.
Authorities now see it as a dangerously chaotic period, and they attack other youthful protest movements as resembling the turmoil caused by the Red Guards.
China has changed enormously since the 1989 massacre, but the Communist Party continues to deny what happened. Americans, too, continue to misremember a complex event.
China is a country that takes anniversaries seriously. But reaction to significant historical events to be commemorated this year has already taken place.
How will the Olympics play in the Chinese equivalent of Peoria, among a populace skeptical of the government’s intent and eager to tout their own economic clout?