19
Over The cOurse Of
six weeks in 1989,
Chinese students and
those they inspired
gathered in central
Beijing in Tianan-
men Square. It began
as a spontaneous outpouring of respect
and grief following the death of reform-
ist leader Hu Yaobang, but the event then
took on a life of its own as mourning be-
came protest against corruption and re-
pression and a call for greater political
freedom. The demonstrations expanded
to other Chinese cities.
As the crowds swelled,
some within the Communist
Party leadership began to
fear that the protests might
continue to expand and to
threaten the Communist Par-
ty’s political dominance. A
cat-and-mouse game began
as the state tried to find ways
to move security forces into
the square to end the Tianan-
men occupation and as the
protesters looked for ways to
block them. As the crowds
grew, so did the audience of
people watching from around
the world.
Then the decision was made. On
June 4, 1989, Chinese tanks used the
cover of darkness to force their way into
the square. In the process, the Chinese
government massacred at least hundreds,
maybe thousands, of its own people, most
of them students.
Three decades later, the fight over
Tiananmen continues. On the rare oc-
casion when a Chinese state official ad-
dresses these events at all, it is to justify
the decision. On June 2, 2019, China’s
Defense Minister described the events of
1989 as “political turmoil that the central
government needed to quell, which was
the correct policy.” Because of this, he
said, “China has enjoyed stability, and if
you visit China you can understand that
part of history.”
On the one hand, it’s hard to
understand how a visit to China can
shed light on the events of that era. Yes,
China’s people have much more access
to information today than they did in
- Yet, particularly when it comes
to a subject as sensitive as the protests
and massacre in the square, the Chinese
state keeps a tight grip. Those who use
social media in China must register
accounts under their real names, and the
authorities can demand access to those
names whenever it wants.
The government also uses state-of-
the-art censorship tools to erase men-
tion of a number of politi-
cally sensitive search terms
or to redirect the user toward
other subjects. Video recogni-
tion software can detect im-
ages related to the square and
its bloody history. In short,
China’s leaders have come as
close as technically possible
to erasing all rec ord of what
happened.
On the other hand, the
Chinese Communist Party
leadership has presided over
the largest economic expan-
sion in human history. In
1989, when adjusted for dif-
ferences in purchasing power, China’s
economy generated just 4.11% of global
GDP. Today it’s 19.24%. There is an ob-
vious human dimension to this success.
Market reform in China has undeniably
lifted hundreds of millions of people
from poverty. Nearly two-thirds of the
population lived on $1.90 per day or less
in 1990. In 2015, it was less than 1%.
Per capita income increased by more
than 900% over that period, and infant
mortality rates fell by more than 80%.
Thirty years after the murders in
Tiananmen Square, China presents
a contradictory legacy. Its leadership
has provided opportunities for a better
life to a larger number of people than
any government in history. And China
remains a police state, where citizens
can’t publicly acknowledge that this mass
murder ever took place.
THE RISK REPORT
How the Tiananmen Square
massacre changed China forever
By Ian Bremmer
China’s
leaders
have come
as close as
technically
possible
to erasing
all record
of what
happened
ADVICE
Forget work-life
balance
Balancing work and life
is a strange aspiration. It
suggests work is bad and
life is good. But they are
not opposites. Work has
uplifting moments and
those that drag us down.
It’s more useful to treat it
the same way you do life: by
maximizing what you love.
The simplest way to
do this is to spend a week
in love with your job. This
sounds odd, but all it really
means is to take a pad
around with you for an
entire week at work, and
assign any activity you can
to one of two columns:
“Loved It” or “Loathed It.”
Our research reveals
that 73% of us claim we
have the freedom to modify
our job to fit our strengths
better, but only 18% of us
do so. Your challenge is
to change the content of
your job over time, so it
contains more things you
love doing and fewer you
ache to escape.
The most helpful
categories for us are not
“work” and “life”; they
are “love” and “loathe.”
Our goal should be, little
by little, to intentionally
imbalance all aspects of our
work toward the former and
away from the latter.
—Marcus Buckingham and
Ashley Goodall, co-authors
of Nine Lies About Work
ILLUSTRATION BY MARTIN GEE FOR TIME
