![]() ![]() “I went back home and asked my elders about it. “That day, the beliefs that had been instilled in me since childhood collapsed,” he said. “In a university elective course many years ago, the teacher secretly played a video for us with the door closed, without saying a word,” said a student who gave their name as “Y.” “Nowadays it's impossible that such a thing could happen.”Īnother respondent who gave his name as Guan Fu said that while in eighth grade, his modern Chinese history teacher “dedicated a whole class to explain everything about the Tiananmen Square incident.” Several students said instructors put themselves at risk by teaching about the crackdown in class or that they managed to access censored educational materials during their studies. The man, calling for an end to the recent violence and bloodshed against pro-democracy demonstrators, was pulled away by bystanders, and the tanks continued on their way. ![]() “I saw someone mentioning the Tiananmen Square massacre in the comments under a tweet by Hua Chunying, so I searched for it on Google and was deeply shocked,” he said.Ī man blocks a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Chang'an Boulevard by Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. He got a VPN account and started following a few accounts of nationalistic Chinese officials known as “wolf warriors.” Later, when I revisited the video on Bilibili, I found that the comment had been deleted,” he said.Ī high school student who gave his name as Liang said he learned about Twitter and Facebook in October 2021 while browsing Douyin, a Chinese TikTok-style video platform. ![]() “The comments were all cryptic, which piqued my curiosity, so I searched for more information. “When they mentioned Leica, the video creator added a comment saying, ‘Leica recently filmed an ad that insulted China,’” he said, referring to a commercial in which a photographer appears to be taking photos of the People’s Liberation Army advance on students on the square, only to be confronted by authorities in his hotel. Tanzhang first heard about the crackdown in 2020, when he was in junior high school, while watching a video describing cameras on Bilibili, the popular content sharing platform. Many openly expressed shock at what they discovered, some saying it had changed them forever. Most respondents declined to give their full names, citing a fear of reprisal. Twitter is banned in China, but can be accessed via VPNs.Ī student protester tosses debris into the flames of a burning armored personnel carrier that rammed through student lines during an army attack on demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, early June 4, 1989. Many use VPNs, or virtual private networks, to mask their IP addresses, which are illegal in China, but still used widely.Īhead of this year’s anniversary, RFA sent out a query on Twitter, asking Chinese netizens born after the year 2000 – essentially those age 22 and younger – to share how they first learned about the Tiananmen massacre. Every June, police descend on the homes of dissidents, placing them under house arrest and banning them from posting on the topic or speaking to the media.Īnd with the student protesters now well into their 50s, and children born since the massacre being raised with virtually no knowledge of the event, the passage of time is helping the Communist Party erase memories.īut China’s youth are technologically savvy and have figured out ways to get around the country’s Great Firewall of internet censorship. However they first learned about the June 4, 1989, massacre of students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the young people were motivated to learn more, driven by a sense that the truth had been hidden from them, a Twitter inquiry of Chinese young people collected by Radio Free Asia shows.Ĭhina’s Communist Party has done its utmost to stymie any form of public discussion of the incident 34 years ago.Īuthorities have worked tirelessly to scrub the affair from history books, online discussions and the media. Some even had personal connections to those involved. Others found out from someone with firsthand knowledge. For some, it began by overhearing an offhand comment. ![]()
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