Probably the most enduring image of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising is of a single young man standing defiantly in front of a tank brought in to crush student protests.
But to the people of Beijing and all over China who are old enough to remember, the massacre of hundreds if not thousands of students and ordinary citizens demonstrating for democracy and a voice in their government is the single-most defining event of their lives, a trauma that lives with them to this day. Their 9/11.
The story of those seven weeks that culminated with the bloody June 3 and 4 crackdown by Chinese troops is told in “Tiananmen: The People Versus the Party,” premiering Tuesday at 9 p.m. on PBS. Using archival Chinese TV footage, interviews with insiders and key figures and eyewitness accounts, the two-hour documentary lays out in detail how a series of peaceful demonstrations could slowly escalate into epic bloodshed that scarred a generation.
“This is both a human story and a universal story,” said Ian MacMillan, the film’s director. “This is a story just about ordinary people wanting a decent life for themselves and being prepared to try and speak out about that. And this being a story that is based in China but actually could be a story that applies to unfortunately … many parts of the world that we live in today. And … my hope is that people see it not as a story that’s just about a particular moment in Chinese history but about the idea of people being allowed to have the kind of life and the kind of society that they want themselves and their children to grow up in.”
Sadly, as history tells us, their efforts did little to change things. Business continued as usual in China, democracy didn’t happen and all evidence of the massacre was wiped away. Today, the events of 30 years ago still go unacknowledged by the Chinese government and just about anyone born after that is unaware of it.
But as MacMillan says, the story isn’t over — if world history is any guide.
“What it achieved was such a sowing of seeds for what will be an inevitable change at some point …,” he said. “It happened in the Soviet Union, it happened across the Eastern Bloc. And yes, the oppression is incredibly severe, but at some point they will be the semi-forgotten but not forgotten spark that will ignite something in the future.”
