The Guardian

Tiananmen Square: A Brutal Reminder of

China’s Regime of Terror
Opinion Column
By Ishaan Pan
May 2021

On June 4, 1989, the Chinese government had decided that the student-led protests, that had
been ongoing since April, had gone on for long enough. The military had marched into
Tiananmen Square and with merciless brutality, brought the protests to a complete halt. The
death toll is widely disputed, ranging between ‘10,000’ into the hundreds of thousands. No
other protests of the scale have ever happened again in mainland China.

The Tiananmen Square protests were a turning point. The future of China would have
been vastly different depending on the victors. For weeks, it seemed as if social change
was coming. The government of China had been slowly opening up their economy and
embracing liberal reforms. This gave people hope. Hope that maybe they could live under
a government that doesn’t dictate every aspect of their lives. Unfortunately for them, the
government did not like having dissidents amongst their country.

The resulting massacre is now the most well-known protest that is furiously being
covered up by the Chinese government and to that extent, they have been very successful.
Barely anyone actually knows about the protest in China. The government even learned
from Tiananmen Square: they were giving their citizens to much freedom to think for
themselves. They needed to heighten their control over their citizens even more so they
don’t have to spend unnecessary costs in fuel sending the military to stop more protests.
Modern day China is more autocratic and
totalitarian then it ever was. They have a massive
surveillance and social credit system in order to
keep every one of their citizens in check. Any
small and inconspicuous act such as jaywalking or
playing music too loudly in public may be seen as
an offense and hurt your social credit score. If your
score goes too low, you will be denied access to
public facilities such as health care, or public
transport.

This technology is used to prevent another

Tiananmen Square from happening before the
thought of staging a protest ever crossed the mind
of the citizens. Dissidents will be removed before
they even know what they did wrong. Anyone who
disagrees with the government, anyone who is not
an ‘ideal Chinese,’ will be systematically removed.
China has made ‘1984’ into a non-fiction report on
how to set up an authoritarian regime.

They even decided to take in one step further by

taking something out of Hitler’s book of ideas.
‘Re-education Camps’ have been set up in the
Xinjiang province of China were millions of
Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are being
tortured and brainwashed to become more like the
‘ideal Han-Chinese citizen.’

Several former detainees have reported of a

massive system or organized rape where guards
and others are able to pay money have their “pick”
of the “prettiest young inmates.”

Modern day China is a mix between Hitler’s Nazi

Germany and George Orwell’s 1984. There is mass
surveillance, systematic oppression and torture of
minorities and dissidents, and an absolute lack of
regard for anyone against the government.

The voice of the people was oppressed once in

1989. People of the outside world saw what had
happened. The same is happening now, the only
difference is we don’t know what is happening.