As I stood in the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference room of the UK Parliament, presenting photos I took 35 years ago in Tiananmen Square of a student hunger strike, Russian President Vladimir Putin was standing on Tiananmen Square, stepping onto the blood-red carpet laid out by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Thirty-five years ago, students sat quietly, waiting for Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to China. They hoped the world would hear their calls for democracy and freedom. In the joint declaration of Xi and Putin, the grim reality for democratic countries is once again revealed: “The joint efforts of China and Russia lead the way for global governance.”
This is a declaration to the world: Authoritarianism is uniting to confront Western democratic countries. So will the massacre of 35 years ago in Tiananmen Square be repeated? The hundreds of photos on my computer are living history. Has history come back to life?
In most of those black-and-white photos, the hunger-strike students, like the youth blocking the tanks, only left their images on film after the massacre, with no names, and no one knew their future. Even the university students I knew who participated in the hunger strike, some working in the London finance industry, still take medication years later to repair their injured stomachs. Some became managers of joint ventures in Beijing, but they are all unwilling to mention their experiences of hunger strikes in Tiananmen Square.
Of course, there are still students and citizens who, despite entering middle age, continue to resist the authoritarian government and constantly enter and exit prisons without surrender. There are also those like Li Hong, Liu Xiaobo, Yang Tianshui, and others who have completed their missions and left “China-the-large-prison” forever.
In the most spectacular scene of tens of thousands of people on hunger strike simultaneously, I also captured some tired faces of hunger-strike students. It was early morning, the square’s broadcast loudspeakers hadn’t yet sounded, and the Tiananmen Gate Tower hadn’t yet awakened. It was a moment without slogans or passion.
A female student, wearing a sun hat and with the round face of a southern girl, her lips cracked, sat up and looked at me as she uncovered her blanket. I took two photos before she turned her face away, not wanting to be photographed. The morning air was not only damp but also tinged with the smell of sweat. Perhaps she hadn’t slept, her face showing melancholy because it was the fifth day of the hunger strike, and if she fell asleep, there was a risk to her life at any moment. I stood up and said: “There will be heavy rain in the next two days. The Beijing Transportation Bureau will send cars into the square to shelter you from the rain.”
To this day, I still remember the torrential rain that flooded the square, turning the rainwater on the ground red from the propaganda posters, mingling with the ink-black torrents swirling around ankles, colliding with sneakers, books, and plastic bags. The square was as dim as night. People speculated that the ghost of Mao Zedong’s corpse in the Memorial Hall had come out.
On the train to Beijing from Shanghai, I took several photos of university students crowded together heading to Beijing. Some lay asleep in the middle aisle, while others climbed onto the luggage racks, their legs dangling over their classmates’ heads below. They were still debating whether the military would shoot to suppress the protests and whether there should be the power to elect the president of the student union in universities.
I thought that when the soldiers with guns rushed into Tiananmen Square, as students from out of town, they could only live in tents on the square and face soldiers holding rifles. And my friend at the time was a soldier with a camera. He captured the scenes of tents and soldiers using bayonets to search through clothing in the aftermath of the tanks crushing protesters. This always made me think of the pairs of men’s and women’s shoes of different sizes hanging in the train compartment. In the photos of the morning of June 4, you can see the square filled with smoke-covered tanks, even more than tents. Looking at the photos, I don’t know if they are still alive 35 years later.
Today’s Tiananmen Square has long erased the tracks of the tanks. The portrait of Mao Zedong, once splashed with egg ink by three young men, remains vivid. Among them, Yu Zhijian, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison, has passed away. When I met them in Los Angeles, Yu Dongyue, who had long left prison for a free United States, was mentally muddled from years of torture by Chinese police.
Since the Tiananmen massacre, the square has seen the addition of hundreds of “plainclothes tourists.” Everyone entering the square must show identification, yet many petitioners still raise banners or even jump from the Jinshui Bridge to commit suicide.
On June 4, 2012, 23 years after the Tiananmen massacre, a young painter named Hua Yong entered the square and wrote “June 4” on his forehead with his own blood to commemorate his slain compatriots. He was quickly thrown into prison by the police. Later, he fled to Canada, only to mysteriously die at sea. This is how Chinese authoritarianism spreads political terror worldwide.
Imagine that in a democratic country with freedom of speech, discussing the truth of the Tiananmen massacre can still threaten your safety, even within the free speech environment of the UK Parliament. Regardless of whether the Conservative Party or Labour Party is in power, after the suppression of free Hong Kong by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), hundreds of young people with British democratic ideals, such as Tony Chung and Joshua Wong, have been imprisoned. Can British people still trust the politicians sitting in the UK Parliament building?
We can all see that China now controls the top of the global industrial chain, much like the UK during the Industrial Revolution more than 200 years ago, with its dominance and vigorous colonial expansion. The CCP is similarly expanding into new colonial territories through strategies such as the Belt and Road Initiative, striving to establish a new international order.
In the era of globalization, the interdependence between countries is increasing, and the UK, having entered the “golden era,” has become a subsidiary “trade department” of China. The relationship between China and globalization affects the economies of countries worldwide. Merely looking at the living standards of the British people, they have quickly returned to those of the World War II era.
The future relationship between China and the world will become increasingly complex and uncertain. Although the COVID-19 pandemic of three years ago seems to have ended, the wounds it inflicted on the world are far from healed. If the CCP had collapsed 35 years ago, like the Eastern European countries following the fall of the Berlin Wall, there wouldn’t be today’s widespread pandemic.
Authoritarian regimes perpetually cover up the truth without reflection, leading to repeated tragedies. It’s crucial to understand that it was witnessing the Tiananmen massacre that awakened Eastern European countries to end communist rule, fearing tanks would also crush their people.
The CCP’s violent crackdown in Tiananmen ignited the flames that toppled communist regimes in Eastern Europe rather than the long-held U.S. prediction that a higher standard of living would lead to a “peaceful evolution.” China’s wealth, coupled with the emergence of a middle class that supports the status quo, has only made the regime more tyrannical. This aligns with the unique Chinese political tradition of “change comes with poverty, stability with wealth.” Authoritarian regimes can rapidly develop economies, as seen with Adolf Hitler’s Germany, which became Europe’s most powerful economic and military state in just 13 years. Similarly, the CCP has turned China into a global power within 20 years.
Currently, the CCP’s “global governance” has taken over various U.N. departments and initiated comprehensive intrusions into Asia through the G20, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Belt and Road Initiative. It is also working to build a community of shared future in economically weak African countries, aiming to undermine the democratic United States’ political influence and promote the CCP’s dominance internationally.
However, backward liberal democracies won’t easily trade freedom and democracy for “bread and milk.” Only when China’s development slows will other countries have the opportunity to grow stronger. While it may be too late, the United States has awakened, and Europe will likely follow. A new Cold War, alongside hot wars such as the Russia–Ukraine conflict, will unfold globally.
Thirty-five years ago, when communist regimes in Eastern Europe were falling, the CCP used violence in Tiananmen Square to warn that only it could save the world. This reality forces us to reflect that the longer authoritarian rule lasts, the deeper it becomes rooted in society. It can revive in the Soviet Union and rise again in China; the Cold War has never ended.
Of course, the CCP won’t allow humanitarianism to survive, nor will it let those unnamed young students in the photos return to Tiananmen Square. If you want freedom to prevail, you must confront authoritarianism, because freedom only exists through competition with authoritarianism. If we hope for democracy and tanks never to meet again, democratic countries must reflect on the historical lessons of the Tiananmen massacre, making the blood-stained history of 35 years ago our source of moral strength.
When Lord David Alton asked, “What is your goal?” I closed those 35-year-old photos and said, “To ensure political terror does not infiltrate the British Parliament and to see the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party.”