This week marked the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which hundreds or perhaps thousands of students and prodemocracy dissidents were killed by the Chinese military. It was an event that profoundly shaped not only modern China but also the U.S.-China relationship.
It is the odd anniversary that will pass virtually unobserved in the place where it had the greatest impact. Each year, around the anniversary, the government mobilizes an army of censors and trolls — both human and robotic — to stamp out any discussion of Tiananmen online.
Yet for the world outside China, revisiting the Tiananmen Square massacre — a misnomer in that nearly all of the deaths actually occurred outside Tiananmen Square itself, as the troops forced their way into central Beijing — is crucial, for two reasons. The bloody crackdown should remind us of the most fundamental political differences at the heart of today's U.S.-China competition. And it helps us understand the intimate connection between how China is governed at home and how it behaves on the global stage.