Tiananmen Square and the effects of censorship

Frightening short piece from the Atlantic about the effects of Tiananmen censorship on cultural memory. I find this amazingly Orwellian and chilling as all hell. I think we all hope to live in a world where censorship doesn’t work as a form of repression.

I have spent a lot of time over the past three years with Chinese university students. They know a lot about the world, and about American history, and about certain periods in their own country’s past… But you can’t assume they will ever have heard of what happened in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago. For a minority of people in China, the upcoming date of June 4 has tremendous significance. For most young people, it’s just another day.

June 4th is the twentieth anniversary of the protests and resulting massacres in Tiananmen Square.