The Day China was Bathed in Red

On October 1, 1949 Chairman Mao stood at the Forbidden City and announced the establishment of the People's Republic of China. As I've been reading Jan Wong's book Red China Blues I've come to a greater understanding of Maoist China. Wong grew up in a suburb of Montreal during the sixties and went to China at the age of 19 as a tourist in 1972. During her visit she was accepted into Beijing University for a year long stay. As a foreigner she was treated both with respect and distrust. She had grown to love Mao and his thought as an activist in Montreal and enjoyed taking part in the height of the cultural revolution, even if it did mean snitching on possible counterrevolutionary classmates and working in a factory and a field to experience manual labor and thought reform. When she went home, she still felt incredibly bourgeoisie.
Wong graduated from McGill then returned to China and enrolled again at Beijing University, where she graduated in Chinese History ten months after the death of the Great Helmsman. Along with the rest of her class Wong experienced months of physical labor and malnourishment while in school. After graduation she got a job with the New York Times Beijing office. After the Cultural Revolution fell apart and she threw away her Mao goggles it was easier for her to see the numerous human rights issues and every blemish in the system. She and her husband (an American draft dodger) moved to the States where she went to Columbia to get a masters (he got a Ph.D. in Physics from NYU). Eight years later she returned to China covering for the Montreal Mail and Globe. No better timing for a journalist.
The day mentioned in the title did not refer to the coronation ceremony of Red China in 1949. Rather the end put to the mass protests for regime change and democracy surrounding the death of an heir, and the Sino-Soviet summit attended by Mikhail Gorbachev. When asked what he would do about the protests, the Russian responded, "I would use democracy to resolve this confrontation." Deng Xiaoping responded with Martial Law, and--on June 4, 1989--bullets.
Wang went to Tiananmen Square to get statements from protestors and student leaders and left just ten minutes before the massacre began. She watched the rest from a 14th floor balcony of a fellow reporter at the Beijing Hotel.
As I read her account of the violence I sat horrified. I still find it hard to believe that so many soldiers were willing to kill their own countrymen simply to comply with an order from the head of government, who at this point had little control of anything in the country--except the People's Liberation Army. Apparently he thought the army could be best put to use at liberating the people from the confines of Tiananmen square where they had been peacefully protesting for nearly two months. On that day of bloodshed the Chinese government reported that they killed 241 people and wounded 7,000, although estimates from more legitimate sources report up to 7,000 deaths (NATO). It boggles my mind that when I was four years old the government of an industrialized country ordered their army, an army named for their duty to liberate the people and brainwashed to repeat the phrase 'The army loves the people, the people love the army,' to open fire on a significantly large group of peaceful demonstrators. Granted, the same type of thing happened just 13 years earlier on a much smaller scale and such action could almost be anticipated from the likes of the repressing Chinese dictatorship, it's still a wonder to me how this happened life went on all around the world. In the US groups staged protests and George Bush stopped all military sales to China. And everybody in China went back to work making our shoes, toys and office supplies. I guess a lot of change has happened since then, but I they're still a long shot from enough change. And when it comes, it might seem like it's a day late and a dollar short, but now's better than Mao and later's better than never. The Olympics looked nice the other year. The U.S. beat the Chinese is nearly everything but gymnastics. Oh, the irony to losing to China in a competition of flexibility.
That's really all I had to say. If anyone old enough to remember this could tell me their initial reaction to the massacre, that'd be cool.