Since the Tiananmen Square Massacre, China’s course has been set: economic development, yes; an open society, no. The government has banned, arrested, and jailed people who tried to set up new political parties or even write about the need for change. It has brought the Internet to heel by deploying thousands of censors. And it has pushed its ambitions abroad by funding Western universities and think tanks and drawing up blacklists of people who mention its deeds. These are the bullets it uses to silence opponents.
The opium is the benefits of economic growth—the real prosperity that makes many people inside and outside of China wary of rocking the boat. For many around the world, China has become an alluring model, and its many apologists, including leading Western political leaders, happily eat from its trough.
So today we have a China that is richer than ever, boasting bullet trains and aircraft carriers, but politically stunted and often driven by nationalistic aims—an unhealthy mixture that has rarely turned out well in world history. It is a country for which 1989 did not mean the fall of communism as it did in Europe but rather is synonymous with a failed revolution.
This book is not a definitive history of Tiananmen but something more compelling: intimate interviews with people who fought for the revolution, were jailed, and were then released to a country that had suddenly turned away from politics and embraced the deadening pleasures of consumer society and the cheap thrills of nationalism. This book is about more than the events of three decades ago; it is also a portrait of today’s unhappy and repressed China.
Table of Contents
Introduction Ian Johnson
Prologue: "All You Want Is Money! All I Want Is Revolution!"
Part I Beijing
The Performance Artist
The Massacre Painter
The Idealist
The Arsonists
The Captain
The Squad Leader
The Street Fighter
The Hooligan
The Prisoner of Conscience
Part II Sichuan
The Animal Tamer
The Accomplice
The Poet
The Prisoners
The Author
Afterword: The Last Moments of Liu Xiaobo
Appendix 1 A Guide to What Really Happened
Appendix 2 List of 202 People Killed in the Massacre
Appendix 3 List of 49 People Wounded or Disabled in the Massacre
Preview (external link)
The New York Times article: "Thirty Years After Tiananmen: Someone Always Remembers" (external link) 紐約時報中文網:「《子彈鴉片》：『六四暴徒』獄中記」 (外部連結)
