Why China’s Rulers Fear Democracy
on September 28, 1989
To try to understand is not to condone or forgive. Quite the contrary. In this bicentennial year when a euphoria for democratic rights seemed to be sweeping the world, why was it stopped in Tiananmen Square? Why do China’s rulers attack their students like enemies when in our view they are the hope of the future? The answer lies farther back than Deng Xiaoping’s aversion to the Red Guards who manhandled him in the Cultural Revolution twenty years ago.
