Tiananmen Revisited

In the early hours of 4 June 1989, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on a pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, killing untold hundreds of people. Twenty five years on, the event has been commemorated around the world, but how does China remembers this defining moment in the country’s history?

We will be joined by a panel including the award-winning journalist Louisa Lim, whose book The People’s Republic of Amnesia charts how events unfolded that night, revealing previously unknown details.

Whilst looking back, we will also trace the effect the crackdown had on society then and the impact it continues to have today. We will explore how the events of twenty five years ago have shaped national identity in China.

Chaired by Paul French, an author and a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.

The panel:

Louisa Lim as an award-winning journalist who has reported from China for a decade, most recently for National Public Radio. Previously she was the BBC’s Beijing correspondent. She is author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited.

James Miles is the outgoing Beijing bureau chief of The Economist, a position he took up in 2001. He will begin a new appointment in August as The Economist‘s China Editor, based in London. He is the author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray.

Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese novelist and filmmaker. She studied film at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before she moved to London in 2002. She is author of Village of Stone, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth and most recently I Am China.

 

Photograph: nui7711 / Shutterstock.com