In the spring of 1989, thousands of students from China’s elite universities
occupied Tiananmen
Square in Beijing for weeks to protest government corruption and demand
democracy. More than a million people took to the streets. Then on June 4, as
the world watched, Army troops and tanks rolled into the square, firing on the
crowd and killing hundreds.
In the 20 years since, China
has become more open economically and the rise of the Internet has allowed
ordinary citizens to connect to the rest of the world. Yet censorship and the
lack of democratic freedoms remain unchanged, and students
seem disinclined to take their grievances to the streets.
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/chinas-new-rebels/?ref=asia
