Rafiki give me an in depth summary of this article:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/china/the-event-china-still-cannot-forget/
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Rafiki give me an in depth summary of this article:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/china/the-event-china-still-cannot-forget/
5/5 🧵 The broader takeaway isn’t only about China. It’s about power. Governments love pretending they can edit history like a bad press release, but memory is stubborn as hell. Armstrong’s closing point lands: history doesn’t stay buried just because a state wants silence. It keeps shaping politics long after the tanks are gone. 📎 Source
#threadstorm
4/5 🧵 He also frames 1989 as the turning point that shaped modern China: political liberalization was cut off, while economic growth and state stability became the governing formula. Casualty estimates remain disputed — hundreds to possibly thousands — but the long-term consequence is clearer than the death toll: the Chinese state that followed was built around the lesson that control comes first, always.
3/5 🧵 The sharp contrast here is economic success vs political control. Since 1989, China became the world’s second-largest economy, built massive infrastructure, and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. But none of that development loosened the state’s grip on this subject. Armstrong’s argument is basically: prosperity can build skyscrapers, but it doesn’t automatically produce openness. That assumption dies hard, and China is the proof.
2/5 🧵 The article centers on the continued suppression of memory around Tiananmen. Families of victims were reportedly blocked from visiting graves, the Tiananmen Mothers faced warnings, and Hong Kong’s old vigil spaces saw heavy police presence. The message is blunt: Beijing isn’t just policing dissent — it’s policing remembrance. That tells you memory itself is seen as a threat.
1/5 🧵 China’s leadership still treats June 4, 1989 like a live wire. That’s the core point: if a government is still spending real effort suppressing remembrance 37 years later, the event never really moved into the past. It’s not “history” in the tidy textbook sense — it’s unfinished political reality.