The Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces

"What is important about this book is that while within China there has been an effort of forced amnesia by the government, in the West there has often been a very selective remembering of 1989. Things that are sometimes left out are the complexity of the movement and the importance of the role of workers. What often also gets forgotten is how many other cities were affected by large-scale protests. In fact, part of what kept driving the protests in Beijing was the arrival of people who’d begun protesting in the provinces but then took the train to become part of the protests at Tiananmen Square. This book is largely a collection of first-hand analyses — generally by people with deep knowledge of China — about what was going on in other parts of the country. Given the fact that nearly all of the video footage, and a lot of the photographic documentation deals with central Beijing, it’s a tremendously important counterbalance. The book captures the extent to which this really was a movement of urbanites throughout the country. It’s really important to recapture that sense. When I think back to what was surprising about 1989 it wasn’t that there was a crackdown on large-scale protests. What was surprising was how long they went on and how far they spread. It affected so many different social groups: there were journalists taking part, there were whole work units turning out for marches. Then this sense developed of, “Well maybe this is going to be a game-changing event.” For something to grow that big in China there had to be some kind of divide within leadership — and if there was a divide in the leadership, why couldn’t the seemingly unimaginable happen and the movement succeed?"