China Celebrates Tiananmen Massacre as a ‘Political Vaccine’ Against Democracy

China’s state-run Global Times pushed ahead with the regime’s revisionism of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre on Friday by insisting what actually happened 32 years ago was not the brutal suppression of pro-democracy youth, but an expression of the “Chinese people’s confidence” in the glorious leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The astonishing editorial presented the Tiananmen massacre as a benefit to the Chinese people because it taught them to appreciate “socialist reforms” instead of “blindly following Western values.”

The Global Times said “facts speak louder than words” when looking at China’s history over the three decades since the Communist Party consolidated its grip on power by murdering thousands of innocent people on June 4, 1989:

More than three decades have passed by. Facts speak louder than words. China has embarked on a socialist path with Chinese characteristics and made remarkable progress that amazed the world. It leapfrogged to the world’s second biggest economy with a per capita GDP of over $10,000, from a country that only ranked eighth in the world in terms of GDP and had a per capita GDP of only more than $400. 

The urban middle classes are rising in China. All cities, villages and people’s livelihood have taken on a completely new look and absolute poverty has been eliminated. While at the same time, the world is full of chaos, with “color revolutions” destroying many countries. All this has made Chinese people see clearly that the path China has chosen is correct. 

“Tiananmen Square embodies the Chinese people’s confidence and pride in the politics of the country, and it is a symbol of China’s unity as well as the country’s independence and increasing prosperity,” the Global Times insisted.

“The Chinese public’s understanding of the incident 32 years ago has undergone a fundamental change. We laugh at those posturing ‘commemorative’ activities and political stunts orchestrated by outside forces,” the editorial concluded with characteristic arrogance.

Despite all of this belligerent swagger from state propaganda organs, the Communist regime regularly belies extreme doubts about the strength of its ideology. The Communist Party is so afraid of pro-democracy activists that it brutally suppresses all discussion of their ideas, even beyond China’s borders. It can no longer tolerate the moving candlelight vigils held for Tiananmen Square victims in Hong Kong for thirty years. Communist toadies make fools of themselves pretending the 1989 massacre did not happen. One old woman waving a flag is enough to panic Beijing’s enforcers into a paramilitary response.

The prosperity the Global Times bragged about was achieved with relentless theft and indulgences from greedy Western leaders who decided to forget about Tiananmen Square because they wanted a piece of China’s emerging markets, and naive Europeans and Americans who thought “economic engagement” would liberalize China.

It is the shame of the free world that it decided to forget about Tank Man and do business with the regime that sent the tanks. It is nothing the Communists should be bragging about.

The civilized world refuses to forget the Tiananmen Square massacre, and China’s long effort to force its subjects to forget appears not to be working, so Beijing’s new strategy is to insist that no country in the free world has the moral standing to criticize its human rights abuses, and suggest any government would have done what the Communist Party did at Tiananmen.