2/ As the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) clamps down on dissidents ahead of Friday's anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, younger people living in mainland China are largely unaware of the momentous events of the spring of 1989.
3/ Public memorials for the victims are banned, and any references to the People's Liberation Army (PLA)'s bloody suppression of the student-led protest movement are quickly deleted from the country's tightly controlled internet.
Secret document say death toll was much higher than later reported, while claiming wounded students were bayoneted as they begged for their lives independent.co.uk/news/world/asi…
2/ First waves of troops went in unarmed to disperse the protesters. Then “The 27 Army APCs opened fire on the crowd before running over them. APCs ran over troops & civilians at 65kmh.” “Students were given one hour to leave square, but after five minutes, the APCs attacked.
3/ “Students linked arms but were mown down. APCs then ran over the bodies time and time again to make, quote ‘pie’ unquote, and remains collected by bulldozer. “The Remains were incinerated and then hosed down into the drains.”
2/ ”Why was there an order to start killing?” Fang Zheng asked. His simple query, among many other questions, has been unanswered for 3 decades. But Zheng—a victim turned activist whose legs were run over by a tank during the Tiananmen Massacre, is still fighting for the truth.
3/ The bloodbath, carried out by orders from the Communist Party (CCP), took the lives of throngs of Chinese students protesting for democratic reform on June 4, 1989. The regime continued to deny any involvement, & online searches of the incident are censored inside China.
2/ Throughout the past decade, Vietnam has been the only Southeast Asian nation that has consistently welcomed warmed ties with the West to counterbalance China. But other regional claimant states could soon do the same.
3/ After months of tough negotiations, Manila is set to retain the crucial Philippine-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which is essential to sustained and large-scale American military deployments to Southeast Asia.
A palpable shift in #Beijing’s thinking has been made possible by a decades-long military modernization effort, accelerated by Xi, aimed at allowing China to force Taiwan back into the fold. foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…
2/ Chinese leaders, including Xi, regularly extol the virtues of integration and cooperation with Taiwan, but the prospects for peaceful unification have been dwindling for years. Fewer and fewer Taiwanese see themselves as Chinese or desire to be a part of mainland China.
3/ The reelection of 'Tsai Ing-wen, reinforced Beijing’s fears that Taiwanese will never willingly come back to the motherland. The death knell for peaceful unification came in June 2020, when China exerted sweeping new powers over Hong Kong through a new national security law.