It is the spring of 1989. Beijing.
In Tiananmen Square, a gathering of students grows over several weeks, anticipating and then observing the visit of the leader of the Soviet Union (a man named Gorbachev) making a call on the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.
The CCP itself is led by a man named Deng Xiaoping. That meeting is a world scale event. Events in Europe have been changing the direction of Communism (Marxist-Leninism), and the TV cameras are invited into Beijing during that period of conversation. In some fashion, it’s an alliance of two communist states that are changing their ways. Deng Xiaoping is seen as a reformer; Mikhail Gorbachev is seen as a reformer.
Gathering in the square are also TV reporters and radio reporters from around the world. In other words—all attention. And then is the death of a man named Hu Yaobang. His death leads to an outpouring of sympathy across the nation because he was seen as a reformer or a lighter hand of the brutality that the people of China have visited.
This event does not begin but ends a new book: To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. I welcome Professor Sean McMeekin. He's done an enormous amount of work putting this all together. And because I've read pieces of this over the years and individual books, it is a great insight to put it all together and to make you read it continuously.
Reference to Tiananmen Square is banned throughout the world wherever there is any presence of the Chinese Communist Party whatsoever. But Tiananmen is what Marxist, Leninism, Communism, Maoism has not explained.
What does Tiananmen mean, that massacre that happened on the night of June 4th, 1989?
Watch the full interview above, or listen to an audio version below:
LINKS:
To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism by Sean McMeekin on Amazon
The opinions expressed on this website and on The John Batchelor Show are those of John Batchelor and guests, and not those of CBS News.
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