New book: Tiananmen 1989 – Seven Weeks that Shook the World
Thursday, 14 May 2009.
The events that led to the bloody massacre of June 4, 1989, represented a turning point in Chinese history
Millions joined wave upon wave of demonstrations in Beijing itself, with anti-government protests spreading to over 100 cities across China. Throughout this movement and right up to the bloody finish, the demonstrators sang ‘The Internationale’, giving the lie to the regime’s claim that this was a bourgeois counter-revolutionary movement.
The movement went beyond a student protest movement and began to activate broad layers of the population including – crucially – the working class. This was the signal for the regime, led by the architect of capitalist ‘reform’ Deng Xiaoping, to crush the movement and to do so with overwhelming violence, in order to draw a line in blood that workers, students, and other layers should fear to cross in future.
This book, compiled by chinaworker.info, is a contribution to the ongoing discussion in China and worldwide over these events. Also, for the first time in the Chinese language, we are republishing Stephen Jolly’s incisive eyewitness account of the Tiananmen events. Jolly, who later became the first Trotskyist city councillor to be elected in Australia, representing the Socialist Party in the city of Yarra (Melbourne), went to China representing the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). Also in this volume are chapters by Vincent Kolo and Chen Mo, both contributors to chinaworker.info.
The book attempts to draw out some important lessons: Could the Tiananmen movement have succeeded in changing China’s political system, and if so, with what political programme? Was the mass movement an attempt to restore capitalism and the crackdown therefore a ‘defence’ of Chinese socialism? Which social classes gained and which were losers from the massacre and the repression that followed? And what role did the working class play in the movement? The answers to these questions will help us to understand what can happen in China in the future: the prospects for workers to organise and fight against super-exploitation, and the prospects for a new mass movement in the direction of genuine democracy and genuine socialism.
At 96 pages, the book retails at HK$70 in Hong Kong.
Click the "Buy now" button to order the book and pay with Paypal or credit card.
Millions joined wave upon wave of demonstrations in Beijing itself, with anti-government protests spreading to over 100 cities across China. Throughout this movement and right up to the bloody finish, the demonstrators sang ‘The Internationale’, giving the lie to the regime’s claim that this was a bourgeois counter-revolutionary movement.
The movement went beyond a student protest movement and began to activate broad layers of the population including – crucially – the working class. This was the signal for the regime, led by the architect of capitalist ‘reform’ Deng Xiaoping, to crush the movement and to do so with overwhelming violence, in order to draw a line in blood that workers, students, and other layers should fear to cross in future.
This book, compiled by chinaworker.info, is a contribution to the ongoing discussion in China and worldwide over these events. Also, for the first time in the Chinese language, we are republishing Stephen Jolly’s incisive eyewitness account of the Tiananmen events. Jolly, who later became the first Trotskyist city councillor to be elected in Australia, representing the Socialist Party in the city of Yarra (Melbourne), went to China representing the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). Also in this volume are chapters by Vincent Kolo and Chen Mo, both contributors to chinaworker.info.
The book attempts to draw out some important lessons: Could the Tiananmen movement have succeeded in changing China’s political system, and if so, with what political programme? Was the mass movement an attempt to restore capitalism and the crackdown therefore a ‘defence’ of Chinese socialism? Which social classes gained and which were losers from the massacre and the repression that followed? And what role did the working class play in the movement? The answers to these questions will help us to understand what can happen in China in the future: the prospects for workers to organise and fight against super-exploitation, and the prospects for a new mass movement in the direction of genuine democracy and genuine socialism.
At 96 pages, the book retails at HK$70 in Hong Kong.
Click the "Buy now" button to order the book and pay with Paypal or credit card.
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