Tiananmen 1989 – Seven weeks that shook the world, new edition

“At least ten of the people I had been discussing with in the previous days were dead. And there was a girl that I had been talking to the previous evening. She was 18 years old with John Lennon-style round glasses, a very slight girl. We were joking around and chatting. The next day I saw her dead body” – Stephen Jolly, who witnessed the June 4 massacre first-hand as recounted in this book.

The 1989 mass protests in China rocked the dictatorial regime of the so-called Communist Party (CCP) to its foundations. Millions demonstrated, occupied, and took part in mass actions in cities across this vast nation. Today’s rulers have tried to erase the memory of these epic events and hide the blood of thousands of young workers and students, which is on their hands following the military massacre on June 4.

This is an expanded second English edition of Seven Weeks That Shook the World, featuring articles from chinaworker.info. This book rebuts the myths and answers misunderstandings about the mass democracy movement of 1989. It explains what the contending forces really stood for. The protesters were not “rioters” or “counter-revolutionaries”, and the CCP regime’s brutal suppression had nothing to do with “defending socialism”. Most importantly, this book identifies critical lessons for today’s struggle against China’s totalitarian capitalist regime.