In 1989, blowback was swift; alienation today is ‘systematic, progressive, long-term.’
China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists sparked a seminal crisis in Beijing’s relationship with the West. On the massacre’s 35th anniversary, China’s leaders face familiar international blowback over their conduct.
Instead of gunfire, today’s sources of discomfort about China are a mix of its aggressive industrial policy and militarization toward neighbors, plus a national-security agenda from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that has curtailed personal freedoms at home and shaped affairs abroad.
They died because they protested in a state capitalist dictatorship?
Yes. But people dont want to acknowledge that because then they would need to acknowledge, that mass murder and massacres are nothing specific to any form of economy, but specific to authoritarianism and then they might have to face their own support of current authoritariansm.