Tiananmen

"In 1966, Mao sanctioned the start of the Cultural Revolution, a campaign against entrenched party interests and "capitalist-roaders" that brought China to the brink of civil war and ruined lives and careers. All the while, he nurtured a personality cult. People carried around his "Little Red Book" of quotations; Mao thought was studied in schools, and his portrait hung on the Tiananmen gate in front of the former imperial palace. It hangs there still."

"Jiang Zemin has almost managed to make the event disappear down an Orwellian memory hole. Even in Western countries, sub-editors have taken to calling it the ‘Tiananmen crackdown’, rather than ‘massacre’, making it seem as insignificant as the endless stories about routine ‘crackdowns’ on smuggling, prostitution, counterfeit goods, VAT forms or corruption, which provide the stuff of daily reporting here in China."