The Economist explains

How Hong Kong is snuffing out memories of Tiananmen Square

But there is more scope for commemoration than on the mainland

Police confront protesters in Hong Kong on Friday evening, June 4, 2021, mourning the victims of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Image: Eyevine

IN “1984”, GEORGE ORWELL’S dystopian novel, the ruling party controls the past by feeding reports of inconvenient historical events into a “memory hole”, replacing them with its preferred version. China’s Communist Party has long taken that approach—no more so than when it comes to the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators that occurred around Tiananmen Square in the early morning of June 4th 1989. For three decades China’s rulers have stuffed their own memory hole with articles, social-media posts and even references to the number 64 (a cryptic nod to June 4th). Many Chinese now have little idea of what happened on that bloody night in Beijing.

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From the June 3rd 2023 edition

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