In the early hours of 4 June 1989, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on a pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, killing untold hundreds of people. Twenty five years on, the event has been commemorated around the world, but how does China remembers this defining moment in the country’s history?
We will be joined by a panel including the award-winning journalist Louisa Lim, whose book The People’s Republic of Amnesia charts how events unfolded that night, revealing previously unknown details.
Whilst looking back, we will also trace the effect the crackdown had on society then and the impact it continues to have today. We will explore how the events of twenty five years ago have shaped national identity in China.
Chaired by Paul French, an author and a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.
The panel:
Louisa Lim as an award-winning journalist who has reported from China for a decade, most recently for National Public Radio. Previously she was the BBC’s Beijing correspondent. She is author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited.
James Miles is the outgoing Beijing bureau chief of The Economist, a position he took up in 2001. He will begin a new appointment in August as The Economist‘s China Editor, based in London. He is the author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray.
Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese novelist and filmmaker. She studied film at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before she moved to London in 2002. She is author of Village of Stone, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth and most recently I Am China.
Photograph: nui7711 / Shutterstock.com
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On 28 October in China’s iconic and politically sensitive Tiananmen Square, a car crashed through crowds and exploded, killing two tourists and three suspects. Just over a week later, on 6 November, one person died and eight were injured following a series of small blasts outside a Communist Party office in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province.
Whether these attacks where carried out by organised groups – such as the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement – or individuals, they show a chink in the armour of the ruling Communist Party, despite soaring expenditure on domestic security over the past decade.
In a year that marks the 25th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, we will be joined by a panel of experts to explore the significance of these two fatal incidents, looking at the levels of dissent in China and how it is being suppressed. We will also be asking who are those behind these attacks and what are their motivations.
Chaired by Rob Gifford, China editor of The Economist. He first went to China in 1987 as a language student, before working for the BBC and then spending seven years in Beijing and Shanghai as a correspondent for NPR. He is the author of China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power.
The panel:
Isabel Hilton is a journalist, broadcaster and writer. She is the founder and editor of chinadialogue and has authored and co-authored several books and holds honorary doctorates from Bradford and Stirling Universities. She was appointed OBE in 2010 for her contribution to raising environmental awareness in China.
Thomas König is China & Asia Programme Coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). He works on the increasing ECFR’s profile in this area, expanding the programme’s activities and contributes to ECFR’s China & Asia research. He played an integral part in the publication of ECFRs flagship report China 3.0, a unique essay collection that sheds light on the intellectual spectrum in Chinese contemporary society.
Yuwen Wu joined the BBC World Service in 1995 and has worked in the Chinese Service, English news and African Service. She was the news and current affairs editor for the Chinese Service from 2004 to 2012 and covered many major Chinese and international events. Since 2012, she has worked as the planning editor of the BBC East Asia Hub and appears regularly on BBC World TV and radio programmes as a China analyst.
Jonathan Fenby has written seven books on China, most recently Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today which was chosen as a book of the year by the Financial Times, The Independent and Bloomberg Business Week. He is a former editor of The Observer, Reuters World Service and the South China Morning Post, which he edited from 1995-9 through the handover of Hong Kong to China. He is currently China director of the international research service Trusted Sources.
Photograph: nui7711 / Shutterstock.com
]]>Photographer Toby Smith recently spent two months in China producing his latest project, China’s New Energy Pioneers. He will be presenting his photography and discussing China’s environmental record in an event moderated by Jim Footner of Greenpeace.
Covering 11 provinces, Toby Smith‘s work took him to coal mines, wind farms and hydro-electric plants while capturing the landscapes and people implementing the Communist Party’s latest Five Year Plan.
Announced in March 2011, the new Plan is significant in its attempts to address escalating energy and environmental problems. A cap on coal dependency, ambitious targets for non-fossil fuel energy sources and a drive towards more renewable sources of energy reflect the Communist Party’s intentions to aim for a cleaner, greener kind of growth.
With new power stations connecting to the grid in the People’s Republic of China at a rate of one per day, how China chooses to fuel its booming economy is one of the most important questions for the world of today, and of the future.
Toby Smith is a contemporary reportage photographer and director of Roof Unit, a collective of photographers based in East London. He specialises in environment and energy matters.
Smith’s feature stills and video work has been published by National Geographic, the Guardian, TIME, the New York Times and the BBC among others.
Moderator Jim Footner manages the Climate Change Team of Greenpeace UK. Over the past nine years, he has worked on climate and energy issues for Greenpeace in various parts of the world including Asia. He led the Greenpeace campaign against new coal fired power stations in the UK, and co-ordinated the use of the Rainbow Warrior as part of an oil spill response team in Lebanon after the most recent conflict.
Footner is also a trustee on the UK board of the French charity Development Workshop France, which specialises in resilient architecture and design in some of the world’s most hostile environments.
]]>After seven weeks of nationwide demonstrations and protests the Chinese authorities unleashed a violent suppression on 4 June, sending in tanks to Tiananmen Square to clear protestors .
The official death toll according to the Chinese government was 200 to 300, but the figures claimed by the Chinese student associations and the Chinese Red Cross were much higher . Thousands of people were jailed and many fled to escape persecution that followed while the ban on the foreign press meant that coverage was strictly controlled.
Join us for a panel discussion about the impact events of twenty years ago has had on Chinese society and on the Chinese Communist Party’s willingness to embrace reform, and commit to improving human rights and press freedom.
What will the impact be on the country if the Party does not adapt and allow peaceful transformation?
Panel:
Shirong Chen, China Editor, BBC World Service
Carrie Gracie, presenter for the BBC news channel who was the BBC’s Beijing correspondent until 1999
Journalist and broadcaster Isabel Hilton, who is currently editor of Chinadialogue
Shao Jiang, a PhD student in political science at Westminster University who runs a blog on Amnesty International’s website in support of human rights in China. He was one of the organisers of the peaceful pro-democracy protests who was imprisoned for 18 months and fled to the West after years of harassment.
]]>With recent events in Tibet raising questions about international support for the Olympics, our panel discusses the possibility of boycott.
Can the Olympics still act as a catalyst for reform in China or is its human rights record only getting worse as a result?
And will the international spotlight force China to make a long-term change in its foreign policy in Africa?
Shirong Chen is the China Editor of the BBC World Service.
Tom Porteous is the London Director of Human Rights Watch.
Simon Tisdall is the assistant editor of The Guardian and foreign affairs columnist.
Liu Weimin is Counsellor of Press and Communications for the Chinese Embassy
Moderated by Isabel Hilton – an expert in Chinese affairs, having gained an MA in Chinese, at Edinburgh University; scholarships at the Peking Languages Institute and Fudan University, Shanghai. She has also undertaken postgraduate work on 20th century Chinese literature at Edinburgh.
]]>Divisions between the cities and the countryside, an urgent need for energy resources, the showcasing of the upcoming Olympics, the rise of social activism and tectonic shifts in the country’s foreign policy – China is by no means a one-story country.
Many argue this complexity is not reflected in western media coverage of this huge and complex country.
Our panel discusses whether we are still looking at China through the prism of the Cold War and what the really big uncovered stories are in China.
Rob Gifford – former China correspondent for NPR, author of China Road: a Journey into the Future of a Rising Power.
Duncan Hewitt – BBC correspondent in China from 1997 to 2002. He now writes for Newsweek and other publications from Shanghai, and is the author of Getting Rich First: Life in a changing China.
Catherine Sampson – former China correspondent for The Times , author of The Pool of Unease.
Lifen Zhang – Editor, FTChinese.com, Financial Times. Previously worked for the BBC as a journalist, producer, news editor and journalism trainer.
Moderated by Carrie Gracie – News 24 Presenter and former BBC correspondent in China.
Join us as we discuss how, with China’s ever growing need for raw materials, the country’s foreign policy is changing.
Trade between China and Africa grew by 39 percent to £10 billion in the first 10 months of the last year. But with interests in the Sudanese and Angolan oil industry, China has been reluctant to attack the Sudanese government for the bloodshed in Darfur.
Nearly 45% of China’s oil imports last year were from the Middle East. No wonder that China is seeking a more active role in the area and seems to be succeeding in being on good terms with all parties involved.
Our panel discusses how this new South-South trade affects the international diplomatic status quo.
Brad Adams is the Asia Director of Human Rights Watch – TBC.
Lindsey Hilsum is the head of Channel 4 News’ China bureau.
Isabel Hilton is a London-based international journalist and broadcaster. She is Editor of www.chinadialogue.net, a bi-lingual website with a focus on the environment, and www.opendemocracy.net.
Wen Guang Shao is the Director of Phoenix TV (Hong Kong) in London.
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