Tiananmen the rape of Peking

On 3 June, the leaders of China’s Communist Party orderen the People’s Liberation Army to turn its guns on the people of Peking. Provoked beyond reason by protests for freedom and democracy in Tiananmen Square, they sanctioned a weekend of indiscriminate slaughter and repression.

The authors watched the naive optimism of the Tiananmen protests give way to butchery and despair. In those last terrible days they witnessed the mass-murder of unarmed civilians, beaten, crushed and shot in cold blood.

In this book, Fathers and Higgins assemble detailes, first-hand accounts of the massacre. they explain why the protestors first took to the streets, and why they moved the Party to madness. they argue that the weekend of slaughter was a cynical, calculated spectacle meant to terrify into submission anybody who dared think that the authorities of the Party could be challenged.

Tiananmen is an urgent, concise and expert study of revolt and repression. Matching informed journalism with confident analysis, it lays bare the conflicts and concerns of modern China.