Shop top categories that ship internationally
Buy new:
-53% $13.14
Delivery Wednesday, December 11
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
$13.14 with 53 percent savings
List Price: $27.99
FREE International Returns
No Import Fees Deposit & $14.23 Shipping to France Details

Shipping & Fee Details

Price $13.14
AmazonGlobal Shipping $14.23
Estimated Import Fees Deposit $0.00
Total $27.37

Delivery Wednesday, December 11
Or fastest delivery Thursday, December 5. Order within 22 hrs 11 mins
Only 6 left in stock - order soon.
$$13.14 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$13.14
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
Returnable until Jan 31, 2025
Returnable until Jan 31, 2025
For the 2024 holiday season, eligible items purchased between November 1 and December 31, 2024 can be returned until January 31, 2025.
Read full return policy
Returns
Returnable until Jan 31, 2025
For the 2024 holiday season, eligible items purchased between November 1 and December 31, 2024 can be returned until January 31, 2025.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
$11.66
FREE International Returns
Minimal signs of wear. Ships direct from Amazon! Minimal signs of wear. Ships direct from Amazon! See less
Delivery Wednesday, December 11. Order within 23 hrs 26 mins
Or fastest delivery Tuesday, December 10
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$13.14 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$13.14
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Added to

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

林慕蓮(Louisa Lim)
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited Hardcover – June 4, 2014

by Louisa Lim (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 294 ratings
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$13.14","priceAmount":13.14,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"13","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"14","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"gV57HnWet0HUnolT52AoqggZO6c7nmiu7K6dEOvUCEXe39%2B1Z6MvBRx%2ByZok3XlXnQrF4A%2FPPSOJJdbcibJV%2BJHZlEJyc9p%2FP%2B2yCdNxR12dmxtkC9KvClch%2BKnz0OBifkq91krmsJbnUJHvvrlTCw%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$11.66","priceAmount":11.66,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"11","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"66","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"gV57HnWet0HUnolT52AoqggZO6c7nmiugsCDNvgkieMlFOFY9E8L6HnPqN4Hw9KZwbTVPltF%2Fr6FP%2BuOTyPczdmD7yNkwhYbCSer0c0Ft4UAY9IW1zvJcaaP7loFHZZdo8ZcB50OwWvdVv85JF4i7rWM%2BeQznH1QKosnnxXX8TsbC9lZk7AtZjilH6QvDjYA","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Finalist for the 2015 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

Longlisted for the Lionel Gelber Award for the Best Non-Fiction book in the world on Foreign Affairs

An Economist Book of the Year, 2014

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

"One of the best analyses of the impact of Tiananmen throughout China in the years since 1989." --The New York Times Book Review

On June 4, 1989, People's Liberation Army soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians in Beijing, killing untold hundreds of people. A quarter-century later, this defining event remains buried in China's modern history, successfully expunged from collective memory. In The People's Republic of Amnesia, Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4th changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4th by rewriting its own history.

Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square. She also introduces us to individuals whose lives were transformed by the events of Tiananmen Square, such as a founder of the Tiananmen Mothers, whose son was shot by martial law troops; and one of the most important government officials in the country, who post-Tiananmen became one of its most prominent dissidents. And she examines how June 4th shaped China's national identity, fostering a generation of young nationalists, who know little and care less about 1989. For the first time, Lim uncovers the details of a brutal crackdown in a second Chinese city that until now has been a near-perfect case study in the state's ability to rewrite history, excising the most painful episodes. By tracking down eyewitnesses, discovering US diplomatic cables, and combing through official Chinese records, Lim offers the first account of a story that has remained untold for a quarter of a century. The People's Republic of Amnesia is an original, powerfully gripping, and ultimately unforgettable book about a national tragedy and an unhealed wound.
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    264 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  4. Publication date
    June 4, 2014
  5. Dimensions
    6.4 x 1 x 9.3 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0199347700
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0199347704
  8. See all details
Next slide of product details
The%20Amazon%20Book%20Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Frequently bought together

The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited
This item: The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited
$13.14
Only 6 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945-46: A Documentary History (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
$19.98
Get it as soon as Thursday, Dec 12
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by Habesos and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
+
Contemporary World History
$104.74
Get it as soon as Wednesday, Dec 11
Only 20 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by itemspopularsonlineaindemand and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
Total price: $00
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
spCSRF_Treatment
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the best analyses of the impact of Tiananmen throughout China in the years since 1989." --The New York Times Book Review

"Lim presents a sequence of sensitive, skillfully drawn portraits of individuals whose lives were changed by 1989...These portraits show us how the party tightly constrains those who defy it, but they also depict determined resistance and even suggest an optimism among those most directly affected by the events of 1989...[This book] enhances our sense of the human costs of suppressing the past." --Wall Street Journal

"[Lim] offers a series of meticulously (and often daringly) reported portraits of participants, the events of that night and what has followed." --The Economist

"Lim tells her stories briskly and clearly. She moves nimbly between the individuals' narratives and broader reflections, interspersing both with short, poignant vignettes." --New York Review of Books

"Lim's outstanding book skilfully interweaves a wide range of interviews in China with an account of the protests in Beijing and ends with the fullest report to date of the crackdown in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province." --Financial Times

"STUNNING and important...The People's Republic of Amnesia provides a powerful antidote to historical deception and a voice to those isolated by the truth." --Los Angeles Review of Books "Louisa Lim peers deep into the conflicted soul of today's China. Twenty-five years after the bloody suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing, the government continues to deploy its technologies of forgetting -- censorship of the media, falsification of history, and the amnesiac drug of shallow nationalism -- to silence those who dare to remember and deter those who want to inquire. But the truth itself does not change; it only finds new ways to come out. Lim gives eloquent voice to the silenced witnesses, and uncovers the hidden nightmares that trouble China's surface calm." --Andrew J. Nathan, coeditor, The Tiananmen Papers

"For a country that has long so valued its history and so often turned to it as a guide for the future, the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to erase actual history and replace it with distorted narratives warped by nationalism, has created a dangerous vacuum at the center of modern-day China. With her carefully researched and beautifully reported The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, Louisa Lim helps not only restore several important missing pieces of Chinese posterity that were part of the demonstrations in 1989, but also reminds us that a country which loses the ability to remember its own past honestly risks becoming rootless and misguided." --Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director, Center on US-China Relations, Asia Society

"In The People's Republic of Amnesia veteran China correspondent Louisa Lim skillfully weaves the voices that 'clamor against the crime of silence' to recover for our collective memory the most pivotal moment in modern China's history." --Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking

"Astonishingly Beijing has managed to obliterate the collective memory of Tiananmen Square, but a quarter-century later Louisa Lim deftly excavates long-buried memories of the 1989 massacre. With a journalist's eye to history, she tracks down key witnesses, everyone from a military photographer at the square to a top official sentenced to seven years in solitary confinement to a mother whose teenaged son was shot to death that night. This book is essential reading for understanding the impact of mass amnesia on China's quest to become the world's next economic superpower." --Jan Wong, author of Red China Blues and A Comrade Lost and Found

"A deeply moving book-thoughtful, careful, and courageous. The portraits and stories it contains capture the multi-layered reality of China, as well as reveal the sobering moral compromises the country has made to become an emerging world power, even one hailed as presenting a compelling alternative to Western democracies. Yet grim as these stories and portraits sometimes are, they also provide glimpse of hope, through the tenacity, clarity of conscience, and unflinching zeal of the dissidents, whether in China or in exile, who against all odds yearn for a better tomorrow." --Shen Tong, former student activist and author of Almost a Revolution

"Lim's intimate history of the events of 1989 deepens our understanding of what happened, and touches our hearts with its humanity. Where other writers succumb to describing history in impersonal terms, Lim brings the history to our doorsteps, reminding us that we aren't so different from those who lived and shaped history and tragedy. The People's Republic of Amnesia is a wholly original work of history that will alter how China in 1989 is understood, and felt." --Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet "NPR's veteran China correspondent Lim shows how the 1989 massacre of student human rights protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square continues to shape the country today... A forceful reminder that only by dealing with its own past truthfully will China shape a decent future for coming generations." --Kirkus Reviews

Book Description

Twenty-five years on, the story of Tiananmen Square's impact on China, told from the inside

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (June 4, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199347700
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199347704
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1 x 9.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 294 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
林慕蓮(Louisa Lim)

林慕蓮(Louisa Lim)

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Louisa Lim is an award-winning journalist who has reported from China for the past decade, most recently for National Public Radio. Previously she was the BBC's Beijing Correspondent.

She currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, where she is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
294 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book a good, terrific, and fun read. They also find it informative, with plenty of context. Readers describe the writing quality as well-written.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more
ReadabilityInsightWriting quality
19 customers mention "Readability"19 positive0 negative

Customers find the book good, terrific, and fun. They say it's a valuable book for anyone interested in China. Readers also mention the descriptions are sober and troubling.

"...It is a fairly quick read, and very well written...." Read more

"...The book can be a little cold at some spots, but otherwise, a good read." Read more

"...Was I wrong! This is a superb book. I am not a fast reader, but I finished it in one day. I learned new things in every chapter...." Read more

"...A friend suggested it to me.This is one of the best books I have ever read...." Read more

12 customers mention "Insight"12 positive0 negative

Customers find the book informative, insightful, and thought-provoking. They say it's a fascinating account of an event that has been buried in history. Readers also mention the most telling and inspiring chapter is the one focused on the Tiananmen Mothers. They appreciate the touching and revealing details.

"...The most telling and inspiring chapter for me was the one focused on the Tiananmen Mothers, those Chinese women who, having lost a child to the..." Read more

"Very good book describing the collective memory (or lack of) of the Tiananmen protests and the response from the peole who she had interviewed for..." Read more

"...Her book has the added merit of being succinct...." Read more

"...Ms Lim writes with a masterful grace. Her work is insightful and thought provoking. I wish I could give this book more than 5 stars." Read more

11 customers mention "Writing quality"11 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing quality of the book to be very good.

"...It is a fairly quick read, and very well written...." Read more

"...Very well written and researched. The book can be a little cold at some spots, but otherwise, a good read." Read more

"...On a purely technical level, Ms. Lim is an outstanding writer -- in the same class as Iris Chang...." Read more

"This brave, searing, beautifully and sensitively written book builds, Bolero-like, quietly, through profiles of carefully selected Tiananmen "types"..." Read more

A chrysanthemum still flowers in Tiannemen Square
5 out of 5 stars
A chrysanthemum still flowers in Tiannemen Square
Hide
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry, there was an error
Sorry we couldn't load the review

Top reviews from the United States

Robert L. Moore
5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Book Based on Amazingly Revealing Research
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2014
Verified Purchase
This is an extraordinary book. It tells the story of June Fourth, or, what the international community often calls "the Tiananmen Massacre," through the eyes of various individuals: a student demonstrator, a soldier, the mother of a slain student, and so on. It is a fairly quick read, and very well written.

The most telling and inspiring chapter for me was the one focused on the Tiananmen Mothers, those Chinese women who, having lost a child to the People's Liberation Army's murderous rampage, have formed an organization that continues to press the Chinese government to admit to its wrongdoing and respond to their loss. There are so many touching and revealing details here. A particularly memorable one is the government's having placed a security camera over the spot where Ms. Zhang Xianlling's 19-year-old son was shot by the soldiers. The sole purpose of the camera is to deter her from her custom of revisiting the spot in memory of her murdered son. Additionally, whole platoons of security agents follow Ms. Zhang around every day. Often they don't even know why they are following her. One young female guard, after hearing from Ms. Zhang what the purpose of her assignment really was, walked off her post in disgust. What courage these Tiananmen Mothers have.

The sad part of the story is that the Chinese government's efforts at hiding what happened in 1989 have been fairly successful where the younger generation of Chinese is concerned. Many are completely ignorant about the massacre.

On the other hand, the massive and pervasive efforts that the government undertakes in order to keep its June Fourth massacre concealed from the public is an indication of just how frightened it is of the truth. I wonder what this implies for China's future.
25 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Julian Douglass
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book describing the collective memory (or lack of) of the Tiananmen protests
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2017
Verified Purchase
Very good book describing the collective memory (or lack of) of the Tiananmen protests and the response from the peole who she had interviewed for the book. This to me was kind of like an oral history of the protests, since there really is no official one, but it is more This book not only explains what happened at the square, but the direction that China is headed in with its collective amnesia. Very well written and researched. The book can be a little cold at some spots, but otherwise, a good read.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
D. Krajnovich
5.0 out of 5 stars Superbly written!
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2014
Verified Purchase
By chance, I was in China as a tourist in 1989 when the Tiananmen massacre occurred (my trip had been scheduled months earlier). Upon returning home, I studied the history and aftermath; attended vigils and protests; heard lectures from escaped dissidents; etc. I did not expect to learn much new in Louisa Lim's book. But since the book got a good mention in The Economist, and it was the 25th anniversary, I decided to buy a copy.

Was I wrong! This is a superb book. I am not a fast reader, but I finished it in one day. I learned new things in every chapter. I was moved to tears by the chapter on the Tiananmen Mothers. There is no greater courage, no greater grief. The chapter on Bao Tong is also remarkable. On a purely technical level, Ms. Lim is an outstanding writer -- in the same class as Iris Chang. She uses a themed chapter format, most chapters concentrating on one or two people whom she personally interviewed. Her book has the added merit of being succinct. I suspect it took her twice the time to write a book half as long as most books on such weighty topics.

If you, like me, think you know all about Tiananmen, this book may surprise you.
27 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Paul Frandano
5.0 out of 5 stars Courageous and Heartbreaking
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2014
Verified Purchase
This brave, searing, beautifully and sensitively written book builds, Bolero-like, quietly, through profiles of carefully selected Tiananmen "types" - the soldier, the stay-behind, the exile, the student - up to the shattering chapter on "the mother," as in the "Tiananmen Mothers," what we'd call a lobbying group of "little old (Chinese) ladies"/activists who, for 25 years, have sought to get the truth out and to get the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government to "reverse verdicts," on 3-4 June 1989. (Very emotional reading.)

And then and onward, with a score that beguns to thump a little, to martial strains...and a chapter on the thoroughly mobilized contemporary "patriot," completely ignorant - as are most Chinese his age - of the events of 3-4 June, the core of whose patriotism is the aggressive, increasingly militaristic nationalism the Party and government has sought (since the early 1990s) to cultivate in the populace as a substitute for ideology (I mean, who knew that a third of the output China's huge Hengdian film studio involves battles against Japanese "devils" and that some call the studio "a huge anti-Japanese revolutionary base"?)

Down into the home stretch, very like Ravel, Ms. Lim hits a revelatory (no pun intended) peak (especially for an old China hand) in a remarkable chapter on a man some of us will remember as pivotal in late-1980s China: Bao Tong, then the Politburo Standing Committee's secretary and deposed Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's right hand man. Bao was arrested little more than a week after Zhao's last public appearance and the declaration of martial law in mid-May 1989. He spent seven years in solitary at the famous Qincheng Prison for disgraced senior officials, and now, an octogenarian, lives under perpetual surveillance. Why? Because he has the superpower of "seeing through" and has the system of China's "success" figured out, all the way down to the ground. Bao describes it to Ms. Lim as a long chain of "mini-Tiananmens" that go all the way back to the night the People's Liberation Army fired on its own children. Each odious event - the constant watching, the constant suppression if not quite forcible repression (but that too), the arrests of grandmothers, the obsessive following around and, if need be, putting away anyone seen as possibly threatening the Great Power by saying the wrong words to the wrong person, anyone who threatens to chip away at the collective amnesia, to undo the technique of forgetting history, and thus expose the rotten foundations of today's China - stands as a small-reproduction of mindset that mandated the actions of June 1989 at the Gate of Heavenly Peace. And all these take place with with the nearly perpetual complicity of a silent West, which shuts its eyes, covers its ears, and rakes in its profits from "People's China." Thus do all these single events that accumulated into one mountainous malignancy that ultimately renders "the China miracle" possible and all the Chinese who benefit complicit in the monstrosity of Tiananmen.

Finally, Ms. Lim's - and our - remarkable journey ends, in a Ravelian crescendo, in one of the not-so-mini Tiananmens that have, until now, dwelt in obscurity to both Western and Chinese eyes: Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, where Zhao Ziyang had as First Secretary led successful free-market agricultural reforms that dramatically increased production and led to a local jingle - "yao chifan, zhao Ziyang" ("if you want to eat, look for Ziyang" - punning on "Zhao"). Chengdu was another scene of the bloody suppression of students in June 1989 - reportedly one of the more than 60 major Chinese municipalities that experienced disorder similar to that of Beijing, but the stories of which have never been told, except in occasional snippets (we've heard, for example, about former President and CCP Chief Jiang Zemin's successes as Shanghai party chief, part of his hagiographic resume when he was named to head the party, state, and military).

Ms. Lim drags the Chengdu story out of the dark, and in doing so stimulated distant memories. Long before the events of 1989, I had stayed at the Jinjiang Hotel, scene of the most heinous events Lim has been able to surface and report. I can imagine looking out my window, into the courtyard where I had watched chefs skinning snakes for the night's dinner, and witnessing instead atrocities, committed by Chinese against Chinese.

And atrocities of a different sort are committed today in the Chinese leadership's failure to admit the success China today enjoys is built upon lies and serial inhumanity. We think of Lu Xun: men eat men. I know: we have our own ghosts in the American closet. (Think, for instance, of Ta-Nehisi Coate's persuasive argment that the greatest of the US economic achievement is built on the grimmest, ugliest feature of US history, indeed, an American holocaust: slavery and its ugly, prejudicial aftermath of lynchings, the denial of Federal benefits to African Americans, neighborhood redlining, overcharging, and on and on and on...) But here in the United States, we can discuss our ghosts, and worry about and become activists for solutions. We're able to expose the lie and have the power to TRY to disinfect the wounds.

But in China, one cannot raise the lies and serial inhumanities, because to begin that discussion risks bringing the entire corrupt house of cards down...and with it, the lives and fortunes of the families and friends who have benefited the most from the rot and corruption that permeates the "China miracle."

We owe Louisa Lim a debt of gratitude for bringing so much of the hidden story to light, and we can only hope that she has a legion of successors who will expose other stories of June 1989 from across China.
14 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
elizabeth
5.0 out of 5 stars This is an important work
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2018
Verified Purchase
I was not paid to read this book or paid to write a bogus review. A friend suggested it to me.
This is one of the best books I have ever read.
I wish that every person who believes themselves to be a “journalist “ or wants to be one- should be required to read this book. This is how a journalist should write about an event.
Ms Lim writes with a masterful grace. Her work is insightful and thought provoking. I wish I could give this book more than 5 stars.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Luki D
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting recounts of the event and perspectives for the Chinese people
Reviewed in Canada on September 8, 2024
Verified Purchase
Lots of different and interesting perspectives that piece together an event in Chinese history. Quite interesting how one event can have so many view points.
Report
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in India on November 20, 2015
Verified Purchase
the book gives very fine details about the event in a beautiful manner.
Report
Adrian J. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars China's amnesia should be countered. Everyone should read this!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 28, 2015
Verified Purchase
As Tiananmen features in every account of modern China that one reads, including biographies of any statesman at the time, or simple accounts of mdoern history, this reader was already very familiar with the event, and as such was somewhat uncertain about reading a whole book on the subject. However, I was pleasantly surprised at not just the informative nature of the book, but also of the emotionally harrowing accounts.
People's Republic of Amnesia addresses several key issues not included in accounts one reads in modern history books. Amongst these are;
The extent to which the Chinese government has successfully whitewashed Tiananmen from popular memory, along with the weapon of nationalistic education. To such an extent that when one witnesses the flag raising ceremony at Tiananmen, one cannot help but marvel at how a place of national shame has become a place of national pride.
The extent to which Tiananmen mothers have been denied any kind of closure, and how they are subject to monitoring by a constant faceless bureaucracy, and the truly faceless nature of the regime on this matter.
The extent of the division within the leadership. Not just Zhao Ziyang, but also the Commander of the Beijing Military Region General Xu Qinxian, who personally remarked that he would rather be beheaded than go down in history as a murderer, and paid for this with his career and a life spent under supervision.
The truly shoddy nature of how the operation was executed. Not only were most of the soldiers deployed badly trained, and ill informed, but the fact was that initial attempts to deploy them failed. The citizens blockaded them and it seemed as though the implementation of martial law was in standstill, looking almost like a joke at first. However, what followed was no joke. Amongst the killed and wounded were even government officials and their families, as the troops fired up warning shots and hit residential compounds at Muxidi.
Perhaps the best was saved until last, which was Chengdu. Perhaps it is inappropriate to say best, but Chengdu and it's brutal crackdown on June 5th is almost entirely forgotten. It is a story that should be told, and here it is solemnly told.
People's Republic of Amnesia is a strongly recommended read for all China enthusiasts and history enthusiasts. It should be read because it details one of the greatest thefts of history in modern times. Indeed there are other thefts of history, not least of which is the Japanese amnesia that routinely agitates China, however this testimony is a perect expose at China's very own amnesia. Everyone should read it!
Report
Jana Kötter
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth a read! - English version
Reviewed in Germany on September 2, 2014
Verified Purchase
It was a brave decision to write this book. Louisa Lim didn’t talk to anyone about her plans, not even her own family. She kept her notes like a treasure, and wrote the book on a brand new laptop which has never been connected to the internet, says Ms Lim – because she was scared of the Chinese surveillance.

25 years after the brutal crackdown of the students’ protest movement which has become a part of (Western) history as Tiananmen-massacre, the topic is still a taboo in China. The government wants its people to forget what has happened, and unfortunately, it is quite successful with its strategy – China, finally, has become the “People’s Republic of Amnesia”, as Louisa Lim states in the title of her book.

„Memory is dangerous in a country that was built to function on national amnesia.“
In her book, the author breaks the silence and revives the memories of probably the biggest taboo of China. She enlightens the students’ movement of 1989 from various perspectives – the soldier who had to follow the government, the students, their mothers.

For example, there’s Chen Guang, a former soldier who is now an artist obsessed with painting images related to the trauma – even though he knows he will never be allowed to show his artwork in mainland China. „Of course there is guilt“, he admits. „Over a long period of time, you realize that there were many things you could have chosen not to do.“ Or Wu’er Kaixi, the most prominent of the students’ leaders who met Li Peng in the Great Hall of the People in his pajamas, painfully undernourished, and who interrupted China’s Premier harshly – he lives in exile today. There are the Tiananmen Mothers, the highest-ranking official Bao Tong, today’s Beijing students.

Ms Lim talked to all of them. She and her protagonists can’t answer all of the open questions regarding Tiananmen 1989; many of them will probably remain unanswered forever. But the author succeeds in painting a diverse and deeply emotional picture of what happened in this summer 1989 in Beijing.

That she is talking out of her own perspective from time to time, adds a personal touch to the book. Because „People’s Republic of Amnesia“ is not only a scientific work, but it is Ms Lim’s search for information, it is her long journey of research on which she takes the reader with her. She tells how she met her interviewees, where the appointments took place, how she felt during the talks – for example, when she met the former student Zhang Ming who continues his very own hunger strike by not eating solid food, but only milk, and she suddenly felt she was hungry. Or, on another occasion: „To find out more, I dug up an old copy of an Asia Watch report detailing the treatment of those 11 prisoners at Lingyuan. As I read the account, I felt a low pulse of shame at my attempts to excavate those long-buried memories.”

The last chapter “Chengdu” deserves special credit. Because it wasn’t only in Beijing that students were fighting for a better China. Wuhan, Chengdu – in many more cities there were smaller versions of Tiananmen. Some say it was in up to 80 cities in the whole country. With previously unreleased pictures and sources, Ms Lim reconstructs on the example of Chengdu how those movements took place. This way, she does not only focus on Beijing, but remembers all the others “Tiananmens” that took place in 1989.

No-one knows which consequences the publishing of this book will have for Louisa Lim – or if it does have any consequences at all. However, it was worth the risk. Because Ms Lim takes her readers as close to Tiananmen as no other author did before. She paints a deeply intense, very touching picture of the democratic movement, its brutal end and consequences that will also help to understand contemporary China in a better way.

More reviews of books concerning China at www.china-blog.org/china-bücher - I'm looking forward to your visit!
Report
Fredrica Cere Kussin
4.0 out of 5 stars A must read... it was more then ...
Reviewed in Canada on June 2, 2016
Verified Purchase
A must read ...it was more then at The Tiananmen Square...all over China students were upset and wanting freedom, demonstrations led to the killing and assault on many young people..
Report