1979, Govind Kelkar, China After Mao[1], New Delhi: USHA Publications, page 85:
On my return from the meeting with Dr Fry, I spent some time walking about Tiananmen Square and took some photographs. Though I had not seen any wall posters there, I did notice six large portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hua. In the middle of Tiananmen Square there were several small open air photography stalls around which people were queuing up to have themselves photographed at the great revolutionary centre.
1989 June 4, Kate Adie, 0:11 from the start, in Archive: Chinese troops fire on protesters in Tiananmen Square - BBC News[2], Peking: BBC News, published 2014:
On the streets leading down to the main road to Tiananmen Square, furious people stared in disbelief at the glow in the sky, listening to the sound of shots.
On April 16, several hundred students went to Tiananmen Square to place wreaths around the massive Monument to the People’s Heroes, an action that should have alerted the authorities to possible unrest. On April 18, more than 6,000 students marched from Beijing University to Tiananmen Square early in the morning and launched a sit-in in front of the Great Hall of the People. And the next day, there were reports of conflicts between the students and security guards in front of Zhongnanhai, headquarters of the Communist Party and residential compound of many top leaders.
Only history can tell us where China will go from here. The Chinese leadership's brutal crackdown on students seeking fundamental democratic rights makes it difficult to chart the future. Those brave students who laid down their lives against the tanks of Tiananmen Square confirmed what I'd always believed: that no totalitarian society can bottle up the instinctive drive of men and women to be free, and that once you give a captive people a little freedom, they'll demand still more.
Even in China—a country with few significant democratic traditions—a million demonstrators gathered in Tiananmen Square to demand political reform.[...]The ensuing violent crackdown by Chinese leaders in Tiananmen Square dashed democratic hopes and outraged the world. Yet considering the dramatic democratic triumphs of 1989, most observers viewed this brutal repression as a tragic but temporary aberration.
To mourn the death of Hu, whom many considered a sincere reformer, thousands of students marched to Tiananmen Square, a central intersection of Beijing, the symbolic heart of the capital and often the site of China’s national celebrations.
After the violence in Tiananmen Square and the crackdown on dissidents that followed, Americans from across the political spectrum felt the Bush administration had been too quick to reestablish normal relations with Beijing.
Another issue important to my district is human rights, specifically what is happening in China. My district includes San Francisco's famous Chinatown, and many of my constituents were deeply concerned—as was I—when the Chinese government began to crack down on protesters who were demonstrating peacefully in Beijing and throughout China. Huge demonstrations led to the Tiananmen Square massacre, where more than two thousand people who had dared to speak out against the government were killed and many more injured. The massacre was followed by even more suppression and imprisonment of protesters.
Ultimately, Deng was able to utter that memorable line about his philosophy of communism: I don’t care about the color of the cat as long as it catches mice. If it hadn’t been for the Tiananmen Square tragedy, I think he would be remembered as a world hero.
Today, we gather here in the magnificent Tiananmen Square for a grand celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
2014 March 1, Philip Wen, Sanghee Liu, “Strangers in their own land: is China forcing Uighurs to extremes?”, in Sydney Morning Herald[12]:
The symbolic heart of political power in China, Tiananmen Square, is among the most tightly controlled and patrolled areas in Beijing. But on October 28 last year, shortly after noon, the constant police presence and surveillance was undone by a rudimentary plot.
2021 March 30, “Beijing Half Marathon resumes in April”, in huaxia, editor, Xinhua News Agency[13], archived from the original on 02 April 2021:
The half marathon covers a total length of 21.0975 km, with a limited number of 10,000 participants, starting from Tiananmen Square and ending at the Olympic Park.
2021 October 30, “China cracks down over 'serious' Covid outbreak”, in France 24[14], archived from the original on 30 October 2021:
In Beijing, authorities ordered all cinemas closed until November 14 in the capital's Xicheng district, which lies west of Tiananmen Square and is home to over a million people.
2022 March 5, Kevin Yao, Ryan Woo, “China to crack down on use of leanness enhancers in cattle and sheep”, in Reuters[15], archived from the original on 05 March 2022:
"We must make economic stability our top priority," Li told delegates gathered at the cavernous Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tiananmen Square.
2022 June 4, Zen Soo, “Police patrol Hong Kong park amid Tiananmen vigil ban”, in AP News[16], archived from the original on 04 June 2022:
For decades, Hong Kong and nearby Macao were the only places in China allowed to commemorate the violent suppression by army troops of student protesters demanding greater democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
2022 August 2, Patricia Zengerle, Michael Martina, “Taiwan visit caps Nancy Pelosi's long history of confronting Beijing”, in Reuters[17], archived from the original on 02 August 2022, World:
More than 30 years ago, U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi angered China's government by showing up in Tiananmen Square and unfurling a banner honoring dissidents killed in the 1989 protests. read more On Tuesday, as speaker of the House of Representatives, Pelosi disregarded China's fiery warnings and landed in Taiwan to support its government and meet with human rights activists.
Mr. Xi drew thunderous applause in 2021 in Tiananmen Square, on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, when he reiterated China’s claim to Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy.
The global political effect of Tiananmen Square was magnified by the fact that unlike the killing of peaceful demonstrators in Lithuania in 1990 by the Soviet Black Berets, the massacre in China took place under the microscope of live international television.
The situation had its parallels to the one that developed in China that year: one might not be in the mood to talk with that country's leaders after Tiananmen Square, but if you really wanted to move them in the direction of democracy, and get them to restore the very rights they had trampled on, you were better off talking to them than driving them into hard-headed isolation.
Some 10,000 people took the streets in the eastern city of Hefei this week in what appears to have been the largest student demonstration since the Tiananmen Square human rights protests of 1989.
But now the best argument against Trump's parade is that it will become a cultural-war flashpoint and “the resistance” will try its utmost to ruin the affair. Just imagine a protester in a pussy hat in a Tiananmen Square-style standoff with an M1 Abrams tank.
