After the Tiananmen Square Massacre: A Reflection on America’s China Policy/conditional barf

The Diplomat ^ | 4/6/25 | Baosheng Guo

[Eleutheria5]

After June 4, 1989, the U.S. government downgraded concerns over China’s human rights record to pursue realist interests. That Trump is doing the same today should be no surprise.

Today marks the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989, yet in recent months the international community has paid little attention to this historical moment and the question of democratization in China. One of the reasons is that after U.S. President Donald Trump took office, he implemented a foreign policy under his “America First” principle that prioritizes transactionalism and ignores values.

Trump not only discontinued the Summit for Democracy held in the Biden era but also withdrew funding from the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID. He gutted the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and suspended or restrained broadcasting regarding China, including Voice of America (VOA) Chinese, VOA Tibetan, and Radio Free Asia (which broadcast in Mandarin, Uyghur, and Tibetan). These platforms have long been the most critical overseas media to promote China’s democratization and to criticize the Chinese government for trampling on human rights. Meanwhile, the funding of many human rights organizations and NGOs related to China was also interrupted.

All of these moves caused significant losses to the Chinese democratic movement, at least overseas, sending it tumbling to new lows.

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[Eleutheria5]

4th of June is also my late father's birthday. One time I gave him a birthday present of standing outside the Chinese Consulate in NY, in the shadow of the Intrepid Museum, passing out poems of mine commemorating the massacre of 6-4-89, and making mention of a similar massacre that occurred in the Square circa 1919.

The consulate workers made embarrassed hand gestures at me, indicating they wanted me to go away. But nobody assaulted me. I passed out all my poems.

China's human rights records remain FUBAR, and the "pro-Democracy" organizations and radio stations, etc., were probably ineffective virtue signals at most.

China, unfortunately, has become too powerful and insidious for such empty gestures to have any impact at all. It's on the West that they allowed this to happen, and saw it all through rose-tinted glasses until it was too late.

Trump is playing ball with Xi Jinpig right now, despite the Uighers and Tibet, and the sabre rattling and island making, and all the crap that's paving the Belt and Road's real intentions. But when the time is right, and everyone in China is taking to the street, my guess is he'll do what Bush should have done to Deng Xiapig back in '89, and provide the last straw that will break the commies' back once and for all.

[Phoenix8]

When “we” (not me) voted for the Bush line of neocon republicanism and not Buchanans type true conservatism we went down a long ugly path we only started getting out of in 2016.

Bush and his kids gloves treatment of the bloody CCP after they massacred thousands (likely) on live TV in 1989 being a prime case in point.

[Gay State Conservative]

One of the two biggest mistakes the civilized Western nations have made in the last 30+ years was to open their ports to Chinese made goods. That has allowed Red China to become an economic and military power...which is the last thing the civilized world wants.

[popdonnelly]

The Chinese regime is extremely nationalistic and militaristic, and has been for decades.