China's "Tank Man" and the search for freedom

We still do not know the name of the bold young man who used his small body to block those big tanks for a few moments that day, though photos and videos of the incident have become famous—except in China, where Internet filters block most access to this powerful image.

To this day, the "Tank Man's" whereabouts are unknown. Did he escape to Taiwan, as some believe? Was he interrogated and killed within two weeks of the incident, as some allege, or was he executed by a firing squad months later? Asked in 1990 about the young man's fate, Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin replied vaguely to a reporter, "I think never killed."

The spring of 1989 was a time of great ferment in the communist bloc nations. In China, during the weeks following the April 14 death of Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang, more than 100,000 students and workers had massed in Tiananmen Square to show their support for Hu's policies of freer markets and greater political openness—echoing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's new policies of glasnost and perestroika, which called for greater political and economic openness and liberalization. More than a thousand students had embarked on a hunger strike to show the seriousness of their support for the deceased Hu and his policies.

Then, just one day before the Tank Man made his bold stand, two world-shaking events occurred. On June 4, voters in Poland elected pro-democracy candidates to the Polish Senate in that nation's first free vote in decades. But democracy did not fare so well in China that day. The large numbers of Western cameras in Beijing since Gorbachev's state visit on May 15 had turned the Tiananmen protests into a source of grave embarrassment for Chinese leaders. When the crackdown finally came on June 4, the People's Army's show of force was swift and brutal, crushing the hopes and bodies of students and workers massed in Tiananmen Square, where they had erected a model of America's Statue of Liberty, which they named the "Goddess of Democracy." No official death count exists for what has come to be called the "June 4 massacre"—estimates range from as low as 241 to as many as 7,000.

But it is the event of June 5—a solitary protestor briefly obstructing a long column of tanks—that remains etched in our memories as a symbol of the Chinese people's hunger for freedom.

Did the Chinese people gain greater freedom? Faced with widespread demand for reform, the ruling Communist Party essentially made a deal with the Chinese people: "We'll let you have economic prosperity, as long as you let us keep political control." Twenty years later, China's economy has boomed. Though hundreds of millions of rural Chinese still live in third-world conditions, the nation's middle class has grown to be, by most measures, larger than the entire population of Germany. To learn more about China's rise and its consequence for Western nations, read our articles "U.S.-China Trade War: Coming Soon?" and "Who Will Rule the Waves?" China's brave Tank Man risked laying down his life for his friends (John 15:13). Yet his allegiance to a so-called "Goddess of Democracy" was essentially for naught.

Would you sacrifice your life for those you love? Jesus Christ did. Would you sacrifice your life for people who hated you? Jesus Christ did that, too. The Tank Man played one small part in China's move toward greater economic freedom. But Christians look to another Man's selfless sacrifice, knowing that a time is soon coming when the whole world will experience true freedom under the loving rule of Jesus Christ. To learn more about that wonderful time, please read our booklet, The World Ahead: What Will It Be Like?