Thirty years after the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and their brutal suppression captured global attention, repression is on the rise in Xi Jinping’s China. In a special set of five articles, activists and scholars reflect on the legacy of Tiananmen:
- Wang Dan re-examines the protesters’ goals and assesses the complex impact of 1989 on China’s social development;
- Glenn Tiffert explores how Xi Jinping has both been influenced by and sought to control the memory of Tiananmen;
- Bruce Gilley argues that the Chinese Communist Party’s strategies for survival without democracy may be less reliable than many believe;
- Elizabeth Economy considers the growth of Chinese civil society and the resilience of dissent; and
- Benny Tai discusses the significance of Tiananmen for Hong Kong’s democracy movement.
Also in the April 2019 issue:
- What lessons does Malaysia’s transition hold for confronting authoritarianism? Anwar Ibrahim addresses this question in the fifteenth annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World.
- Why are dissidents and exiles increasingly being targeted through Interpol? Edward Lemon explores authoritarian cooptation of the world’s leading global-policing organization.
- How did peaceful protesters unseat Armenia’s semiauthoritarian leader? Miriam Lanskoy and Elspeth Suthers examine the roots and prospects of the 2018 Velvet Revolution.
Plus:
- Takis S. Pappas analyzes how populists act when they are in power;
- Nate Schenkkan and Sarah Repucci report on Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World survey for 2018;
- Eileen Donahoe and Megan MacDuffee Metzger make the case for a human-rights–based approach to governing artificial intelligence;
- Erik Jones and Matthias Matthijs consider the future of central-bank independence;
- Sean Mueller argues that majoritarian democracy lies at the root of Spain’s crisis over separatism in Catalonia;
- George Soroka and Félix Krawatzek assess the troubling implications of new European laws governing historical memory; and
- Christopher Walker reviews The People vs. Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (and How We Save It), by Jamie Bartlett.
For the complete Table of Contents, visit www.journalofdemocracy.org.
