China blanketed Tiananmen Square with police and security forces yesterday, blocking any attempt to commemorate the anniversary of the deadly crackdown on mass democracy protests.
Police officers searched bags and even the pockets of thousands of Chinese and foreign tourists streaming through checkpoints to visit the giant plaza in the Chinese capital, and foreign journalists were barred from entering.
“There are far more police than normal days,” said a 35-year-old Chinese man who said he frequently visits the square. “It’s because of June 4. It’s pretty scary having so much police. There are a lot of plainclothes officers too.”
An AFP TV journalist was ordered by police to delete footage from his camera and local tourists near the square declined to discuss the 1989 crackdown.
In Hong Kong, Victoria Park was lit up by tens of thousands of candles in remembrance of the massacre victims. Organizers said 150,000 people attended the vigil .It was the only commemoration of the military crackdown on Chinese soil.
“This rally will tell the world ... that we still remember the Tiananmen Square democracy movement,” said Xiong Yan (熊炎), a student leader of the 1989 protests who was surprisingly let into Hong Kong on Saturday.
Meanwhile, a state-controlled English-language Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, carried an unusually bold article on the Tiananmen crackdown, calling the incident a “sensitive topic.”
The Global Times is not representative of the Chinese press as a whole, and addresses a foreign audience, leading critics to say it mainly serves to give China a veneer of openness.
“Twenty years after the June 4 Tiananmen incident, public discussion about what happened that day is almost nonexistent in mainstream society on the Chinese mainland,” said the Global Times, published by the People’s Daily, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece.
“It’s still a sensitive topic. Scholars, officials and businessmen declined interviews with the Global Times on the subject. And searches for ‘June 4 incident’ on the Chinese versions of Google, Baidu and Yahoo were blocked,” the paper wrote.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS