Television; Tank Man' Haunts All Except in China

Summary

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If you do a Google image search for "Tiananmen Square," you'll find some 30 pages of pictures of the vast urban plain in Beijing that is said to be the world's largest public space. Repeated many times will be one from 1989 that is famous all over the Western world: a nameless Chinese man standing in front of a line of tanks, stopping them by his simple, powerful presence.

But if you do the same Google search in China, according to filmmaker Antony Thomas, you'll call up just three pages of pictures, not one of them depicting the tank man. Also missing will be the repeated references a Westerner would find to the Tiananmen Square massacre, a bloody government putdown of the grass-roots rebellion that sprang up in Beijing in '89.

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Extract

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Television; Tank Man' Haunts All Except in China

"The Tank Man," Thomas' enlightening investigation for PBS' "Frontline," begins 17 years ago with the remarkable act of courage that became a symbol for Chinese citizens' defiance of government repression. It ends with a disquieting look at a new China, w...

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