April of 2009 will mark the twentieth anniversary of pro-democracy demonstrations by students and workers in the People's Republic of China. June 4, 2009 is the twentieth anniversary of the government's vicious response to the demonstrators. Thousands of demonstrators were shot by soldiers of the Red Army, and many were literally crushed by tanks in Tiananmen Square. One-party domination of the Chinese people may be challenged again in 2009. Globalization via the Internet and international trade make the Chinese government vulnerable to world-wide opinion. Overseas Chinese communities are important sources of support for the demands for democracy. Beyond that support, millions of people who remember the massacre of demonstrators in 1989 should be ready to support new demonstrations. China's Premier Wen, on March 12, 2009 at his once-a-year press conference, expressed his concern about the safety of China's trillion dollar investment in U.S. bonds, according to a New York Times article. (The Times also reported that a Chinese government investment of three billion dollars in a U.S. financial firm had shrunk to one fifth of that amount.) Financial concerns, coupled with Chinese repression of Buddhists, Falun Gung and Muslims in western provinces make 2009 a tense year for Premier Wen. In late 2008 three hundred Chinese writers, educators and journalists published a signed call for political reform under the title "Charter 2009." (You may read a translation of that document by searching on Google or another search tool.) In 1989 the U.S. government was very timid in regard to the Tiananmen protest and its ruthless suppression. If pro-democracy demonstrations reoccur in 2009, the American people and our representatives in Washington must give immediate and significant support to the Chinese protestors who will have put their lives on the line as certainly as did our Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence. During the 2008 Olympics China marketed itself as progressive and tolerant in the governing of its citizens. Might it be suggested to Chinese leadership that the voice of the common man in China ought to receive a more tolerant audience? | 