Tiananmen

The events that took place at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on 4 June 1989 attracted international attention and sparked outrage at the Chinese government’s military advance on student demonstrators. Since then, a new generation of Chinese has grown up in a country that continues to grapple with issues of political liberalisation, democracy and censorship. Twenty-five years on, Morgan Chua’s bold political cartoons offer us a graphic history of a period China would still like to sweep under the carpet.

Morgan Chua is a Singapore-born cartoonist who started drawing for the Singapore Herald in 1970. Chua’s publications include Tiananmen (1989), My Singapore (2000, 2008) and Divercity Singapore: A Cartoon History of Immigration (2010).

 

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Watch this video where Morgan Chua recounts where he was on 4 June 1989 when the Tiananmen crackdown happened.

‘Executed in black and white, often with a wild frenzy of strokes and sharp lines, these images speak more eloquently than many written records of the events—one of the reasons that makes this historic edition a collector’s item’—Mint, The Wall Street Journal

‘[I]t is unlikely that many mainland Chinese will get to see this 25th anniversary edition of Morgan Chua’s book of cartoons. Which is a pity, because it is a collector’s item, a chilling indictment of state-sponsored violence against its citizens’—Business Standard

‘Chua’s new book offers a tongue-in-cheek depiction of the period that led up to the massacre; it also tells us what some of the key leaders on both sides of the divide are doing now’—Hindustan Times