Louisa Lim, author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited (Oxford University Press, 2014), presented a lecture on "China's War on the Past: Remembering Tiananmen in Xi Jinping's China." The struggle to control historical memory can be seen most recently in attempts to curb even private commemorations of the bloody crackdown of 1989 and silence public comment. Over time, the events of June 4 1989 have become more, not less, sensitive. By examining the example of an almost-forgotten crackdown in the city of Chengdu in 1989, we can see a case study of the state's ability to rewrite history.
The lecture was sponsored by the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.