Bullets Over Beijing by Nicholas D. Kristof.
One stocky rickshaw driver had tears streaming down his cheeks as he drove past me to display a badly wounded student so that I could photograph or recount the incident. That driver perhaps couldn't have defined democracy, but he had risked his life to try to advance it.
Calvin Liu, at 11:03am June 4, commenting on the above article in Facebook.
i agree with Sayem Ahmed and Rachel Kim. I'm an American born Chinese, with both parents from China. On the American political spectrum we run liberal, which often implies complaining against the "oppressive" regime of China. But I think that the Chinese are committed to nationalistic progress, and are willing to trade freedoms (as Americans see it) for economic development. You mentioned this, saying that life is better now in China. Someone else, I think, characterized this as a decline in morality. It's a strange progression, but Chinese has risen to first-world economic prosperity but remains at best a second-world country, socially/politically. I think time will lead them to democracy - although who is to say that our own democracy provides a good example for them? Tiananmen square is a tragedy, but it's a tragedy the likes of which would not be repeated now - so at least some progress has been made.
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