China, Tiananmen Square | featured news

China blocks access to the term "Shanghai Composite Index" on some of the country's most popular microblogging sites.

In an unlikely coincidence certainly unwelcome to China's communist rulers, the stock benchmark fell 64.89 points Monday, matching the numbers of the June 4, 1989 crackdown in the heart of Beijing. In China's lively microblog world, "Shanghai Composite Index" soon joined the many words blocked by censors. In another odd twist, the index opened Monday at 2,346.98. That is being interpreted as 23rd anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown when read from right to left.

Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi, whose speeches helped inspire the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, has died aged 76, says a fellow activist.

Chinese security forces rounded up more government critics ahead of Saturday's anniversary.

The former Chinese leader told the military to be ready to “shed some blood,” according to an unpublished diary.

Mainland China remained quiet on the 20th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown Thursday, while tens of thousands of people staged a protest in Hong Kong.

Chinese security forces blanketed Tiananmen Square on Wednesday ahead of the 20th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, a day after Twitter and Hotmail Internet services in China were blocked.

Chinese censors blocked access to Twitter and other popular online services on Tuesday afternoon, two days before the twentieth anniversary of the crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square which cost hundreds of lives.

A new book by the deceased former Communist chief ousted for refusing to suppress the 1989 protests offers a rare look at the struggle.