In 1966, Mao sanctioned the start of the Cultural Revolution, a campaign against entrenched party interests and "capitalist-roaders" that brought China to the brink of civil war and ruined lives and careers.
All the while, he nurtured a personality cult. People carried around his "Little Red Book" of quotations; Mao thought was studied in schools, and his portrait hung on the Tiananmen gate in front of the former imperial palace. It hangs there still.

Like many Beijing landmarks - the Gate of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Literary Glory, the Hall of Martial Valour - Tiananmen's name, "The Gate of Heavenly Peace", is abstract and absolute, an appellation bequeathed by Mao Zedong, "The Great Helmsman," whose cult still lives on in his mausoleum in the square, and in the sale of kitsch Maomorabilia.

His May 30, 1989, photo captured the “Goddess of Democracy,” the students’ version of the Statue of Liberty, facing the portrait of Communist China’s first leader, Mao Zedong, on the massive Tiananmen gate.

“Today the socialist China stands tall in the world’s east,” Mr Xi, 66, told cheering crowds from Tiananmen Gate as he delivered a speech invoking the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation from the rostrum where Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

FILE PHOTO: A Union flag and a Chinese flag on a pole with security cameras in front of a portrait of late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong at the Tiananmen gate, during a visit to China by the then British prime minister, Theresa May, in Beijing, January 31, 2018.

Jiang Zemin has almost managed to make the event disappear down an Orwellian memory hole. Even in Western countries, sub-editors have taken to calling it the ‘Tiananmen crackdown’, rather than ‘massacre’, making it seem as insignificant as the endless stories about routine ‘crackdowns’ on smuggling, prostitution, counterfeit goods, VAT forms or corruption, which provide the stuff of daily reporting here in China.

The parade will feature more than 10,000 Chinese troops who will pass by the rostrum at Tiananmen as close to 200 military aircraft fly overhead.

Despite a ban on vigils by Beijing, Hong Kong residents found ways to remember the massacre that took place in Tiananmen 32 years ago.

Tiananmen

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