Chinese propaganda officials once used the image of Tank Man to defend the government’s handling of the protests, arguing that the military had shown restraint by not killing him.
But more recently, the government has worked to eliminate the memory of Tank Man, censoring images of him online and punishing those who have evoked him.
A court convicted four men in southwestern China this year for selling bottles of liquor that referenced him, alongside the words, “Never forget, never give up.”
As a result of the government’s campaign, many people in China, especially younger Chinese, do not recognize his image.
A recent survey of 239 internet users in China by Rutger van der Hoeven, a lecturer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, found that 37 percent of respondents said they recognized a photo of Tank Man, compared with 49 percent on average across the globe. In a separate question, about one in six Chinese respondents correctly identified the protests at Tiananmen Square as the backdrop for the photo.
Outside China, Tank Man has endured in popular culture, the subject of books, documentaries, television shows and art exhibits.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/world/asia/tiananmen-tank-man.html
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