Tiananmen: how dangerous is protest in China now?

Beyond Today

China has ramped up efforts to prevent people from reading about the student protests of 1989 that ended in bloodshed when the government sent tanks into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Activists have been arrested and censorship has been stepped up, with bans placed on English-speaking foreign media such as CNN and the BBC.

We speak to the BBC’s longest serving foreign correspondent John Simpson, who was in Beijing in 1989. We also examine how the truth has been suppressed and what the government has done to erase Tiananmen from the history books. One person who is trying to keep the memory alive is a secretive artist called Badiucao, also known as ‘the Chinese Banksy’. Danny Vincent, who reports from Hong Kong for the BBC, has travelled to Australia to meet him. And Yaxue Cao from chinachange.org tells us about the Chinese artists who have been rounded up and what it’s like to be a young dissenting voice in China.

Producers: Duncan Barber and Lucy Hancock. Mixed by Nicolas Raufast. Editor: John Shields.