Dear FRONTLINE,

I wonder whether a lot of Chinese are as disappointed in their government now as they did in 1989 because China has come a long way economically since 1989. I remember one of my Chinese colleagues at work commenting to me that the life of an ordinary Chinese person was the best today compared to the last 600 years.

Indeed, the Chinese government seems to be using the economic progress (e.g. China has 20 mil cars now compared to 2 mil in 1995) to keep dissidence at bay and the buying of the US treasuries to keep the US government quiet. The Chinese govt is financing the US deficits and propping up the dollar. You are not likely to see action in Washington on aiding the voices of democracy in China.

Don Noit
Dallas, Texas

Dear FRONTLINE,

As someone whose travels in southeast asia predated Tiananmen and ran through the repatriation of Hong Kong, I thought it interesting that much of what was presented in the program was as I recalled China.

After Tiananmen, it was surprisingly not unusual to hear businessmen justify the role of the army in putting down the protest. A typical comment propogated was that the army had been fired upon first. To be sure, the troops had no allegiance to the people of Beijing as most were brought in from outlying provinces. The military has been and continues to be the trump card of the goverment.

The Chinese goverment clearly has a tiger by the tail. I have often thought that it looked at the former Soviet Union as an example of uncontrolled, chaotic democratization not to be emulated. One of the more disconcerting elements for the goverment though was touched upon in the program. It is the growing disparity in wealth between the 'free enterprisers'and goverment bureaucrats on one hand and those in the rural hinterlands on the other. It is a rather dry tinderbox in the grand scheme of things. It also remains to be seen how effective attempts to control population movement, which I first observed in Hong Kong, will be.

What appears to be a great unknown is whether a new, younger generation of party officials will adopt and promote the rigid philosophy of the old guard. The upcoming Olympics may provide a window on this subject.

mark furlong
Philadelphia, PA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am very moved by tonight's program. Thank you for your coverage.

As a student from China, my heart and perhaps my fate were forever changed by the freedom movement that happened almost 17 years ago. In May of 1989, we were all glued to CNN and had little sleep or did anything other than watching what was unfolding in front of our eyes. We remembered the calls we made to home telling relatives that people are shot and killed in Tiananmen Square. Contrary to what was implied in the program, many young people do know what happened but are told not to mention them to others, especially the foreigners. Another sad truth is that Chinese leaders often use students to advance their political agenda and ambition. We know that Mao did it to start the cultural revolution, and I think Deng did it in 1989 to expand his power and then hold on to it for a little longer. After Tiananmen, Deng have the supreme power to push through rapid economic changes and nobody was willing to challenge him.

Since 1989, I have traveled to China many times, and witnessed its rapid change. Indeed, China has hastened its pace toward industrialization (similar to what happened in US a century ago) since mid-1990s. People's material life has gotten better by and large. It is true that many people work for very little money, but that is still much better than what they can earn in the village as peasant. The problem is not how little some people make. Rather, it is how little value rich people think of these poor working people. It is rather strange that a party found by the peasants and workers are now totally against them and only served the elite in China. This is a huge challenge, and if not properly managed, can explode.

Whereas I saw a lot of angry post here at Frontline, I did not see corporate America provide better working conditions for the working people in China. I see huge American companies willing to sacrifice principles for market share and money. Did you see Wal-Mart putting up commercial saying how much better the Chinese workers are doing in their factories? No, all they are doing is to press suppliers in China to lower their prices, so they can put up commercial proclaiming how cheap the prices are.

The sad truth is that China is still a country that changes everyday but is lead by a party that does not want to change. These two forces now work against each other. At sometime in the near future (in a decade maybe), one of them has to change for good. I hope that it is the party that will finally change. I wish that I will never see another bloody Tiananmen Square in my life.

God bless China.

Bright Lake
Houston, TX

Dear FRONTLINE,

I was in China that time, but not in Tiananmen square, not in Beijin. I was a Sophomore student in my hometown. I attended protests in our city. My parents stopped me going Beijin, they had a torrible experience during the Culture Revolution, they knew how the communist party treats their people. Love of parents, the fear kept me silent. That man, standing in front of Tanks, spoke out our supressed silence. Maybe we never have a clue to figure out what happened next, who is he. But as a witness of history, I believe Chinese will gain their freedom!

Oxford, MS

Dear FRONTLINE,

I was deeply moved by "The Tank Man" episode which I happened to catch as it aired tonight. It is so very important to continually remind ourselves, as citizens of the U.S., how lucky we are to enjoy the freedoms our government allows us, as imperfect as it operates. The majority of us go about our lives encountering decisions only as difficult as deciding what to watch on TV or eat at a restaurant. To see a seemingly ordinary man perform the extrordinary feat of walking in front of a line of tanks so as to peacefully stand against what he belived was wrong is mezmerizing to witness on film. The beauty of this documentary is that for those of us who have been led to believe through one mean or another that China is moving in the right direction, now know that all is not well. There is censorship, injustice, inequality, poverty, insufficient healthcare... What a poignant way to close the episode by showing that the very university from which students came from to protest in the late 80's now appear to not recognize the famous Tiananmen Square photograph with the Tank Man. It seems like a diversionary tactic to me: give people the means to become wealthy and they forget about what it was that thousands of people died in search of in 1989.

Thank-you for exemplyfing exactly what TV should be like. Brilliant work.

Wes Brooks
Nashville, TN

Dear FRONTLINE,

This young man stood in front of tons of metal and steel rolling towards him. His fragile flesh and bones were all that stood between him and the machine, you could almost see his will as an immovable object that ultimately forced this tank to make these awkward attempts to go around him. Even to this day when I watch this young man stand in the way of those tanks I am transfixed and awed by his determination. We read about many heroes in history but very few of us actually get to witness the act that earned them this title. With Tank man it is clear on that tiny clip of film that his actions were pure unquestionable heroism. I wish young people today could learn more about a person like Tank man rather than the ego driven media stars that pollute their minds. Thank you Frontline for resurrecting the ghost of man who deserves more attention from us.

Nuri Celikgil
Flushing, NY

Dear FRONTLINE,

For two years I taught college English in China. Only once (early in my time there) I happened to show a Chinese co-teacher a photo of "Tank Man." This teacher knew what the image was. I wonder if those Beijing University students were only pretending not to recognize the pictures, since they were being interviewed by a foreign media representative. It is truly remarkable if four Bei Da students knew NOTHING about this image.

H. L. Erwin
Athens, Georgia

Dear FRONTLINE,

The memory of Tiananmen Square is vivid in my memory. We had a small import consulting business in Hong Kong at the time. Our representative in Hong Kong at the time reported back about the throngs of people that poured into the streets in Hong Kong in support of the demonstration. Though still under British rule at the time most Chinese in Hong Kong had strong ties in China. Those we had come to know were insensed and somewhat fearful of the implications of the government crack-down.My response to this program was one of concern. Can we, as human beings, become complacent about our most treasured freedoms as long as we are allowed to appease our appetite for material posessions? Which will win in China, ethics or greed? We should all be watching.

M. Warner
Lenexa, Kansas

Dear FRONTLINE,

For years now, Frontline has been a welcome and beloved guest in my home. Yet, I was particularly affected by "The Tank Man." So much so that I feel I must simply offer my thanks. So unflinching and adamantine a narrative for what has become, for most Americans, a forgotten and invisible legacy of a distantly foreign past. Moreover, to glimpse once more the unnamed man stand at the very gates of oblivion in the face of the gaping maw of hell with a courage few of us could muster brought tears flowing to my eyes.

Drew Jolly
Barry, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

Very interesting, but what I missed in the welter of social and economic information was how the Chinese media covered Tiananmen contemporaneously. I was listening on Long Island to Radio Beijing (in English) and heard their announcers almost tearfully asking for help and coverage, saying that hundreds the scene had been and were being killed or wounded -- including members of their staff. I told this to a person on the New York Times but since I hadn't made a tape it wasn't deemed worth checking. The Wall Street Journal did mention these pleas but I have often wondered what happened to those radio staffers. I think, considering the charged situation, they were just about as brave as journalists can be, not as dramatically visible and admirable as Tank Man but defintely doing their part to get the story out.

Gerald Clarke
New York, New York

Dear FRONTLINE,

Why are some of our most powerful USA technology companies partnering with China's government to obstruct the free flow of information to and from the Chinese population? How timely for this showing of Tank Man, days before the Christian World participates in their holiest season. Christ's teachings were ignored, scoffed at, and his person scouraged so all people could experience the freedom to choose right over wrong, good over evil, generosity over greed. Yet we see Yahoo, Cisco, Google, Microsoft and other American companies unabashed at filling their coffers on the backs of millions of poor citizens in a country with a horrific record on human rights. This American head is bowed in shame!

Margaret Harris
Indianapolis, Indiana

Dear FRONTLINE,

It is time we faced the fact that buying PRC made goods is no different than buying slave made goods from the pre-Civil War South. By doing so we undermine freedom and capitalism. By doing so, we support an authoritarian state that does not allow individual citizens to negotiate a fair market value for their skills and labor. The value of their sweat is decreed to them.

Without a fair market value for labor underlying PRC made goods, free people of the world cannot compete with their underpriced products and the concept of a 'free market' collapses. Keeping the PRC as our 'most favored trading partner' is only rewarding the embodied antithesis of 'free trade' that is the PRC government. Every semi-slave made product we purchase feeds that corrupt freedom consuming machine orders of magnitude more than it may feed the slaves who actually do the work.

We should be very afraid not just because of the ethical implications. We should be afraid because we are, by our Walmart and other purchases, funding the very government and military that many think are already looking well beyond their borders to complete the vision of an outwards communist world with an elevated corrupt and totalitarian elite that seems to be the only consistent product of communistic endeavors to date.

Buy only freely made goods where all aspects of the cost of goods sold are determined as much as possible by free market forces. The artificial suppression of the market value of slave labor (resting implicitly on the assumption that the individual is nothing and human life is cheap) cannot be competed against successfully and can only be terminated by refusing to purchase.

We do not raise the slave to a higher state by buying goods they are forced to produce. We only make the enslavers richer.

I bet the citizens of the PRC now wish they had a Second Amendment in their Constitution and that if so, it was intact and respected. They need it now.

Martin Galyean
Madison, NC

Dear FRONTLINE,

There is another Tank Man. He was driving the tank and chose (or did he?) not to crush the one tank man we saw on TV. Those two clearly talked to one another. What did they say? And is it possible that, in the end, the reason why the man in front of the tank survived was that the one inside it refused to take part in this bloodshed? Was he resisting orders? If that was the case, then what happened to him? The drama that was unfolding during those few, intense minutes should really be entitled "The Tank Men".

Pierre Godin
Montreal, Quebec

Dear FRONTLINE,

I dont think I have seen a more courageous act by a civilian against an oppressive military. He would make an patriotic American bow his head. I have never forgotten that picture and I never will.

Noel Cox
Bronx, NY

Dear FRONTLINE,

I saw the event on CNN in 1989 and was greatly moved. There will not be justice or freedom in China until democracy takes hold. I have long suspected that there is an underground that will rise up at the right time. I also believe that there is an awesome and power Christian Church that is waiting for the right moment. I was surprised to hear on tonights program that there have been thousands of uprisings throughout China in the past few years--and I am shocked by what Google, Yahoo, Cisco are doing--SHAME! Congress must do something about this corporate greed. How can they do such a thing?

Brad Farrow
Flowery Branch, GA