Ed Jones, AFP / Getty Images
All was quiet in Tiananmen Square as the 23rd anniversary of the protests and subsequent crackdown approached. “The current stability-maintaining force, including the police, has effectively stopped people from doing anything on the anniversary,” Ding Xueliang, a Hong Kong university professor, told reporters. “The cost of organizing any collective action is too large; the pressure and risks on individuals too great.” The government has forbidden events to commemorate the 1989 demonstrations. Meanwhile, the United States, fresh from a scrape with the Chinese government regarding blind human-rights activist Chen Guangcheng, urged the country to provide “a full public accounting of those killed, detained, or missing” from the protests more than two decades ago.