
Thirty-Seven Years On, a Wound That Never Closed
A former star of Chinese state television turns her camera on a Taiwanese journalist wounded in the Tiananmen crackdown — and on the limits of what witnesses could say at the time.

On September 1, 2024, media representatives from Indonesia gathered with their Chinese counterparts at the second annual China-Indonesia Media Forum (中國-印度尼西亞媒體論壇) in Beijing to discuss further cooperation. The event was part of China’s deepening media diplomacy push across Southeast Asia in the hope of shaping perceptions in this strategically key region. The event, organized by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, emphasized “the media’s positive role in building a community with a shared future,” referencing a central foreign policy concept closely associated with CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平). Indonesian participants included Antara National News Agency, the news site Kumparan, the national daily Republika, the English-language Jakarta Post, the Indonesian free-to-air television network RCTI, and the media portal Merdeka. Mirroring China’s diplomatic positioning of media cooperation, Indonesia’s ambassador to China called on both sides to “step up cooperation in news production” and invited journalists to “report on positive aspects of each respective country.”
