ROGER KIMBALL: Remember Tiananmen Square. The Chinese are keen to brush the historical reality of what happened in 1989 under the rug. Don’t let them.

Second, the facts of Tiananmen underscore not just the brutality of the Chinese but the surprising potency of individual action. You cannot find many discussions of those haunting images of the Tank Man without encountering the word “iconic.” A solitary man versus a column of tanks. Who won that exchange?

No doubt Stalin thought he was being cynically clever when he asked “How many divisions has the Pope?” The answer, of course, was “zero” and the implication was that the pontiff, a solitary man, would be no match for Stalin with his millions of troops.

It did not turn out that way, however. On this unhappy anniversary of Tiananmen Square, as the Chinese grind the denizens of Hong Kong under the thumb of their vast surveillance apparatus and the world wakes up to the true origin of COVID-19 in a Chinese bioweapons laboratory, the fate of Stalin’s sarcastic question should give us both pause and resolution.

As should this: Xi Jinping’s Tiananmen Vision Is Coming for Us All.

UPDATE: ‘Do We Need to Be in Hong Kong?’ Global Companies Are Eying the Exits. Buffeted by political upheaval, a crackdown by mainland China and the pandemic, global companies are heading for rival cities such as Singapore and Shanghai.