On April 15

On this day in ...
... 1994 (15 years ago today), in Morocco, the 7-1/2 years of trade negotiations known as the Uruguay Round ended with adoption of the Marrakesh Protocol to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994. Ministers from nearly all the participating 123 countries signed the Marrakesh Agreement, as it is known. This agreement led to the establishment the following year of the World Trade Organization (logo above), and to an ensuing Doha Round of trade negotiations, still under way.
... 1989 (20 years ago today), in Beijing, Hu Yaobang, the deposed General Secretary of the Chinese Community Party, died of a massive heart attackthe news, people began to gather in Tiananmen Square, where paid tribute to Hu, whom leaders had forced out of office 2 years earlier. This Washington Post story explains that Hu

is remembered by many Chinese for overturning cases against millions persecuted during Mao Zedong's political movements and launching the economic and political reforms that ended the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

In addition to honoring Hu, those who gathered that day also voiced discontent with the regime governing China. The event thus proved a catalyst for the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations that roiled the city in the next months.

(Prior April 15 posts are here and here.)

On March 29

On this day in ...
... 1970, Dr. Anna Louise Strong (right) died in Communist China, where she had moved in 1958, at age 72, and had become "one of few Westerners to gain the admiration of Mao Tse-tung." She had been born in Friend, Nebraska, to "middle-class liberals who were active in missionary work and the Congregational Church." After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago at age 23, she became active in child welfare and labor movements, 1st in Chicago and then in Seattle. She was elected the latter city's only woman school board member in 1916. The same year the New York Post hired her to cover a bloody labor dispute in her home state between the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, and mill owners. She would go on to become a radical writer and pacifist, traveling 1st to the Soviet Union and eventually to the People's Republic of China.
... 1849 (160 years ago today), just over 2 weeks after the Sikh army had surrendered to it, Britain's East India Company "annexed" the Punjab (left) and rendered it a province of British India, by concluding a treaty with the maharajah of Lahore. (credit for 1909 map)

(Prior March 29 posts are here and here.)

Reason sleeps

Saw a fascinating and disturbing exhibit last week at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Entitled "Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Logan Collection," it included sculptures and paintings depicting, from the view of Chinese artists, life in China today. It's worth a look should the exhibit arrive at a museum near you.
The message in these works was bleak, a world of forced conformity and false authority.
Hard to have a favorite among such sad images. Still, one piece struck me for its dark-humor approach to a gray life. It's The Sleep of Reason, a sculpture that likely borrows its name from El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos/The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, the 18th Century etching above right, by Francisco Goya. (The inspiration's reproduced here because of copyright restrictions on the work under review.) From a distance, the 2005 work by Beijing sculpture professor Sui Jianguo (below left) resembles a colorful behemoth of a mountain, surrounded by a color-wheel of swirling landscape. Close up, one sees that the mountain is the late Communist leader Mao Zedong, who's snoozing under a warm blanket while phalanxes of brightly hued admirers stand guard. The admirers? Monsters of a sort that's filled with meaning, toy-store purchases all -- plastic dinosaurs.

On October 11

On this day in ...

... 1987, the AIDS Quilt was unrolled for the 1st time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (right). It was a key feature of the National March on Washington in favor of LGBT rights and against the decision in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) (holding 5-4 that the Constitution's Due Process Clause did not protect individuals from criminal prosecution for same-sex intimacy), overruled by Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The Quilt, which "covered a space larger than a football field and included 1,920 panels," was seen by 500,000 persons that weekend. (photo credit)

... 1976, the new chairman of China's Communist Party signaled an end to that country's Cultural Revolution when he ordered the arrest in Beijing of the so-called "Gang of Four," who had been influential in spurring Mao Zedong to declared the upheaval 10 years earlier. The 4 were convicted 4 years later of attempting to overthrow the government; they received death sentences that later were commuted to imprisonment. Among the 4 was was Mao's widow, known as Jian Qing. A drama school graduate, the woman who'd been given the birth name Li Shumeng was pursuing a career in theater when Japan invaded China. That event led her to quit the stage and begin working against Japan and for the Communist Party -- work that led to her meet the Party's leader, Mao. Jiang Quing died at age 77 in 1991, soon after her release from her post-Cultural Revolution imprisonment. (credit for 1947 photo above left of Jiang and Mao; credit for circa 1930s photo at right of Jiang, then using the stage name Lan Ping)

On this day

On February 28, ...
... 1972, the week-long visit of Richard M. Nixon to the People's Republic of China, the 1st ever by a U.S. President, ended with the signing of the Shanghai Communiqué. In it Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai set the groundwork for deeper relations between the 2 countries. During his visit the President also had met Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-Tung; for a detailed account of the visit and all that preceded it, check out Nixon and Mao (2007) by Oxford historian Margaret MacMillan.
... 1971, the all-male electorate in Liechtenstein voted against women's suffrage in the principality, which is situated between Switzerland and Austria. The vote was 1,867 to 1,817. Women would win the right to vote in 1984. (map credit)