Editor’s note for Thursday, June 4, 2020

Dear Access member,

Some notes:

Itโ€™s June 4 today, or May 35, the 31st anniversary of the crackdown on protests at Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China. For a rundown on the events of that day and that year, see the piece we published last year: 30 essential stories about June 4, 1989. ย 

MemetJan Juma, the deputy director of Radio Free Asiaโ€™s Uyghur Serviceย tweeted: โ€œAbdukadir Juma, my brother, who translated Chinese Nobel Prize Laureate Mรฒ Yรกnโ€™s ่Žซ่จ€ Red Sorghumย into Uyghur Language, had been transferred to a forced labor camp after his internment for three years.โ€

A few videos and events you may be interested in:

Half of all vaccines for the virus that causes COVID-19 that have gone to clinical trial were discovered by Chinese companies, NPR recently reported. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has saidย that if China develops a vaccine, it would be a “global public good.” What do you think Xi means by that more precisely, and how do you think that would play out geopolitically if the U.S. were in a position to depend on China for yet another critical medical resource?

Our word of the dayย is June 4, 1989, usually just shortened to ๅ…ญๅ›› liรน sรฌ in Chinese.

โ€”Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief