Commentary This past week marked the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. On June 4, 1989, pro-democracy protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing for peaceful demonstrations. Led by students, the demonstrators denounced China’s ruling Communist Party and sought greater freedoms for the Chinese people. In response, the Communist Party sent the military to crush the protests. The Chinese government has never released any figures, but we know the People’s Liberation Army massacred anywhere from several hundred to several thousand people. It was a horrifying display of brutality. Yet the business lobby’s response in the United States was essentially to ignore what happened and move forward with engaging China. The calculation was simple: While the massacre was despicable, the Chinese market was simply going to be too big to pass up. The business community’s reaction to the Tiananmen massacre is characteristic of how American corporations have dealt with China for …