When America Did Not Come, God Did
37 Years After Tiananmen: The Truth I Learned About What Can Save Nations
by Chai Ling
Thirty-seven years ago, I stood in Tiananmen Square until the final hours before dawn on June 4, 1989.
Like millions of Chinese people, I longed for a better China—a nation governed by law rather than fear, where leaders listened to their people, where truth could be spoken without punishment, where the dignity and rights of every person were respected.
I remember the courage of General Xu Qinxian, who refused to lead troops against the people he was sworn to protect. I remember the Tank Man, who stood before a column of tanks with nothing but conviction and courage. I remember students, workers, journalists, soldiers, government officials, and ordinary citizens standing together in an extraordinary display of unity, sacrifice, and hope.
For a brief moment, China glimpsed what was possible.
Then came the tanks.
The courage of the Chinese people and the brutality of the massacre shocked the world. The events of Tiananmen helped awaken freedom movements across Eastern Europe and contributed to the collapse of Soviet communism. Half the globe was liberated from communist rule.
Yet China remained unfree.
Thirty-seven years later, China has become stronger, wealthier, and more influential than ever. The system that ordered the massacre survived. The values that justified crushing dissent were never fully confronted. Instead, they were emboldened with economic power and global reach.
Is China a Threat to the World?
Thirty-seven years later, China has become stronger, wealthier, and more influential than ever. The system that ordered the Tiananmen Massacre survived. The values that justified crushing dissent were never fully confronted. Instead, they were strengthened by economic success and global influence.
Today, many people ask whether China poses a challenge to the world.
I believe the deeper question is this:
What happens when a society loses its moral compass?
What happens when power becomes more important than truth, prosperity more important than conscience, and human beings become means to an end rather than precious lives created by God?
The lesson of Tiananmen is not merely about China.
It is about the human heart.
The same forces that justified sending tanks against unarmed citizens can emerge anywhere. Whenever a government, an institution, or an individual begins to believe that some people can be sacrificed for a greater goal, the seeds of oppression have already been planted.
I witnessed this in Tiananmen Square.
I later witnessed it in China's One Child Policy, where millions of unborn children were sacrificed in the name of economic development.
Today, I see echoes of the same tragedy in other forms: when human beings are exploited for profit, when pornography turns people into products, when traffickers sell the vulnerable, and when nations pursue power without moral restraint.
The danger is not China alone.
The danger is what happens when we lose sight of the dignity of every human life and forget the God who gave it.
For thirty-seven years, I have wrestled with these questions.
After the massacre, I became one of the most wanted people in China. For ten months I lived in hiding. Courageous men and women risked their own lives to protect mine. Eventually, I escaped China in a cargo compartment aboard a ship, spending 105 hours in darkness on my journey to freedom.
When I arrived in America, I had little more than a backpack and a pair of sneakers.
I left behind my family, my language, my culture, my home, and my country.
I signed, “God, you gave freedom, but nothing else left for me”.
Like many refugees, I believed freedom would answer all my questions. And alas, it will be worse it.
It did not.
I studied at Princeton. I attended Harvard Business School. I worked on Wall Street, at the United Nations, in business consulting, and in public policy. I built a family, a career, businesses, and a life in America.
Yet despite all of these blessings, I remained restless.
I had escaped China.
But I had not found peace.
I kept asking the same question:
What can truly save a nation? What can bring us hope and peace? Once, I had hoped America would be the answer that saves China.
Could America save China in 1989?
In the final days of Tiananmen Square, rumors circulated among the students that if we stayed until the last hour, America would come.
We stayed until the last hour, when we faced tanks and troops.
But America did not come.
A couple years later, after I arrived in the United States, I asked former Ambassador James Lilley why America had not intervened.
His answer haunted me. “They don’t care”. I was shocked by his answer. Two years before the Tiananmen Massacre, Mr. Lilley was Ambassador to South Korea With the commitment and support of President Reagan, he was able to deliver the message to the dictators and caused them to release all dissidents and enabled South Korean to become a free country. But this time, his request for America to intervene failed. A precious moment for China to be free was lost.
The years that followed were not easy. I watched many former comrades move on with their lives. Some abandoned the cause altogether. I saw governments and businesses increasingly prioritize economic opportunities with China over discussions of freedom and human rights. I watched China grow stronger economically while remaining politically enslaved. I watched America's focus shift from confronting China's human rights abuses to pursuing economic engagement and prosperity, hoping that trade and openness would eventually lead to reform.
At times I wondered whether the sacrifices of 1989 had been forgotten. In fact the headline for the 20th anniversary was” “Tiananmen, the great forgetting.”
For many years I searched for answers. What is the truth? What will help a nation to be free?
I studied at Princeton. I attended Harvard Business School. I worked in business, public policy, and international affairs. I built a family, a career, and a life in America. By many measures, I had achieved the American dream.
Yet deep inside, I remained restless.
America did not come, God did.
The question that had followed me since Tiananmen remained unanswered. Until one day, God came.
For twenty years, I resisted Christianity.
Growing up under communism, faith was viewed with suspicion. Later, I encountered people who publicly claimed Christianity while privately causing deep harm. I became skeptical and distrustful.
Then I read the testimony of Brother Yun, known as Heavenly Man.
After severe torture and imprisonment, he heard Jesus tell him, "Get up and walk."
He walked out of prison past guards who seemed unable to see him.
As I read his story, I remembered a moment from my own escape.
While hiding from authorities after Tiananmen, I sat on a bus as security officers checked identification cards. I was terrified. My name was on a most-wanted list.
An officer approached my seat.
Then somehow, he passed me.
As he turned back to check again, a sudden commotion erupted at the front of the bus. He rushed away and never returned.
For twenty years I still remember the moment of terror and relief after.
Then I read Heavenly Man's story and wondered:
Could it be the God who protected him had also protected me?
On December 4, 2009, six months after my friends to put my soul on the alter for the Lord to take, He did, and I finally said yes to Jesus Christ.
That simple decision changed my life.
Not because all suffering disappeared.
Not because every question was answered.
But because I discovered a freedom deeper than political freedom.
I discovered that truth is not merely an idea.
Truth is a person.
I discovered that God is not merely interested in saving individuals. He is interested in transforming nations.
The God who ended China’s One Child Policy
I saw this most clearly through China's One Child Policy.
For more than three decades, countless women were dragged from their homes, forced onto operating tables, injected with drugs that killed their unborn children, and subjected to unimaginable trauma. More than 400 million babies lost their lives under the policy. By the time God opened my eyes to this tragedy, more than 35,000 babies were being lost each day.
What stunned me was not only the scale of the suffering, but the silence surrounding it.
Other than a few courageous voices, such as Congressman Chris Smith, very few governments, institutions, or organizations seemed willing to confront this evil.
When God brought this issue before me, I expected the answer to be political activism alone.
Instead, He taught me something deeper.
The answer was not hatred.
The answer was not revenge.
The answer was repentance, forgiveness, prayer, and truth.
As I was growing in my faith, I learned how a fetus was already life and how abortions grieve God’s heart and how my coerced and forced and later voluntary abortions grieved Gd’s heart too. And how powerfully Holy Spirit spoke to me via miraculous events to put my own journey into my memoir: A Heart for Freedom. A Christian couple who had planted dozens of house churches throughout China read the book; they had lost five of their children to still born and went back to China to share immediately this important truth to their spiritual sons and daughters.
These Christians who had personally suffered forced or coerced abortions were shocked and deeply convicted, as if their eyes were opened. They all either had forced or coerced abortions, or caused others to have abortions, they began confessing their pains and sins before God, asking forgiveness for their own participation where applicable, and extending forgiveness toward those who had harmed them.
Something remarkable began to happen.
Then, two days before another June 4 anniversary, a photograph of a young mother lying beside the lifeless body of her forcibly aborted child went onto the internet and spread across China and globally. Similar images had existed for years, yet this one ignited something different. Tens of millions of people expressed outrage. Conversations that had long been suppressed suddenly erupted into public view.
Within months, Chinese authorities announced an end to late-term forced abortions. That was 2012.
Soon afterward, the One Child Policy itself began to unravel.
First came reforms.
In 2012, China ended the late-stage forced abortions.
In 2015, end of one-child policy, implementation of two-child policy.
Shortly after, the three-child policy.
Today, the government is actively encouraging larger families.
Looking back, I see God’s promises is so powerful: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."
We people called God’s name, humbled ourselves, repented, forgive and prayed, seek His face, He indeed hear us from heaven forgive our sins and heal our land.
And I witnessed something I never expected to see in my lifetime: a policy that once seemed untouchable began to collapse. I witnessed a policy that once appeared untouchable began to collapse. For me, it was a profound reminder that when we humble ourselves, God can change hearts, and when hearts change, nations can change.
For me, this became a living lesson.
God is more powerful than any government.
More powerful than any dictator.
More powerful than any ideology.
The same God who changes individual hearts can also change the course of nations.
Call for God to save China and America
Today, I see many threats facing America and the world.
Some come from abroad.
Some come from within.
We face geopolitical dangers, ideological extremism, addiction, loneliness, family breakdown, pornography, sexual exploitation, and human trafficking. 9 out of 10 men and 6 out of 10 women are using porn regularly. Many thought it is not harming anyone. Least do they know the lethal impact of how this is breaking our society, our families and our very being, one clicks a time.
Those trapped by pornography are not enemies. On the contrary, they are victims, they just don’t know yet. Many are wounded themselves, targeted when they were 12 or 13, searching for love, intimacy, purpose, and connection in places that can never satisfy. They are captives who need freedom.
The same God who ended China’s brutal One Child Policy called me to herald the “Me too” movement in 2012 to end sexual assault, by 2015, we saw predators were being exposed and held accountable from every sections, Media, Entertainment, Military, Education, Government, etc
Now God is calling us to end sex trafficking and SEXploitation in America, then around the world. God is calling us to end counterfeit addictions, to pursue covenant love, to make strong husbands and strong fathers, to protect women and children --- not exploiting them, to form strong families and strong nations!
The battle is not merely political.
It is spiritual.
The deepest threats to a nation are not only armies, economies, or foreign adversaries.
The deepest threats emerge when truth is abandoned, when conscience is ignored, and when we forget the God who created us.
For thirty-seven years, I searched for what can save a nation.
I witnessed democracy movements, revolutions, elections, economic miracles, and political failures. I studied at Princeton and Harvard, worked on Wall Street and in public policy, and observed governments around the world.
Today, I believe more than ever that laws matter, freedom matters, and good governance matters. But none of them alone can heal the human heart.
The greatest hope for China is not politics.
The greatest hope for America is not politics.
The greatest hope for any nation is a people willing to humble themselves before God, repent, forgive, seek truth, and pursue righteousness.
On this 37th year anniversary,
I remember those who died.
I honor those who stood.
I thank those who risked everything to save my life.
And I pray.
I pray for China.
I pray for America.
Not that we would merely become stronger.
Not that we would merely become richer.
Not that we would merely defeat our enemies.
But that we will NOT repeat the mistakes of history.
That we will recognize both the dangers around us and the dangers within us.
That goodness, truth, courage, and righteousness will rise again.
And I pray that, as we humble ourselves and seek God's face, seek truth, repent of our sins, forgive one another, He will heal our hearts, restore our nations, and bring His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.
My friend and hero Jimmy Lai, along with many others, remain imprisoned. Freedom has not yet fully come. China is not yet free. But today my cry is no longer directed first to governments. It is directed to heaven.
Lord, set them free!
Will you join me in prayer?
Thirty-seven years ago, I waited for America to save China.
America did not come.
God did.
Today, I still believe freedom matters.
I still believe democracy matters.
I still believe human rights matters.
But after thirty-seven years of searching, I have learned that no nation can remain free unless its people first learn to be free in their hearts.
And that freedom begins when we humble ourselves before God.
"If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land."
That is my prayer for China.
That is my prayer for America.
And that is my invitation to you. Now, will you join me?
Written on the 37th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.
Chai Ling, a student leader at Tiananmen, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, escaped to America, spent 37 years searching for what can save a nation. She looked to democracy, America, education, success, and politics. In the end she concluded that nations are ultimately saved when hearts are transformed by truth, repentance, forgiveness, and God. Get a copy of her book on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Freedom-Remarkable-Dissident-Daughters-ebook/dp/B005KCYXJC/
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