A photograph of two Chinese athletes embracing has been scrubbed off social media and online platforms in China, purportedly due to an inadvertent reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. About the massacre: The Tiananmen Square massacre remains one of the darkest chapters in modern Chinese history. On June 4, 1989, Chinese military tanks rolled into Beijing to violently suppress students protesting for democracy in Tiananmen Square.