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It was 20 Year Ago Today...

post #1 of 24
6/3/09 at 5:30am
Thread Starter 
...that an event occured to help awaken me to global politics and world events. Never forget no matter how much our governments owe to or are making off our new rich and powerful friend in the east.







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post #2 of 24
6/3/09 at 5:59am
Shhhhhh!

How about that Chavez, though? What a dictator!
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post #3 of 24
6/4/09 at 12:02am
Thread Starter 
One comment guys? Really?

Anyway, this was an interesting piece in my paper today...

Haunted by details missing in the struggle for objectivity

Quote:
Tiananmen Square became an urban killing field, one that I witnessed without knowing what I was seeing, or how to see it. Fifteen years of reporting certainly did not prepare me for that night 20 years ago when China's ageing governing despots unleashed a modern army on the capital.

I watched as soldiers fired randomly into houses and at darkened street corners where people stood dazed with shock and disbelief. I peered into blackness, first glimpsing flashes of gunfire, before hearing a delayed crack, like a whip, and the deep-grinding rumble of armoured personnel carriers.

People slumped onto the footpaths outside their homes; others were ground into the bitumen beneath the tanks. I told myself not to look away, but what I saw was not enough - or too much. It overwhelmed and invaded me.

It was only after the army had surrounded the square and murdered many of those remaining, that I began to suspect I had no way of making sense of what I had seen.

I had clues - I knew that seeing a young woman shot is not as disturbing as hearing a bullet puncture her body - but I had no idea how to weave such details into an orderly story. What was orderly about a massacre?
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post #4 of 24
6/4/09 at 12:34am
Thread Starter 
Tiananmen aims lost in prosperity

Quote:
DO CHINESE people yearn for democracy? Do they dream about being able to vote for a government or a leader? And do they approve of the job President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are doing? After three years as China correspondent for this paper, I'd say the answers are probably No, No and Yes. But no one really knows because such questions remain off limits in China today. No public pollster would dare broach them.

On the 20th anniversary of the brutal crackdown on democracy demonstrations in Beijing, Westerners might also ask whether ordinary Chinese people care about what happened in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago.

But you cannot care about something you know little about....
Quote:
....Most Chinese under the age of 30 - including millions of schoolchildren - are ignorant about this part of their country's history. The 1989 massacre and Zhao Ziyang have been airbrushed from schoolbooks and censored in the media and, when possible, on the internet.

The June 4 "incident", as is it is referred to on the rare occasions it is acknowledged officially, temporarily made China an international pariah, but it did force change - although not necessarily the kind the student protesters hoped for. Two decades of economic growth and increasing engagement with the rest of the world have made the Chinese people more affluent than at any time in the past 5000 years of Chinese civilisation....
Quote:
....But, while 20 years of economic growth has delivered much to the Chinese people, it has not delivered the freedom to speak out loud what they may think privately if those private thoughts question Communist Party rule.

Three Chinese dissidents I met during my time in their country were later jailed. One is still in jail, another is under house arrest and the third is a broken man who has been released after recanting his former heresies (including acting for the banned Falun Gong movement and calling for the abolition of the CCP).

Another man, He Weifang, a brilliant young lawyer who has campaigned for an independent judiciary, has recently been banished to a small university in remote Xinjiang province. He believes this is punishment for signing last year's Charter 08 petition calling for democratic reforms.
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post #5 of 24
6/4/09 at 3:04am
To this day, Im sure of three things about this:
-China will never, ever be seen as a "fair and democratic" country in both my eyes and my lifetime...and its because of this massacre and the suppression of its truth.
-I will never understand how Chinese officials have been able to blindfold and suppress such an event that happened only 20 years ago....even with crackdowns, suppression and information manipulation on a grand scale, I cannot understand how it has been deleted from history and memory.
-The Unknown rebel (or tank man) is easily the bravest person of the last 100 years, at least if you ask me.

Also, the lack of comments on this thread is disappointing to say the least.
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post #6 of 24
6/4/09 at 3:20am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryoken View Post
Also, the lack of comments on this thread is disappointing to say the least.
I'm kinda stunned considering some of the compassionate firebrands we get around here.

Is the US media simply not making a big deal about the 20th anniversary or something?

It's been pretty prevelant in my paper yesterday and today.
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post #7 of 24
6/4/09 at 3:30am
Sadly, I don't think there will ever be any big amount of public pressure for a reconsideration of the West's relationship to China. The Western governments themselves are certainly not going to do anything about it, because it would endanger their relationship with the next big guy. Barring major, cataclysmic events, China is going to become the world's biggest power in the next couple of decades. Pissing them off is bad business. And for all our talk about freedom and democracy we won't do anything if it's bad business or dangerous.

Now even accepting what a huge crime it was, I can't imagine the amount of shit that would go down if added to the mess that the dissolution of the USSR was you would also have a destabilized China.
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post #8 of 24
6/4/09 at 4:50am
The fact that this event has had so little effect on modern Chinese history is one of the most tragic occurrences in my lifetime. A sacrifice that courageous should be for something real, something lasting. The deaths of the IRB men in the Dublin 1916 rising led to a fast and (mostly) successful revolution that made history. In this case? Nothing. It's enraging, and the fact that people hardly care about China's abuses makes it even worse. The idea of the next most powerful force in world influence not even making the most basic, nominal lip service towards freedom is terrifying and will definitely lead to major, major Issues down the road.
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post #9 of 24
6/4/09 at 10:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by stelios View Post
Sadly, I don't think there will ever be any big amount of public pressure for a reconsideration of the West's relationship to China. The Western governments themselves are certainly not going to do anything about it, because it would endanger their relationship with the next big guy. Barring major, cataclysmic events, China is going to become the world's biggest power in the next couple of decades. Pissing them off is bad business. And for all our talk about freedom and democracy we won't do anything if it's bad business or dangerous.

Now even accepting what a huge crime it was, I can't imagine the amount of shit that would go down if added to the mess that the dissolution of the USSR was you would also have a destabilized China.
Here's one thing about China: it's either gonna be the next big guy, or it's gonna fracture like it did so many times in the past.
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post #10 of 24
6/4/09 at 11:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Savage View Post
Here's one thing about China: it's either gonna be the next big guy, or it's gonna fracture like it did so many times in the past.
I think that was what the Chinese government had on its mind during 1989. It was a calculated display of determination in order to discourage others from getting funny ideas.
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post #11 of 24
6/4/09 at 11:29am
There's something wrong about the fact that this thread's parody already has more comments.
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post #12 of 24
6/4/09 at 11:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Rain Dog View Post
I'm kinda stunned considering some of the compassionate firebrands we get around here.

Is the US media simply not making a big deal about the 20th anniversary or something?

It's been pretty prevelant in my paper yesterday and today.
No, they aren't making a big deal of it.....

Considering who currently is holding a great deal of US bonds right now, it isn't surprising either (or at least it shouldn't be too surprising).
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post #13 of 24
6/4/09 at 11:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Rain Dog View Post
I'm kinda stunned considering some of the compassionate firebrands we get around here.

Is the US media simply not making a big deal about the 20th anniversary or something?

It's been pretty prevelant in my paper yesterday and today.
People here in the US aren't really making a big deal of it. I am not surprised at all. We owe them money, our media has major investments in China, and John And Kate Plus Eight is far more pressing a concern to most Americans anyway. We don't talk much about countries that we aren't going to blow the shit out of or demonize for some reason, and we talk even less about misdeeds commited by ones that we owe unimaginably huge sums of money to.

Or, what Hbarr said, while I was rewording what I said. And at first glance I thought this was a Sgt. Peppers-related thread.
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post #14 of 24
6/4/09 at 4:57pm
Actually the fact that China was able to practically retcon their own history, or at least effectively delete this event for most intents and purposes is, at least for me, proof that the romantic fantasy about democracy, freedom, people finding a way etc. etc. is just that.
It may not work in every country, but frankly that is more due to the fact that the chinese government was just damned good at handling this.

I am sure there are not just a few politicans in the western world in the past years who would have loved to be able to redo history themselves.
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post #15 of 24
6/9/09 at 3:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Rain Dog View Post
...that an event occured to help awaken me to global politics and world events. Never forget no matter how much our governments owe to or are making off our new rich and powerful friend in the east.
At 12? Really?
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post #16 of 24
6/9/09 at 4:11am
Thread Starter 
Yep.

I grew up in a pretty politically switched on family.
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post #17 of 24
6/23/09 at 10:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Rain Dog View Post
It was 20 Years Ago Today...
...that Tim Burton's Batman was released and CHANGED THINGS FOREVER. To quote Mike Carlin, "Imagine if it had been any good?" I wore this totally awesome t-shirt to the event:

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post #18 of 24
6/23/09 at 10:42am
In that awesome Frontline episode called "The tank man" (About the massacre) they showed a group of young Beijing students the famous photo of the man blocking the tanks, and asked them what it meant for them. NOT ONE of them knew what it was, they had NO idea and simply thought it was some kind of military parade.

Try looking up Tianamen square in google images and you wil find 18 pages of photos with lots showing the tank man. Do it in China and you get 3 pages with tourist photos from the square and not one about the events 20 years ago. This is a direct result of the Google collaboration with the chinese authorities on censorship.
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post #19 of 24
6/23/09 at 10:46am
But what does that have to do with Batman?
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post #20 of 24
6/23/09 at 10:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bitches Leave View Post
In that awesome Frontline episode called "The tank man" (About the massacre) they showed a group of young Beijing students the famous photo of the man blocking the tanks, and asked them what it meant for them. NOT ONE of them knew what it was, they had NO idea and simply thought it was some kind of military parade.
Linky Link!
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post #21 of 24
6/4/10 at 1:31am
Thread Starter 
...and another year has passed.

The US owes even more to China these days doesn't it? So do we if I remember rightly.

Thanks China, we'll try not to remember any inconvenient facts about your past.
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post #22 of 24
6/4/10 at 4:34pm
Meanwhile they've murdered over a million people in Tibet since 1957, and we've not seen the Chinese stage single demonstration of that size since 1989. Sickening.

Green boxes galore to The Rain Dog for refusing to allow the CHUD-munity(c) to turn away from the horror

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post #23 of 24
6/4/10 at 8:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by reggie-wanker View Post
People here in the US aren't really making a big deal of it. I am not surprised at all. We owe them even more money, our media has major investments in China, and finding and/or keeping a job is far more pressing a concern to most Americans anyway. We don't talk much about countries that we aren't going to blow the shit out of or demonize for some reason, and we talk even less about misdeeds commited by ones that we owe unimaginably huge sums of money to.

Or, what Hbarr said, while I was rewording what I said. And at first glance I thought this was a Sgt. Peppers-related thread.
Updated!
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post #24 of 24
6/4/10 at 9:45pm
I had that same t-shirt, Phil!

And to answer your question from last year, Rain Dog. No, the American media doesn't really note the anniversary. Which is a shame. And I thank you for reminding me.
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