Tiananmen Square 25 Years Ago
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
When the Tanks Rolled In
It was the night that the frightened old men of the Chinese government chose to ‘kill the kids instead of change’. Under one-party rule, the same men remain in power today and continue to pretend the Tiananmen massacre never happened.
Below are graphic images from the the evening of June 3rd into June 4th back in 1989 in Beijing.
http://hongwrong.com/tiananmen-anniversary/
It was the night that the frightened old men of the Chinese government chose to ‘kill the kids instead of change’. Under one-party rule, the same men remain in power today and continue to pretend the Tiananmen massacre never happened.
Below are graphic images from the the evening of June 3rd into June 4th back in 1989 in Beijing.
http://hongwrong.com/tiananmen-anniversary/
0
Comments
http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dclarke/public/Munro_Who_Died_in_Beijing_and_Why.pdf
You are very out spoken against US policy in the Middle East, can I also ask where you are from and what you support?
Matt's question is a fair one and I hope you address it fairly without 'getting on the attack'. I'm also curious to know... what would the percentages of China's population be used to describe upper, middle, and lower classes?
He's living in China right now. He has a great insight as to what the mood and sentiment of the people there is.
He introduced the thread and people are asking for more information.
This is not a question. This statement implies that Bryzine's post claimed some sort of "change" took place. Hence my request for clarification as to where Bryzine claimed or insinuated that change occurred.
Sorry I don't have real insight of the situation. Looking through those pictures just made me think of that coversation I had with my grandpa 25 years ago.
Shocking Asia have you seen it ? It gets worse what goes on. And in muslim countries women are beaten and gang raped. Some are kidnapped and held hostage and raped repeatedly, sometimes its in the family. People stab one another now.There are serial murders who taunt their victims who dont get caught.
Theres bullying, and also animal cruelty.
And then theres bull fighting, it still exists.
So it is more discreet now and aside from that there is the poor starving and there are sex slaves and I could go on.
I dont see much difference really.
Though as for the Tienanmen Square massacre changing nothing, this clearly shows how little you know. It in fact changed many things, some for the better, and some for the worse. The events caused the Chinese leadership to grant far more personal freedom to the people of China, and helped speed up the process of reform and opening set in motion by Deng Xiao Ping a decade earlier - in an attempt to pacify the population. And in hindsight it worked a treat. The lives of the ordinary Chinese since 1989 have improved greatly, including the lives of the poor in the countryside, to a significant degree (though many do still live in poverty). As long as people are free to make money, then they will tend not to rock the boat too much, and that's exactly what's happened.
At the same time, the government have clamped down on dissent and any perceived threat to their rule - the internet age has helped them in this, and the 'Great internet firewall of China' is now notorious, as are the 30,000+ paid internet police surveying Chinese cyberspace every day.
Basically, what the Chinese leadership told the people after Tienanmen was that if they don't mess with the government, then they're pretty much free to do what they want. But Tienanmen also taught the government that the people, and especially the working classes, will not tolerate their corruption and tyranny beyond a certain point, and that if the government lean on them too hard again then the country could again erupt like a powder-keg. The fear and paranoia of the Chinese leadership since 1989 is all too obvious to the ordinary Chinese, but so far the cat-and-mouse game has been pretty balanced. But it wouldn't take much for things to kick off again, and I doubt that things will play out the same way the next time around.
I'm from England. What do I support? What do you mean?
But this also shows how afraid the leadership is of the people. And of course, Beijingers haven't forgotten, and the more educated Chinese in the big cities, like Shanghai. But, yeah, most people are ignorant, and just content to make money. (Not much different to people in the U.S, or U.K in that respect).
The school system here is also designed to keep the children ignorant. They study from about 7am-9pm 6 days a week, and many do extra-curricular studies on the 7th day too, so they have no time to develop any personal interests. They're just controlled and bombarded with 'facts' for about 18 years until they mostly end up like robots.
'Education' really is a great tool for controlling and molding people.
But, the Chinese are getting richer, and many are becoming more World-Wise, and a lot of people I met here six years ago have now travelled to the U.S, Russia, Germany, e.t.c, and the more they're exposed to the outside World, then there's a greater chance that they'll end up demanding more freedoms for themselves, and more transparency and accountability from their own government. Distance and cultural diversity tend to grant a much clearer perspective on things.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117983/tiananmen-square-massacre-how-chinas-millennials-discuss-it-now
"I Think It's Already Been Forgotten" How China's millennials talk about Tiananmen Square
June 3, 2014
'...Twenty-five years after June 4, 1989, even China’s educated youth have only a foggy understanding of the incident, and they’re skittish about discussing it openly. Textbooks don’t mention the violence that left hundreds, maybe thousands, dead in the streets of Beijing. The Chinese Internet has been scrubbed of all but the official accounts. (The first result on the search engine Baidu is a short article from People’s Daily concluding that the incident “taught the party and the people a useful lesson.”) The Chinese government has arrested dozens of people in recent weeks for planning or participating in events related to the anniversary, and police have warned foreign journalists not to cover the story. Still, most young Chinese people I approached were willing to talk—as long as they could remain anonymous.
Awareness of the Tiananmen incident among young Chinese tends to correlate with education level, exposure to the world outside China, and general curiosity. Wang, a goofy 26-year-old from Lanzhou who works in finance, didn’t learn about June 4 until he was in college and saw The Gate of Heavenly Peace, an American-produced documentary about the student protests and the ensuing crackdown. It was only then that he started to understand the motivations behind the movement, the tensions between liberal and hardline factions within Deng Xiaoping’s government, and the infighting among students and workers that ultimately doomed their cause. Liu, who is 31 and works at a Chinese media organization, saw the same documentary after graduating college, and had a different takeaway: “The government is an asshole.”
...Even for the young people who have learned about June 4, it’s still a distant concept—nothing like the open wound it is for their parents’ generation. “It’s like something from a legend,” said Jenny. “It seems so exaggerated.”
“I may understand it, but I can hardly feel it,” said Liu. “It’s like the Cultural Revolution to us.”
And like the Cultural Revolution, the ten-year horror show that ended in 1976, it may take a couple of generations before people can speak candidly. “If a historical event is recent, you can’t evaluate it objectively,” said Jenny. “You have to let time pass before you can judge it.” But what if it’s been forgotten by then? I asked. “I think it’s already been forgotten,” she said.
Forgetting isn’t just easy; it’s often necessary. As Louisa Lim writes in her new book The People’s Republic of Amnesia, “moving on—not dwelling on the past—has become a key survival tactic, perhaps the most important one.” The young people I spoke with seemed torn between wanting to care, and knowing that caring wouldn’t make a difference. “Say I really get to know what happened,” Jenny said. “So what? … Maybe I’ll get really angry, but I won’t be able to do anything about it. So I’d rather not know.” Susan seemed almost scared of what she herself would be capable of if she knew too much. “What am I going to do,” she said, “raise a revolution? Write an article? I can’t. I know myself, I know if I start writing I’ll be so aggressive, so critical, so negative. I don’t want to be noticed by the government.” She believes that even searching for forbidden key words could get her in trouble, she said: “They can track you down within minutes.”
They were pessimistic that the next generation would know any more about 1989 than they do. The post-’90s generation, the oldest of whom are now graduating from college, prefer American TV shows and Korean pop stars to social issues, said Amy. Susan argued that most young Chinese are too focused on getting by to worry about grand political issues. “They don’t care, as long as they have something to eat and a place to live,” she said. “We’re just walking dead.” Between the quest for material goods and the squelching of her own curiosity, Jenny said, “the government succeeded. We’ve been brainwashed.”
Sorry to get off topic here but jeez-louise, it's like AMT has become just a place to be contrary.
The sky is blue.
No, it's pink.
Horse whinny.
No, they neigh.
Obama's hair is turning grey.
No, it's getting less black.
Sheesh.
Yeah, there are many dissidents still actively opposing the Chinese leadership, such as artist Ai Wei Wei, Liu Xiaobo (awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize), Chen Guangcheng (civil rights activist who fled to the U.S in 2012, Ma Jian (writer - see his novel 'Beijing Coma' - and political activist), and Liao Yiwu (writer, reporter, musician, poet, and political activist).
i fucking love china, the orient... all of it
deep old history
the powerful will in spirit & mind is overwhelming
i wish the u.s. made more of its own products
tiananmen square... i know less about this than i know of it. i'll have to read up on this sometime.
those pictures up above are brutal... soup & mush
good on the chinese citizens for not taking the governments bullshit
we could learn to do that here
the citizens of china & the citizens of america & any other country are more than likely very capable of being friends, loving friends even. it is the governments that wanna fuck shit up real good for everybody. that stinks
are china, nepal & tibet relations still a disaster?
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
As for the future of China, Westerners love talking about this. It's like a game to see who can prophesy when and how the 'inevitable' downfall of the Communist system will come about. But I think this is mostly just projecting. We like to think that the Chinese want the same things as us, and want the same lifestyle as us. I don't think they do, except for maybe the superficial trappings and gimmicks. They want certain basics rights and securities, but apart from that, they're mostly perfectly satisfied that politics is left in the hands of those at the top. Most people just don't give a fuck about it, because for the majority, it rarely effects them.
I watched a documentary today called 'The Gate of Heavenly Peace'
I think this essentially sums it up. The idealistic youth of 1989 wanting to throw off some of the shackles of heavily ingrained Chinese cultural indoctrination. The main difference today being that China's youth are so numbed by excessive schooling and peer pressure, that by the time they get to university they've mostly had any spark of independence and/or creativity squeezed out of them. That, coupled with the fact that information is so tightly controlled, restricted, and manipulated.
I think the question that should be asked is: Do the Chinese want democracy? Do they want freedom? And I think the answer to that is: No. The students in 1989 weren't necessarily fighting for political freedom, so much as personal freedom, or cultural freedom. And such freedom can't be granted from the top down. It comes from the bottom up. And most Chinese are still enmeshed in a culture that tells them that they have to be married by the age of thirty or be regarded as an outcast. They live in a culture that's obsessed with hierarchy, and respect for authority. It's a society where group-think is standard, and rebellion and dissent are almost unheard of. There are exceptions, such as those people I listed earlier, but most Chinese are now just concerned with making money and doing what they're told by their parents: i,e, get good grades, get a good job, get married, and have a baby.
What did 1989 mean? Not much. Just a brief wave of dissent in an otherwise flat sea of obedience.
Though I could be wrong about this. [Just thinking out loud].
Tiananmen: the massacre that wasn't
What really happened 25 years ago in Tiananmen Square?
http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/what-really-happened-in.html
From the “Tiananmen Massacre” to the “Lhasa Protests”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/from-the-tiananmen-massacre-to-the-lhasa-protests/8635
Both articles provide witness accounts from students and Western journalists that seem to corroborate the Chinese government's claim that the protestors left the square peacefully around dawn...and that much of the bloodshed was due to student actions against police and military forces, mostly on the streets around the square, with virtually no violence occurring in the square itself.....both articles claim that Western media manipulated the truth to vilify the Chinese government by lying about and grossly exaggerated the casualties. One article went so far as to say that the West actively supported 'regime change' via the protests. Remember this was a time when the Soviet Union was failing, and the iron curtain (and break-away) states were seeking capitalist allies....
Is this just revisionist Chinese propaganda being fed thru Western outlets?...or is there something to it? I know I sure as hell don't trust our media any more than other countries...
What about my enquiry to the class stratification in China? Is there a prominent middle class in China?
A lot of the cities along the coast of China are very rich now. Go to Shanghai and you'll see that it makes London and new York look like a garbage bins. Most people in my city tend to drive BMW's, and there's also a Lamborghini parked outside my building on most days. But in the countryside most people still live pretty basic lives. You go inside some houses and see that the only furniture the family has is one bed.
Basically, China is all contradictions.
So, in essence, the opportunity for some to rise from poverty is non-existent... or at a very minimum... extremely difficult... because Hokou limits people based on where they are born?