20 Years Ago - Tiananmen Square

[curtoid]

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20040602/capt.bej10706020946.china_tiananmen_anniversary_be j107.jpg

Los Angeles Times Article... (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&e=1&u=/latimests/aniconandthenhesgone)

Stuns the hell out of me that it's been 15 years since this happened.



http://img21.photobucket.com/albums/v64/curtoid/44.jpg


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[blakjeezis]

I love that picture, man. One man, on his way home with his shopping, stops in front of the tanks. He wasn't in the Square, he wasn't protesting. He saw the students, saw the tanks, and stood up for what was right. Such a powerful image.

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[Tall_James]

How could you not be moved by that image?


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[badorties]

that was one of those moments that alter/change your perception on life ... i was 13, and waking up to put on buggs bunny, and instead saw peter jennings, and history unfolding before my eyes ... i had a moment of clarity that there were things of great scale and importance ....



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[furie]

for all the good it did. I remember everyone was talking how China was on the cusp of a civil war. the people were ready to revolt. they yearned for freedom. we were staring at the creation of a democratic POC.

yeah.


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[HBox]

That is a moving picture, but it is a depressing reminder that bad guys do win sometimes.

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[schmega]

the people were ready to revolt.

you think the rural farmers that make up the majority of the population really give a shit about their political freedoms?

democracy is a helluva sell to 1.2 billion. give them another 15 years so the rest of the old guard can die off. by then capitalism would've softened up whatever resistance is still left.

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[furie]

you think the rural farmers that make up the majority of the population really give a shit about their political freedoms?



no I don't think they care. but si ce 90% of their population lives on or near the east coast in or near dense population centers, I also don't think they matter much.


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[schmega]

as of '97, 70% of the population is still rural. (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/ChinaFood/data/urban/urban_5.htm)

they're still very much a nation of farmers. and they matter A LOT. Mao could've never sent that corrupt dipshit Chiang Kai Shek swimming without the backing of the rural population.

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[Yerdaddy]

Don't confuse rural with stupid. The Communist Party is involved in the running of the smallest village, and the population is as aware of its political situation as any other. The Chinese people don't want politcal repression any more than anyone else. But, like all other modern authoritarian states, the ruling class rules with a military deployed for internal conrol as much as external defense.

The student democracy movement in China was as courageous and principled a group as our own founding fathers. But, (like the similar military putdown of a student democracy protest in Burma that killed 2 to 3 times the numer of people, and other mass movements around the world), the world chose to sit on its hands and watch the people get slaughtered. Tiananmen Square should have marked a major triumph of democratic progress in the world, but instead, like the Rwandan genocide, it marks another shameful apathetic response by the international community. "Never again" is just a bumper sticker.

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[TheMojoPin]

Man, I was 9 when that all happened, and I remember sitting down with my dad for a good two hours while he explained everything that was going on...and like yerdaddy said, it's sad that absolutely nothing came of it. No international support for the students...nothing. Just hand-wringing and head-shaking afterwards.

That is a moving picture, but it is a depressing reminder that bad guys do win sometimes.

They may have one that battle, but they're clearly losing the "war." Maoist communism is visibly and dramtically dying in China...it'll probably be decades before the military and government are noticeably changed by this process (If it continues "naturally" and there isn't a more abrupt uprising and changing of the guard), but it IS happening, and history will tell how much the actions of the students 15 years ago played in that "death."

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[Furtherman]

Time to fix up this thread. Mods? Make it "20 Years Ago - Tiananmen Square"

Tiananmen massacre wiped from China's collective memory (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25581516-25837,00.html)

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...in March 2007, China’s President and Communist Party chief Hu Jintao stepped up the rhetoric, telling more than 2,000 delegates to the country’s annual National People’s Congress that the country would “expand people's democracy and ensure that they are masters of the country”.

Since then, the phrase democracy has spilled from Hu’s and a host of other Chinese leaders’ lips countless times. But 20 years after the bloody massacre in central Beijing and Tiananmen Square, barely a peep – at least in public - on the topic comes from its vast citizenry.

Even this week, the Chinese government used its massive internet censorship system to block popular websites such as Twitter, Flickr and Hotmail and all mention of Tiananmen Square and June 4 in the lead-up to the anniversary.

There is a common simplification and even misconception in the west that the demonstrations in 1989 were “pro-democracy” in a western sense - an insistence on free and fair multi-party elections.

While this may have been the ultimate aim, the concerns at the time were less radical and more practically achievable within the context of China’s one-party state.

“We didn’t really know what we wanted,” Beijing based lawyer Pu Zhiqang admitted to The Australian.

Pu was a student at the time and was in the Square on June 4. He survived, but many of his friends were crushed by tanks or shot by often young and frightened soldiers. His story is not uncommon: thrown out of university, he was forced to work as a labourer for many years before re-emerging some years later to practice law. Like many of his ilk, he makes money from commercial law and takes human rights cases out of principal.

Three years after Tiananmen, the Chinese Government began publishing growth figures for its gross domestic product – the main measure of the health of a country’s economy – for the first time. Since then, China’s GDP has not slipped below an annualised quarterly rate of 6 per cent - a figure so large that most other countries would be concerned that growth was too fast for their economies to cope.

“The Chinese have made a Faustian pact with the government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for more material comfort,” Chinese author Ma Jian wrote in the UK’s Guardian newspaper at the weekend.

“They live prosperous lives in which any expression of pain is forbidden.

Interesting article - give the people what they want, but not too much.

Improvements notwithstanding, the people have a long way to go with such a corrupt government.