Tiananmen Square: China minister defends 1989 crackdown
bbc.com
bbc.com
It's a pretty simple equation. Why would any state have to spend so much explicit effort on making no one mention it, if there was nothing really wrong with it?
It will forever be the giant elephant in the room, regardless of how big and successful China makes itself. Few westerners really understanding how completely thorough and effective it was. The near universal obedience seen among the population would seem very foreign to most people in the west. Which is in itself an interesting cultural question.
You say that, but mainstream western media is very rarely really critical of the government and especially the core policies of the government (which are the same regardless of whose government it happens to be). Yeah, mainstream media will take some potshots (which is an improvement over China) but very rarely will there be an actual critique of establishment politics.
Almost no mainstream media was critical of the Iraq war and the lie that Saddam had WMDs. No mainstream media is critical of the currently 5 illegal wars (not approved by Congress thus being illegal under the US constitution, nor an act of defense thus being illegal under the Nuremberg Convention) being waged by the US. No mainstream media was critical of the Syrian gas attack (used as justification to bomb Syria with America's "majestic" weapons) which may have been false, given the recent leak of an internal OPCW document detailing evidence that the gas canisters could not have been dropped from a helicopter and the attempts to cover it up[1] -- which was so ignored by mainstream media that I can't even find an article mentioning it. No mainstream media is critical of US interventionism nor modern US imperialism. No mainstream media is critical of the current narrative being pushed by the government about Venezuela or Iran. And that's just the war narrative!
[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/douma-syria-opcw-chemic...
Aaron Mate did a piece on this[1], who is definitely a more reputable journalist (though not mainstream). I also just found that (of all people) Tucker Carlson mentioned this on his show[2]. Then again, I have many other issues with Tucker Carlson.
[1]: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/25/opcw-syria-gas-attack-sta... [2]: https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/were-being-played-tucke...
Instead, they criticize the politicians themselves (particularly Trump, right now). This would never be allowed in China.
I disagree that it's because the public doesn't care, but you're close that it's related to revenue. The problem isn't government censorship. The problem is corporate bias. News networks are owned by giant conglomerates and it's bad for business to criticise your sponsors. I won't dive into a long tirade on the military industrial complex in the US, but suffice it to say that (just on the topic of war) all of the mainstream news outlets are funded by giant defense contractors. Speaking out against war would be bad for business.
The most scary part is that mainstream media has very significant control over the Overton window, meaning that even if the public distrusts the media the debate can still be framed by them. It's very difficult to discuss anti-establishment politics without sounding like a conspiracy theorist -- even though mainstream media ran a conspiracy theory for almost two years (RussiaGate).
> Instead, they criticize the politicians themselves (particularly Trump, right now).
Almost all of the criticisms of Trump resort to one of three things:
1. Personal criticisms such as sex scandals, how much he plays golf, etc. 2. Criticisms of being too soft on Russia (even though the exact opposite is true in terms of US policy -- with most US actions being significantly against Russian interests and more hawkish than the days of Obama and Bush). 3. Minor political disagreements or scuffles.
None of these are actually serious issues, and are just spending time getting the public outraged over nonsense. The newly-found discussions of impeachment are a valuable discussion to have, but the past two years have been completely disconnected from reality.
How long did news networks run stories that Trump vetoed a bill passed in Congress to end the US war in Yemen (a war that was already illegal)[1]? Less than a few days, and then it was full steam ahead on other less important topics. The US has been committing war-crimes for decades and I think it's insane to argue that the public wouldn't care about it if they were being told about it.
When the media does talk about policies, they have insanely corporate biases. Every discussion of medicare-for-all in the US is dominated by discussions of "how much will it cost" (it will be cheaper overall), "what about people who love their health insurance provider" (those people don't exist -- people love their doctors, not their health insurance), "it cannot work in the US" (even though it works in rest of the developed world, and the US already has medicare), and so on. No meaningful discussion and reporting of the massive problems with the current health insurance industry and how it must be reformed, or how the US's healthcare system is among the worst in the developed world.
[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/04/17/trumps-...
In contrast to the man in the audience Singapore was one of the first countries to normalise relationships with China, and in his biography From third world to First, Lee Kuan Yew actually seems somewhat supportive of it because he contrasts China's handling of the situation with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And realistically a country like Singapore is always going to be best positioned by keeping its relationships to opposing forces like the USA and China ambiguous. Committing to one side will draw a reaction from the other, and for smaller countries that's devastating. The space for most freedom and autonomy for a country like Singapore is right in the middle, in a competition between two large nations, choosing sides is a bad move.
CCP wanted that answer out. It will reach its intended audience: upcoming generation of party leadership; young and affluent non-CCP Chinese; nationalist Chinese; law and order Chinese.
I think that substantial and important subset will be satisfied with the answer. The rest are busy chasing virtual butterflies glued to their "smart assistant" (a feature, not a bug) just like their counterparts over here.
And the fact of its being discussed rather diminishes that propaganda card.
> It's a pretty simple equation. Why would any state have to spend so much explicit effort on making no one mention it, if there was nothing really wrong with it?
> elephant in the room
You mean like two modern skyscraper crumbling into dust in a handful of seconds which one must not mention in respectable society unless repeating the "party line"?
Like those two elephants?
Should we discuss the official fact finding efforts for additional black humor, and then revisit the "universal obedience" phenomena?
> The near universal obedience seen among the population would seem very foreign to most people in the west. Which is in itself an interesting cultural question.
Laughable and racist. (See "conspiracy theory" for disambiguation.)
Are you suggesting that the US government suppresses discussion of 9/11, similar to China and Tiananmen? That's a strange opinion, I've heard lots of discussion about 9/11, there is even a museum about it.
Interesting that HN is not blocked.
What about this (expires in 7 days, but does require an actual download. It is a FF screenshot of the BBC page): https://send.firefox.com/download/0fc126b73012ee50/#o_bILCxP...
I'm curious, because if they analyze these links (or even this message) I figure it would be easy to identify.
I found it almost funny that you just cannot say anything negative about anything Han-related. Few months ago I was having lunch with somebody considered educated & globalized (went to school in the UK, works in a Canadian VC firm in Beijing). The minute I said that my air quality monitor[1] is reading PM10 100+[2] in Beijing so I need to wear a mask, she said I was exaggerating and that the monitor firmware was modified by American propaganda machine.
Then this other guy went on a rant of Aquaman (movie) being a great Chinese achievement because it's directed by James Wan (Wan is a common Han last name). The guy is Malaysian-born Australian who made a career in LA.
I don't particularly care if that's how people prefer to live their life (if it works for them that's fine). I just find it funny and weird every time I go there.
Perhaps a congruent (but not exactly analogous) debate in the USA would be the use of atomic weapons at the end of WW2.
But it's a good point to bring up when someone plays the moral relativism card. Imagine if our government sent armed thugs after anyone who posts or even mentions the famous photo of the students at Kent State. Not even Nixon would have tried that, but it's business as usual in China.
Nobody criticizes the geocentric model of the solar system these days either.
I have not found an explanation for that epiphenomenon, although I have concluded that it is not meant ironically.
That seems to be happening a lot lately.
They unironically invoked Mao's pest campaign when the last time they did that they created mass famine because in the absense of chemical pesticides it is far preferable to pay the "sparrow tax" than have uneaten locust grubs eat everything.
The best they have for Mao is doublethink where they abandoned his views and suppress Maoists while refusing to condemn him and his mistakes for fear of it harming their "legitimacy".
The other reason is my concern at a defence minister even mentioning this event when everyone is aware of the state position already. It seems to be an expansion of the conversation from trade and market access to ideology which is unfortunate. There's enough to sort out with just market access, currency flows and IP.
This was, in large part, because people were given near total freedom (far more of it than you see in the US today) in one fell swoop, and _way_ before they knew what to do with it. Naturally, some people were much better than others at turning this to their advantage, opportunistically injecting themselves into the corridors of power, buying up previously state-owned factories for fractions of a penny on the dollar, swindling the common people out of whatever breadcrumbs the government threw to them during privatization.
This shit was allowed to run unabated for a decade or so, and ended up with Yeltsin hanging up his hat and apologizing on TV, before de-facto installing Putin as his successor. The people behind this were Siloviki: the powerful folks who run or otherwise control Russia's several security services.
In retrospect, given the amount of pain, death, and suffering inflicted on the general public, it could be that shooting a few hotheads early on would be an objectively better option. The country could then proceed to a much more controlled and measured liberalization, with law and order carefully enforced throughout, rather than a decade-long free-for-all (or rather "a few") that ensued in practice.
That's not to say that Tiananmen suppression was justified. I grew up in Russia, so I was a direct observer and participant of the events I describe above, so in the case of Russia I can tell you with a good degree of confidence that if the wild 90's weren't allowed to happen there to the extent that they did, Russia would be far better off.
Stuff like this also can't be judged by reading propaganda, foreign or domestic, so those who haven't been there at that time should refrain from commenting one way or the other. That'd be just regurgitating someone else's talking points: an entirely pointless exercise.
I'd love to hear from someone who lived in China at that time and for whom this is not something they've read about on the Internet.
It’s always very interesting to hear from someone who’s directly lived through experience. Thanks for offering your perspective.
People still remember all of this. That's why Putin is so popular: he is widely credited (and rightly so) with pulling Russia from the brink of disintegration. I always voted for anyone but Putin, though: can't stand vote rigging, and he rigs every single election, even though he doesn't need to: he'd be elected by quite a margin anyway.
Governments defend their actions, usually.
Not the same at all. If the Chinese government were smart, they could have had the debate, shrugged off any conclusions they didn’t like, and let general apathy run its course. But they didn’t do that.
That's a far cry from what we see here.
Gunning down protesters then grinding into a mulch with tanks and aocs, so that you can wash the remains down the gutters is never a solution.
Trying to push this incident into the background only shows how little change has happened.
Once more - this isn't a situation you can ever forgive a government for. There is no ifs, buts or collateral reasons for this.
Although we do not hear much about that in the US other than praise of the army. Just endless rehashes of Beijing events before LA happened, in the middle of Trump's trade and South China sea war with China.
It was defended at the 1992 RNC as I said - https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/patrickbuchanan199...
In fact the Republicans have this speaker saying an almost word for word echo of what the Chinese minister said.
Relatively few people were killed by the government, and most of them were self defense or unintentional. While perhaps some of the deaths in Tienanmen square were self defense (e.g. the soldier that was lynched and hanged from a burnt out bus), most of them weren't. Most of the people killed in Tienanmen were unarmed.
The US is pretty open about the LA riots. I can Google it and get useful results, I can see pictures of bodies and soldiers on Google images, I can watch documentaries about it on Netflix, if I go to my local library (operated by the government of Los Angeles) I can get books about the riots. Some of the books are even written by soldiers who were there, and the authors use their own names because they aren't afraid of reprisals for talking about what happened. The rules of engagement for soldiers were much more restrictive than they had experienced while deployed to Vietnam or the middle east. (https://thefederalist.com/2017/04/28/learned-civil-unrest-lo...)
It makes me think of people who are "shocked" that Chinese college students don't know about Beijing in 1989, and they say how the Chinese elite have suppressed events. But I talk about the US army marching into Los Angeles in 1992 and dozens dead in the wake, and it is a complete mystery to multiple people here, they have no idea what I'm talking about.
Also, saying that the military and police killed "dozens" is a bit disingenuous. While 53 people were killed during the riots, of those 8 were killed by police and 2 by national guardsmen.