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Comment by sageikosa | Hacker News Reader

Me thinks, perhaps, because in the West, knowledge of Tiananmen Square wasn't suppressed, and knowledge that knowledge of Tiananmen Square was suppressed in China is also not suppressed. Since there hasn't been a real change in Chinese governance since, there is no reason for the West to believe that when something is broadcast it makes its way into public view because of protected rights, as opposed to deliberate allowance, or simple negligence.

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Actually, ironically, knowledge of the Tiananmen Square WAS indeed suppressed in the west. What we know is the single guy standing in front of the tanks. What we in the west did not know is that, in fact, the great majority of protesters were workers being oppressed by the "free-market" reforms being implemented at the time. In other words, the protests were basically against the oppression caused by the new westernized-style economy.

This was (is) suppressed in the western media because it goes against our narrative that protesters were fighting for democracy, when in fact they were protesting against the oppression created by the same system that we so much value.

EDIT: I forgot to include sources. Check the book "What Does China Think?" by Mark Leonard, and look for essays by Cui Zhiyuan, a Chinese philosopher who was part of the Tiananmen protests.

The "free-market" reforms being instituted at the time were the shedding of responsibilities of the Chinese state by "privatizing" state-constructed factories via the (often secret) sale of the factories to party members, in other words they went from statism to crony-nepotism. The workers were unaware that these sales were going on and that their state jobs were no longer guaranteed, nor were they part of the public pension system, but effectively serfs to regional power brokers of the party.

Transparency, end of state-party corruption, and the guarantees of political and economic freedom were pretty much what I remember being called for at the time during the news coverage. Tank man was right at the end just before everything went off the air, and has stuck in people's minds because he was just a dude coming back from shopping who decided he'd had enough.

You remember wrong. It was and is reported as pro-democracy protests, that were crushed by Deng Xiao Ping.

These were the seven demands drafted by the students in Beijing (from Wikipedia):

1. Affirm as correct Hu Yaobang's views on democracy and freedom; 2. Admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization had been wrong; 3. Publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members; 4. End the ban on privately run newspapers and stop press censorship; 5. Increase funding for education and raise intellectuals' pay; 6. End restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing 7. Provide objective coverage of students in official media.

I remember a very poignant image of a bunch of Chinese students building a replica of Lady Liberty.

Can you explain why this would have been the case if all they were concerned about was crony-nepotism and redistribution of profits or whatever it is you're saying.

If that's directed at my comments, then I wasn't stating they were protesting against the party-aristocracy, just that the "free-market" reforms were not free-market reforms, but the transfer of industrial ownership from the state directly to party members. I was taking exception to the definition of "free-market" as something that was neither free, nor a market.

Exactly my point... That's what we saw in the west (that's what the western media focused on), because it neatly fits the narrative of capitalism-as-freedom of our mainstream media. According to the sources I referenced above the educated students were actually a minority who joined the protests later. The huge majority (which was not the focus of the media) was made of peasants and factory workers pissed at the reforms.

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