Tiananmen Square: China minister defends 1989 crackdown
bbc.comI wonder who asked the Tiananmen question to the minister from the audience in Singapore. That guy has some backbone, I like it. They should be challenged on the topic of their political repression more. And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to dismiss as western propaganda.
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.
> And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to dismiss as western propaganda. [...] The near universal obedience seen among the population would seem very foreign to most people in the west.
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...
I wouldn't take Robert Fisk at face value here without some detailed citations of primary sources after he signed onto the "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" 9/11 conspiracy theory.
As I mentioned above -- I don't like that the only article I could find of any repute which mentioned the leaked OPCW report was the Independent (the other option was InfoWars). And yes, about half of the article does appear to be at least slightly bullshit. But the leaked report was so ignored by mainstream media there isn't even a mention of it in an opinion piece in more reputable papers like the Guardian.
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...
The main reason Western media doesn't much criticize the actual policies is because it's "boring" and doesn't generate advertising revenue. It has nothing to do with whether they're allowed to or not.
Instead, they criticize the politicians themselves (particularly Trump, right now). This would never be allowed in China.
> The main reason Western media doesn't much criticize the actual policies is because it's "boring" and doesn't generate advertising revenue. It has nothing to do with whether they're allowed to or not.
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-...
>I wonder who asked the Tiananmen question to the minister from the audience in Singapore. That guy has some backbone, I like it. They should be challenged on the topic of their political repression more. And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to dismiss as western propaganda.
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.
The question and answer are likely planned.
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.)
> 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"?
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.
I'm reading this thread while in a hotel a block away from the square in China (not on VPN, because that has not been working due to political events). Of course the BBC article is blocked. The thirtieth anniversary of the event is tomorrow.
Interesting that HN is not blocked.
Let's test it: is this blocked? https://outline.com/99a78v
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.
Neither were blocked.
Well then it looks like you can use outline to read things that are being censored.
For now, at least. The Chinese firewall may eventually whack that mole, too.
Man, this entry disappeared from the frontpage quickly! Anyone knows why?
I am trying to understand what it feels like to Chinese people. As Americans, is there any past government action we can't criticize? I am sure there is some example but I can't think of it. Is there something similar for us?
You can just go visit China and see for yourself. Beijing / Shanghai at least, but better yet outside the top tier cities (if you can get a proper Visa for that).
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.
I think some Chinese think of the 64 events in the context of the Cultural Revolution (which was still fresh in the memories of the leadership at the time). Many were afraid that the student protests would result in another Cultural Revolution and believe it was for the greater good to stop the protests at all costs.
Perhaps a congruent (but not exactly analogous) debate in the USA would be the use of atomic weapons at the end of WW2.
I think it’s actually quite simple. The Chinese fear the American government more than the Chinese government. Therefore they care more about the legitimacy of the Chinese government and are willing to elide whatever mistakes their own government may have made. That their government may or may not have told the truth about Tiananmen is immaterial.
Why do they fear the American government?
Good point, no one ever criticizes that.
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.
Er, the reason we rarely talk about Kent State anymore is because nobody defends that. What's the point in "criticizing" something when everyone agrees with the critics?
Nobody criticizes the geocentric model of the solar system these days either.
Spherical Earth, on the other hand...
I have not found an explanation for that epiphenomenon, although I have concluded that it is not meant ironically.
Some of that is a put on, trolling people over something obviously silly. And some is real.
I think the whole Flat Earth thing is like the "Kubrick filmed the Apollo 11 landing on a soundstage" idea... it started out as a joke, and then got out of hand.
That seems to be happening a lot lately.
Don't understand how people come to the conclusion that the earth is circular.
This sadly isn't news - authoritarians never admit their mistakes.
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".
As of this writing, this post is 2 hours old, ranked #96 (4th page of HN), and has 117 points. I believe it was on the front page 30 minutes ago. This is a steep drop in ranking -- what are the factors in the HN ranking algorithm that could contribute to this?
I posted for the long Kate Adie video in the article which I had not seen before.
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.
As detailed in the article, he didn't "mention" the event but was replying to a specific question about it during an event in Singapore.
I feel like China has learned from Perestroika and made a conscious choice not to go down that path, but instead focus on economic freedoms rather than political. To offer some perspective: the 90's were a dark time in Russia. The Soviet Union disintegrated, taking large chunks of deliberately decentralized economy with it, there was hunger, hyperinflation, deficit of basic goods (same shit you're seeing in Venezuela right now), and the poorer, older, less economically nimble part of society was disproportionately impacted.
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.
Were you still a child/teenager during the 90s while living in Russia? Or were you already an adult and working at that point?
It’s always very interesting to hear from someone who’s directly lived through experience. Thanks for offering your perspective.
I was a student for most of the 90s (6 year MSc). But I was also working part-time. So I guess a little of both. Still remember it all pretty vividly 20+ years later. Not having any money to buy food for weeks on end especially (subsisted on eggs, potatoes, and pickles). I also remember converting all my ruble denominated savings into dollars on a whim 2 weeks before the 1998 default. That was a major coup for me: before the default USD/RUR was about 6, after - about 21, and most prices were revised upward correspondingly. Imagine losing 2/3rds of your money in the span of a few days for no fault of your own, just because the oligarchs are picking the rotting corpse of your country clean and can't be bothered to pay taxes (some of which would normally go to service the debts).
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.
Meanwhile, the same thing is repeating in Sudan at the exact same day and nobody cares. Peaceful months long sit-in met with violence.
If you want to learn about the incident, here's a great documentary (NSFW)
NSFL might be more appropriate?
Same sort of response I'd expect an American Government Diplomat to give if asked about what happened to the 82 men/women/children of the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX.
Governments defend their actions, usually.
Isn’t the suppression of the event in media the key difference, though? The Waco massacre was widely discussed and publicized, and you can find plenty of information on it if you’d like - including people that defend the Waco standoff.
It seems to me like Orwell vs. Huxley difference. In the end thing is mostly forgotten in both cases.
Here is the difference: in one case it is forgotten because the government is actively imprisoning people who mention it; in the other, because people are apathetic and easily distracted and perhaps disagree that this is an event of similar import. It seems a rather important difference to me.
It is a difference but when I read what you wrote I have trouble deciding which is worse.
None of those events are hidden from view, are taboo for the press or public to talk about, and have even been studied in depth with research available to the public.
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.
Janet Reno admitted the storming of the compound was a mistake and regretted the loss of life. She also took full responsibility for the actions. You can also find Waco testimony all over the internet, including hours and hours of footage.
That's a far cry from what we see here.
Yet, neither she nor any participants were imprisoned, indicted, or even sacked for their role in it.
You might expect this, but this says more about you than it does about the American government and its diplomats, at least the ones in charge when the Branch Davidians were in armed rebellion against the US government. Here is a reference describing her apology at the time: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Janet-Reno . The relevant quote: "Reno’s acceptance of full responsibility and her candour and obvious regret over the incident helped her earn the respect of many Americans."
"That incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence, which is a correct policy," he told the forum.
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.
Right. And it's not like the Dalai Lama can go home either. The only thing that's changed is they dictate more of the groupthink than they did in 89. The social credit system is probably going to be more effective than that tanks were.
We act like we find it so unacceptable but we're still perfectly willing to do business with them. Why should they change if they know they can get away with anything since $100 televisions matter more to us than our principles?
"Crackdown", in 10 years it'll be "Trouble" then "Protest" then "Revolt"
It sounds like the US government ministers who defended the 1992 crackdown in Los Angeles at the Republican National Convention and elsewhere. The US army marched in to quell the upset, and dozens were killed.
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.
The 1992 Republican National Convention was in Houston and AFAIK no one died
I said Los Angeles, not Houston.
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.
Gotcha. The post was written in an ambiguous way that made me thing <in Los Angeles at the Republication National Convention> was an event that you were referring to. I think the main differences with the LA riots are:
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...)
The two replies are completely puzzled about what I mean by the US army marching into Los Angeles in 1992, with dozens dead in the wake.
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.
People probably don't know what you're talking about because of the way you phrased it. Generally people don't recognize "the 1992 LA Riots" but they do recognize "the Rodney King Riots", which I'm pretty sure is what you are referring to?
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.
I mean, it's like 0.0001 tiananmens. the US government never ran over hundreds of peaceful pro-democracy protesters with motherfucking tanks.
Are you thinking of the protests in 1968 at the Democratic National Convention? It was the police, there, not the army. I don't believe there were any deaths there, though. Maybe you're thinking of Kent State? That wasn't affiliated with any party's convention.
Hi, you are probably being down voted because your post is being interpreted as "whataboutism", although perhaps that was not your intention.