24th Anniversary of 6/4/89 Beijing Incident - Was it justified?

In what way did the US fund the protestors? Did they give them enough money to make copies of fliers? Did they give them money to buy markers and paper to make signs?

 

we'll never know because the CPC, in their shame, decided never to discuss the matter again.

 

That was just a wild ass guestimate without any data. I just thought that everyone under 30 would have been kept in the dark or been fed the party line.

The victors write the history.

 

the national guards were brought in to suppress the student protest in Kent state, ~ 1970, no?

 

This represents very typical view among many Chinese intelligentsias, who have largely benefited from the super growth of China. However, they don't represent whole of China.
For one, I also do not believe every revolution challenging old order on a 6/4 magntitude would necessarily bring positive changes (e.g., the first international by the French, the communist movment by the Russians, the Chinese communist movement, on and on). However, I think 6/4 is different from those. Why couldn't people express their angers at an repressive order and demand a change. Again, whose order are we talking about? Is China less repressive than 25 years ago? Is the system fair by and large for everybody? Without people's inputs, none of those critical issues facing China would be addressed fairly. In the end, the ones who benefited applaud and fortified their interests even more. This cycle goes on.

 

For the most part the students were peaceful until the army moved in. Also consider that the first attempt by the PRC military to suppress the Tiananmen movement was suppressed by everyday people of Beijing and not just the students. So while the Tiananmen movement did shut down much of Beijing it also had much support from the people of Beijing.

Also finally consider that by June 4th the movement had already started to wind down and many students had left the square.

That's speculative considering that yes there were several incidents of police brutality there didn't appear to be an organized and sanctioned use of brutality against the occupy movement. Further the military was never called out.

True the PRC has learned to handle protests better but that is probably more a consequence of them learning from the US and other countries than that the US would respond like the PRC on June 4th.

Except not all countries do. Even during the worse of the Rodney King Riots the US didn't use the military as indiscriminately to kill as many protesters / rioters as the PRC did. In the situation most similar during the Tahrir square protests the Egyptian military didn't open fire on the protesters even though they paralyzed Cairo.

 

And only 4 students died there. How many died in Beijing on the night of June 4 to 5?

Also lets not forget Kent State is openly discussed in the US not suppressed.

 

Actually much of the Occupy Movement wasn't obeying the law as many municipalities had laws on the books against camping out in public squares. For the most part most municipalities allowed occupiers to stay for weeks in those places and even gave some tacit support to them in some cases.

Also the Occupy movement's had more to do with that they didn't translate it into actual political change but got obsessed with occupation rather than elections. While I don't agree with the Tea Party they did move quickly from protest to actually engaging in politics. The difference there though is that in the PRC there are no free elections beyond the local level.

There is no doubt the US supported the movement but consider that protests were both widespread and as noted earlier much of Beijing supported it including helping to rebuff an earlier attempt by the military to enter Beijing. But anyway this seems more like typical nationalistic paranoia and blaming things on foreign influences rather than considering that there was a legitimate demand for political reform in China.

 

Some Chinese people does view what happened during Soviet Union's rapid switch to "democracy" and the ensuing chaos for many years as justification that what happened on 64 is justified and was best for the country.

To be honest though, democracy does have a very poor track record in developing countries. When compared to democratic developing nations, China so far have done a much better job of improving the prosperity and the life of its people.

 

This is your average China critic right here.

Wild ass guestimate and no data.

 

http://www.economist.com/news/brief...nsolidate-his-power-what-does-he-now-want-his

that's your average CPC critic

 

elaborate?

China is right next to neighbors that are very contradictory to that notion.

 

Which ones? South Korea? ( was an autocracy for quite a while) Taiwan? (same) Singapore? Nope. Vietnam? Nope. Japan? (If you thought people didn't care about politics in the US....)

 

you forgot Hong Kong (which I still consider very much a neighbor, especially politically), somehow conflated relative apathy in multi-party elections with a complete lack of democracy with regards to Japan's post-war development miracle, listed Vietnam confused, ignored the fact that as South Korea and Taiwan developed into full-fledged democracies, steps were taken in between that only enhanced their development (and once developed, those countries prospered even further), and with regards to Singapore, even if only one party ever really gets elected, you ignore the fact that there are elections, and universal suffrage---and in fact, have been since 1959.

You've also forgotten the Philippines, and (hell, let's add it in) Mongolia. Given the whole Suharto bit in Indonesia, and recent electoral fraud in Malaysia, I'll give you a mulligan on those two countries---though they're still much further along then China.

 

Also, it wasn't at the direction of the US government to shoot at young college students. It was a local act of criminal stupidity that was the shame of the nation and, as you said, openly discussed for a very long time. Heck, it is still being openly discussed. We're doing it right here. How about in China? With all due respect to the OP, and it may be unintentional, but he sounds like a paid shill for the PRC's ruling party.

Here are a couple of examples of the national reporting of the incident:



The cover of a major magazine at the time.




This image was on the front page of America's newspapers... all over the country. It was in magazines. It was shown on the newscasts of local and national television news. There is no rational comparison between Kent State and Tiananmen Square, not the tragedy that happened there, and certainly not of the coverage of the incident itself. Our national media did an excellent job, and no one, certainly not Washington, did a thing to prevent that coverage. How about China?

 

for all intents and purposes though, I could just point to Japan and the post-war boom, and that would probably be enough in terms of a case study to justify my position.

 

Japan was a world power before it was a democracy. South Korea and Taiwan were economic powers before they became democratic. Which country became world economic power just because they became democratic? If you want do the closest case comparisons, it would be with Russia and India, and I have to say China have done much better then either of those two countries over the last couple of decades.

Democracy does not necessarily bring economic prosperity.

 

China was a world power too, as the CPC likes to remind people constantly, before the West embarrased it/humiliated it etc. Japan, meanwhile, certainly saw growth kick-start in the post-war period---and in case you hadn't noticed, Japan pre-war might have been a world power, but Japan post-war was an occupied shambles that had just had two of its' largest cities nuked.

I can trace through the entire case study of Japan and why in that instance democracy brought economic prosperity, but this argument isn't even completely about that. The Chinese people deserve better than the CPC.