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

Both China and the US need more democracy and freedom. The Chinese need more freedom from the dictates of the Party hierarchy. We need more freedom from the dictates of our unelected corporate rulers who own our government.

Let me say that the Party leaders and our corporate guys and gals do feel very comfortable with dealing with each other and being in very small elite with enormous wealth. They are very much in agreement with respect to paying the vast majority of the citizens of each country as little as possible and suppressing any movement which oppose this.

 

Excellent post. For instance a very strong majority of Americans are in favor of taxing the upper couple percent and particularly the upper .1% much more.

 

It seems like the event holds a lot more import for Americans than it does the Chinese. And, Americans think about it more than they do our own student protests and overzealous police reactions from the 60s. I see Tiananmen Square as growing pains, not a real watershed moment in China's history.

 

I had heard that but was only there for a week and didnt have Internet access much if the time anyway.

 

For one the PRC has effectively blocked out a lot of mention of it in the Chinese media and since it happened 24 years ago it is isn't so much in the public consciousness. Also the CCP has delivered on the promise of improving material quality of life while ratcheting up nationalistic feelings among the geraniol since Tiananmen.

That said it is not completely forgotten and I saw a memorial for it in Hong Kong at a university with a lot of students from the Prc.

 

Also those comparing this to the occupy movement need to remember the US never used the military, live ammo or suppresses all mention of the occupy movement.

 

I think this would be an interesting discussion to have 30 years from now. They've murdered civilians before, just not at magnitude. The difference is, our government has the good sense not to freak everybody out be declaring martial law and overtly curtailing freedom of speech. However, I guarantee that if you're saying the wrong things, you'll be punished. It just won't be for your speech. They'll prosecute you for some minute detail you missed on your tax returns. It's been done, albeit under the radar.

 

Uhhh okay..... so people in China are NOT afraid of their government, but people in the US are afraid of their government?

Also, please provide a link to live bullets being used by the US government against OWS.

The US government is NOT innocent, but if you think they treat their people worse than China you are insane.... and this is coming from someone that has spent a fair amount of time in China.

 

This oversimplifies. Say if the German people out their own conscience had protested against Nazi during the war by setting up barricades, mental fences and everything else, would you character Nazi cracking down on such hypothetical protest as necessary means to ensure orders. Whose order? Was the British Ok to quash the protest in Boston? Could North Korea open fire on its people if they decided to ask for better?
As someone said, your view and sense is questionable. Why are you downplaying the repressiveness of CCCP? You shouldn't ignore important context around the student protest at the time and, as I mentioned, reduce it to a mere unruly act by the mob.

 

By the way, the mayor of Beijing at the time, Cheng Xitong, just died on 6/2, two day short of the 24th anniversary. Cheng was documented in various sources that he sent field reports exaggerating situations that lead the committee to make the decision to end the protest with force. Deng was documented to later regret trusting Cheng's field reports and made that decision based on the reports.

 

The occupy movement was obeying the laws and they were suppressed from day one by police, propaganda and corporations. Their failure was determined from the beginning.

64 movement had involved with killings of cops, soldiers, robberies, lootings, arsons, occupations of TV stations, CIA operations, USA fundings and western propaganda rumors. The 'western' development of 64 movement totally turned Chinese people off. In my (who experienced 64 personally) opinion, China used the military 2 months too late. very confusing and suspicious.

If the occupy movement was also involving 20 million raging youngsters and funded by China, I expect to see US army operations which could come way earlier and more fierce.

 

I was in Shanghai at the time. Some of what you said was true. I rememer vividly a train with post letters was burned by mobsters.
But almost twenty five years later, viewing it objectively, you still blame it all on the people? Monks were out there protesting for crying out loud, and yet the order should still trump everything in your view? Hitler, Gaddafi, Mao, Stalin ... all said what you just said.

 

The truth is right here.

All governments are the same when talking about suppressing the majority of their own people. Only difference is that the democracy appears more willing to spare their effort abroad.

 

Twenty five years later, and thinking what had happened in the world in 1989, I have to say: China dodged that bullet, beautifully.

I blame 'them' having different agenda from the people.

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Yeah, sure, they doged a bullet beautifully.

 

A different angle I had never seen before. That's the tank dude in the upper left.

 

Just wait a few years...

 

24 years of media blackout, what percentage of Chinese would have never even known about Tiananmen? 75%?

The interesting aspect to me is that no matter what labels you put on it, political relationships between human beings are all a war between order and chaos. Statism, feudalism, corporatism, theocracy all attempt to order and stratify society, while democracy, self-determination and individualism promote complexities.

Information is the ultimate weapon in this war. The autocrats always try to control the message with nationalism, religions and propaganda campaigns but truths are self-evident, learning never stops and the very essence of being human is the communication of ideas. The evolution of the human brain, the sentient individual organism, has always been about trying to direct it's own destiny.

The laws of entropy tell us that no matter what the short term appearance is, chaos is always increasing and in the end chaos will rule. The science fiction future of singularity will probably be about the chaos of ultimately empowered individuals rather than the order of one collective identity.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299,00.html

 

75%? come on. people are not that stupid. i was a little kid at the time then left the country a few years later. even i remember what happened without having to read about it online. it was a big deal at the time even if you are not from BJ. the entire country knew what's going on. students from my dads university went to BJ in truck loads. everyone everywhere were tense. kids born after 2000 may not know much about it, but that's still a very small percentage of the population.

look, people know about 6/4 even now, but they choose to focus on their actual living condition rather than something that you have little control of. bad environment is even more important now than freedom because it threatens people's health and life. the government has to deal with it soon before people start protesting more and more about it.

say what you will, but 6/4 protest was bad for the progression of democracy in PRC. from what i remember and hear from others, the moderates had slightly upper hand at the time. the protest made the government realize that they need to control the population more and basically took out the moderates from the government.

some of the student leaders at the time even came out and stated they regret the whole thing happened. i know a guy who joined the protest 6/4 in US, he basically said what i have heard from others. a lot people are regretting it and saying they were young and stupid at the time. of course, there are others who will stand by their view even now.

to me, the government was completely wrong and stupid in their response to 6/4. they shoud apologize for what happened. but the student leaders, not the mass students, should also apologize for their role. they ran away as soon as they could when the whole thing started. bunch of cowards. some of them were eating at restaurants when others were doing hunger strikes.