judoka and maniam, the protest in the latter stage was far from being peaceful as you both claim. I'll give a more detailed response when I have some larger chunk of free time later on.
i saw a PBS special on this the other day and they showed university students today in china of the tank man picture and they had no idea what that was. also how if you google this event someone away from china you get different images. if you google it in china, it shows a bunch of tourists taking pictures. i'm surprised you even know about this wnes, those university students in china had no idea what the event was about. on another note.. if Yao has a bad game, do the chinese censor his missed shots? I remember when Pryuen was on here, he would NEVER ADMIT Yao played bad. I'm all for Yao, he's been great this year, but to never admit this guy had a bad game is beyond me. Even Hakeem had bad games.
I don't presume the PRC is taking lessons from Zimbabwe but the PRC is maintaining an authoritarian system similar to Zimbabwe's of single party rule. So the argument that democracies aren't doing well has to be compared to the alternative. True democracy is no panacea and I've said that before but neither is authoritarianism. If anything authoritarianism where is more prone to oppressing vulnerable groups since those groups, or anyone else not part of the ruling party, have no say.
Was there looting? From what I recall the latter stages of the demonstration the crowd was starting to thin out from Tiananmen.
Ok. I had to post this, mostly because it has something to piss off everybody. The following quote is only a partial bit of the story - the part giving the narriative of events. The full story here. It tries to make a bigger point, that frankly doesn't interest me. I'm not endorsing the story, btw. I'm just poking the hornet's nest. ---- Edit: After reading some of wnes' comments, I was a bit too selective in what I didn't include from the original. The extra bits he talks about have been added. ---- [rquoter] Leave China Alone Shut up, Hillary, and tend to your own garden ... Before an American secretary of state gets up on her hind legs and lectures the rest of the world about "the darker events of its past," complaining about the lack of "a public accounting of those killed, detained, or missing," let’s look at the record: in 1993, then-attorney general Janet Reno ordered the murder of 76 people in Waco, Texas, on grounds that didn’t sound all that credible at the time, and, in retrospect, turn out to have been entirely dubious and self-serving. Can it really be that the U.S. government – yes, the same people who ordered this and this – is hectoring China for unlawful detention? As a great philosopher once said, oh, puh-leeeeeeeze! No one disputes the fact that the suppression of the Tiananmen Square revolt was a brutal act, one that belied the Chinese government’s claim to enjoy popular support in the face of what it characterized as a "counterrevolutionary" gathering. Yet what, exactly, was being suppressed? This is where the Western-spun narrative veers markedly away from reality. To begin with, what was the uprising about? What demands were the students – and most of them were indeed students, rather than ordinary workers and peasants – intent on pursuing to the end? The initial protests were over reductions in student subsidies. As an economizing measure, the government decided to drastically cut student allowances, while China’s generous foreign scholarship program, which enabled many students from Africa to study in Chinese universities, was continued, in spite of the cutbacks. This outraged the fiercely nationalistic Chinese students, who, in the winter of 1988, used it as an excuse to rampage through the living quarters of African students, injuring 13. What began as a lynching miraculously turned into a "human rights" protest, as 3,000 demonstrators showed up in Nanjing, where slogans such as "Kill the black devils!" mingled with demands for "political reform." From Nanjing, where the movement originated, anti-African demonstrations spread to other cities, notably Shanghai and Beijing. A major motivation behind the demonstrations was apparently the success African students had with Chinese women. That the anti-African riots were the prelude to the Tiananmen protests, the spark that started a roaring fire in the center of Beijing, was evidenced in the slogans and banners raised by the students in the square, such as "”No Offend Chinese Women” [sic]. Imagine if such sentiments were displayed at an American university! The miscreants would be rounded up, charged with "hate crimes," and summarily shipped home with their tails between their legs. Western reporters didn’t see fit to report on this aspect of the "democratic" uprising in Tiananmen Square. Perhaps they didn’t notice: people see what they want to see, especially Western journalists bent on pursuing a ready-made – and easily believable – narrative, one that (just coincidentally, of course) fit in rather nicely with the U.S. government’s stance. They saw the "goddess of democracy," but they failed to see the portraits of Chairman Mao, the worst despot and mass murderer since Stalin, reverently carried by many of the marchers. According to the narrative spun by the Western news media and simultaneously promulgated by U.S. officials, the Tiananmen Square incident was provoked by the lack of "democracy" in China and was a surge in favor of Western-style liberal humanism in the face of Red Chinese "totalitarianism." Clean, easy, black-and-white, good guys vs. bad guys: Cut! And that’s a wrap! The reality, however, was quite different, and the inability of Western reporters to see this is not hard to fathom. After all, what did they know? Only what they saw, or, rather, what they chose to see. The context in which these events occurred was invisible to them. For years, China had been pursuing the "four modernizations," as the regime dubbed its goals, and evolving away from the fanatical egalitarianism championed by Mao and his Red Guards during the so-called Cultural Revolution. The economic system was being thoroughly reformed, and China was moving toward leader Deng Xiaoping’s concept of "socialism with Chinese characteristics," i.e., mercantile "communism," in which the entrepreneurial instincts of the Chinese people were given such free rein that old Deng took it upon himself to coin a slogan that seems more Ayn Randian than Marxian: "To get rich is glorious!" Gathered together in Tiananmen Square were all those elements who were dissatisfied with the Chinese status quo and who had some special cause – reductions in student subsidies, the lack of free speech, "preferential" treatment for foreigners, the suppression of cults such as Falun Gong, the increasingly pro-market orientation of the Chinese Communist Party (which had recently voted to allow big businessmen to become members), the absence of democratic elections, Africans hitting on "their" women, etc., etc. Western reporters edited out those grievances that didn’t fit their narrative, and television coverage focused on the most dramatic visual in sight, the statue of the "goddess of liberty" that arose in the square. The rest, as they say, is history – except that it isn’t. As Western commentators, including the American secretary of state, weigh in on the occasion of this anniversary, none have so far mentioned the initial reaction of the Chinese government. To hear them tell it, the students gathered in Tiananmen and the regime promptly marched in, crushed the rebels, and forbade forever more any discussion of what occurred. This is complete nonsense. To begin with, the reaction from the government was initially support for the students, as indicated in the state-controlled news media, which ran front-page stories praising them as heroes and patriots – and this went on for weeks. Imagine if an unruly crowd of students, the unemployed, and various sorts of malcontents – numbering in the tens of thousands – occupied, say, the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and refused to budge. Further, try to picture the universally acknowledged leader of this mass calling on the crowd to deliberately provoke the authorities into intervening so that blood is spilled. This is precisely what happened at Tiananmen Square. Here is the movement’s leader, one Chai Lin, on the prospect of violence as the culmination of the Tiananmen protest: <blockquote>"Some fellow students asked me what our plans are, what our demands will be in future. This made me feel sick at heart; I started out to tell them that what we were waiting for was actually the spilling of blood, for only when the government descends to the depths of depravity and decides to deal with us by slaughtering us, only when rivers of blood flow in the Square, will the eyes of our country’s people truly be opened."</blockquote> Although other student leaders, such as Wu’er Kaxi, argued that the demonstrators should evacuate the square and live to fight another day, most of the protesters – weakened by a prolonged hunger strike and unable to think clearly – went with their self-styled "commander in chief," Chai Lin, who was ready – nay, eager – to die and take her followers with her. They stayed, even as word spread that the troops were on the way. The prolongation of the protest gave Chinese hard-liners the excuse they needed to enforce a crackdown. As one grizzled old army general and veteran of the Long March put it: <blockquote>"Those ******* bastards! Who do they think they are, trampling on sacred ground like Tiananmen so long?! They’re really asking for it! We should send the troops right now to grab those counter-revolutionaries, Comrade Xiaoping! What’s the People’s Liberation Army for, anyway? What are the martial law troops for? They’re not supposed to just sit around and eat!"</blockquote> As Communist regimes across Eastern Europe fell, one by one, in spontaneous uprisings of long-suppressed anger, the same currents were roiling the Chinese political landscape, and the regime was determined that they would not share the fate of Stalin’s heirs. On the other hand, however – and without having any illusions about the motives and methods of China’s rulers – to characterize the Tiananmen Square incident as a protest demanding Western-style democracy is very far from the reality. In the context of Chinese history, and the long struggle between liberalizers and orthodox Maoists in the Chinese Communist Party, the students represented an intensely nationalistic surge, not anything we would recognize as liberalism. Far from supporting the economic reforms put in place by the leadership – which amounted to liberalization from above – the concrete demands put forward by the protesters favored maintaining the old "iron rice bowl" policies of subsidies and state control of living standards. [/rquoter]
We should let this thread end so that some of our more outspoken Chinese brothers and sisters do not end up in some gulag.
You think the Chinese government have enough resouce to track down the identity of basketball bbs posters in the US?
It was a joke... Sort of... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061100148.html
I think that is going too far by the Chinese government. Ottoman thx for the article, I didn't know why June 4 started like that.
I don't know what to say to that? As I've stated already, I'm not against democracy. You say that I do "nothing but parade of horribles," that's because I call it as I see it. I see four year cycles. I see the lack of long term planning. I see election year bills. I see populist anger (much like what is going on right now to the financial services industry). I see special interest groups, etc etc etc. Hey, this year I saw an article on Gordon Brown's lame duck year. That's what, 1/4 to 1/5 to a guy's term, depending on the country. Like I said, democracy being a better system is your opinion, which is fine if you present it as such. Others may believe it's not a better system, or not a better system for now, which is all fine and dandy too. So in other words, there are sh1tty democracies and there are sh1tty authoritarian systems. Well thank you very much. I didn't know that. If that is true, we should switch to democracy because...? I can't tell if you are joking. For your sake I hope you are. You do realize that much of South Korea and all of Taiwan's infrastructures were built during their less "free" times, much like much of that of China's was built during Mao's times, allowing for the current boom. You do also know, of course, that since India's single party rule (and that for Taiwan and Korea) we've had a cosumerism and globalisation boom, allowing for India's call centre jobs. But IT boom, that'll be a way to spin it. And of course, surely you haven't missed the fact that Huawei is larger than all three of India's largest IT companies combined. When you have a low base point, it is quite easy to look impressive. Hey guess what, Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest countries, clocks in a growth of 9.5% a year. Also of course, China's worst sh1tholes are so far ahead of India's worst sh1tholes it's not funny. Neither is its much higher literacy rate, better health care, standard of living, yada yada yada. Lastly but not least, I'm sure you've heard of this already, there has been one country in the world that successfully industrialized under a democracy, and that is the United States. And as you may have noticed, the conditions in which the US industrialized (two World Wars that wiped out all foreign competition) no longer exist. So for both you and YallMean, empirical data do not support your claims.
Some quick comments on the article posted by ottoman: 1. Students uproars were quite common in those days, but the anti-African students rallies had no connection to the June 4th incident. 2. Falun Gong didn't exist in the '80s. That's a bad factual error. 3. The author did make an excellent point that Western media have been very deliberately selective in their reporting on matters (students' protests, for instance) regarding China. 4. For judoka/maniam and anyone else who is interested, the author presented irrefutable evidence that some student demonstrators on Tian'anmen Square intended to, and quite successfully did, turn the event, which started with good intention, into a bloodshed after the martial law was declared in Beijing. In her own words (which were spoken before a single gun shot was fired), Cai Ling, the self-appointed leader of the "democracy movement," was calling for people to overthrow the government with bloodshed on the Square.
oh, puh-leeeeeeeze! Not again, not you again! I thought you might have better memory of your own posts. Do you still remember that fake story of how owners of Beijing bars were ordered to keep blacks out? Do you still remember you and others jumped up and down to condemn that before the fake story was anywhere proven by another independent source? What happened to that story? Do you still remember you came out on a limb to claim how "most Chinese are proven racists"? What did you use to prove your breakthrough finding? An internet story, very similar to this one you are quoting again, however it did happen on 1986, instead of 1988, as this author claimed. The story you quoted in that fake bar story thread, was a lot more closer to reality instead of this version. It happened in Nanjing, and it was started by some African students living and studying there FREE. They took some prostitutes with them to go back into the university, and they were very loud, and were confronted by 2 Chinese students. 7 African students beat those 2 Chinese students up. Later on, the foreign student building was surrounded by Chinese students. The rest, you can go back to that thread and go through your own posts. Now, in your new post, it became the initiative cause of the student movement 3 years later? No, as you claimed, you are not endorsing the story, you were just using the story with a different twist to spread false information once again, as you did to "prove" your ridiculous claim how "most Chinese are proven racists" in a fake story thread. It's funny that you refreshed my memory with this new lying of old story, regarding your actions back then. It's even funnier to see how you and some other residential "righteous" group hand in hand condemning the OP of that "most racist" thread, I didn't see any of them saying a word to you, when you threw out that claim "most Chinese are proven racist". What a special character you are, with all due respect.
Because without democracy you have no accountability of the government to the people. If you notice with countries like Zimbabwe when a democracy fails it is quite often due to someone trying to change the government into a totalitarian state so they no longer are accountable. The problem with an authoritarian state is that you are dependent on having wise leaders. If you have a bad leader there is no way for the people to remove them short of revolution. True much of their infrastructure was built then but if democracy was so bad for Taiwan and South Korea have you seen them collapse? If you see this graph will also show that South Korea's economy has taken off during the time of democratization in the 1990's. While yes infrastructure was built, a lot has also been built due to private investment coming in due to democratization., democracy doesn't hamper economic development and just looking at the time more likely helps. And how many countries with an authoritarian system have capitalized on that boom? Have considered that under an authoritarian system you are relying upon the leaders to be wise enough to take advantage of that boom while under a democracy the people can react to a global boom and vote in leadership more amenable to development? And guess what Ethiopia's growth didn't really start taking off until they had a democracy. True the PRC has done better than India but that doesn't discount that democracy hasn't been a good thing for India or that democracy doesn't help economic development. For that matter the PRC's development didn't take off until the Government gave up many aspects of authoritarianism in the economic field. Britian, most of western Europe disagree. For that matter as noted the ongoingn transformation of India's economy is taking place under a democracy while African countries like Malawi and Ethiopia who are experiencing quite a bit of growth weren't able to do so until they reformed their political systems to become more democractic. I've just cited the empiracal evidence.
I have no doubt there were troublemakers among the demonstrators but from everything i have seen the vast majority were peaceful. While Cai Ling called for bloodshed other student leaders opposed him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989 [rquoter]Within the Square itself, there was a debate between those who wished to withdraw peacefully, including Han Dongfang, and those who wished to stand within the square, such as Chai Ling.[/rquoter] While there was certainly violence in the streets of Beijing what do you expect when tanks are being rolled down the streets and soldiers are firing indiscriminately. Up until the point of the crackdown I have seen little evidence that the protests were violent and from what I recall they were starting to fizzle out by the night of June 5, 1989. As for the mixed messages I'm not surprised. Any large protests will have all sorts of messages, just look at the Tea Party protests. Whether you agree with all of those or not the point is whether peaceful protests should be violently put down. Leaving aside a debate of whether the PRC should democractive, when and how I won't justify a bloody crackdown on mostly peaceful demonstrators.
I fail to see how this supports your argument, unless it is that votes can be rigged. If anything, your reply suggests that a democracy is susceptible to a power struggle as well. You missed a couple of steps in your economic model. No infrastructural development, no improved education, no R&D, all of which conducted during authoritarian times means no "economic miracle." It's not that hard of a concept to understand. Of course, don't you also kind of find it interesting that after the Korean economy kinda hit a snag in the early 80's, that its recovery coincided with the rise of China, now its largest trade partner? Now you are confusing yourself. Authoritarian system and private investment isn't contradictory, nor does democracy ensures it. Authoritarian vis-a-vis democracy both are political systems where as private vs public (i.e. socialist vs. conservative) ownership are economic systems. China in the 30's and dynastic times were authoritarian systems. China in the 30's and dynastic times also enjoyed significant private investments. Are you serious? Japan and Korea in the 60's and 70's. Singapore. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc during the oil crisis. Russia during the commodities boom while rolling back democratic rights. Sudan right now. Vietnam copying the Chinese model. Do you not see them because you are unaware of them or because you don't want to see them? Obviously you've never heard of the term return attribution. And here I thought Ethiopia went up because of the agricultural boom and because it was so poor it had nowhere to go but up. Once again, this isn't an economic systems debate. It's a political systems debate. See above. Your memory fails. The industrialization process in Britain started quite a bit earlier than you see to think. It started when feudal lords uprooted serfs off their lands to force them into the (at the time) textile. This led to both a boom in urban population as well as a significant degradation in urban living standards, neither of which possible under a democratic system, somewhat of like what is going on in China right now. Imagine that. Germany, Italy or France, to the further east, Russia, didn't industrialize under democracies either. Except that it was wrong.
You raise some good points and I will respond to them when I have some more time. I did want to give you a quick response to this point. It is undeniable that economic growth took off in SK during democratization. I will agree that there are many reasons for that but it is a fact. You may spin it all you want but just looking at the graph democratization and economic development went hand in hand. You and Wnes have in Yallmean's word given a parade of horribles regarding democracy but clearly the evidence presented refutes the idea that democracy is a bad thing and cannot greatly benefit a country.
Even if it isn't true that "democracy is a bad thing and cannot greatly benefit a country" (I agree with you on this btw), MFW argues quite convincingly that it isn't clear that democracy is the no.1 way to run a country. Given that China is doing well right now, the impetus for a change in system is weak.
Clarify. How did the economic growth of SK take off during democratization? Did you actually look at the underlying data instead of the graph? South Korea clocked GDP growth rates of close to 9% between the 60's and '87 to '89, when it democratized. Part of it has to do (once again) with its low base point. But unmistakably, GDP, GDP per capita, productivity, living standards, etc, all of which make your claim that economic growth took off during democratization just a wee bit dishonest. If anything, its economic growth rate has been in a downward trend since it democratized. Of course, this does not conclusively mean a democratic system hampered South Korea's development (such as the critical mass argument), but what it does mean is that at best, there is no provable correlation between democratization and positive economic growth. What is interesting though, is how closely South Korea, being an export-led economy, rises and falls with economic conditions of the major economies. One final note too. You know, I did something very stupid. I went to college, got a job and then worked hard. I should've praised democracy, sat on my ass and hoped it got me to this point.
I got in Shanghai two days ago. Even though I know China very well, it is always different to talk about it while you are in China. Maybe it has to be some changes to get it started.
