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On June 3, 1989 (called June 4 in Beijing, China), Chinese authorities cracked down on a huge group of students staging protests in Tian An Men Square, the central square of Beijing, and in other locations around China. More than 300,000 troops were mobilized. Thousands of students and other protesters were killed, and as many as 10,000 injured.
The next day, as a column of tanks started to spread out from Tian An Men Square to attack nearby locations, a single man with a briefcase stepped out and stood in front of the lead tank. It did not run over him, but tried to drive around him, and he kept moving to remain in front of it. Video footage of the incident went viral, and is today most known as an iconic image of protest against the government. (The man spent most of the rest of his life in various Chinese prisons.)
The crackdowns were ordered by then-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Deng Xiaoping - the same man who had introduced capitalist-style reforms that allowed the Chinese economy to explode into more prosperity than the country had ever known in its 5,000-year history, along with the inevitable growing pains (overcrowding in cities, pollution etc.). Soon after, Deng fell from power.
Censorship of the media coverage clamped down. Today, though most of the world instantly recognizes the pictures of "Tank Man" standing down the tanks, most Chinese citizens have never seen or heard of him. When shown the picture, even well-educated Chinese respond with a blank stare and a question about when it happened, and in what country.
Most Chinese people refer to the series of crackdowns as the "June 4th incident". When some do internet searches trying to find information about the crackdowns, even today Chinese government censorship filters out all references to them. So some Chinese use alternate designations to get around the censorship, such as "May 35", "64" (for June 4), "8-squared" etc.
it's funny. in the 90s i was talking to a chinese graduate student who was in school in france when tiananmen happened.
he told me how upset he was to hear about this on the french news, BBC, voice of America etc. -- and then how relieved he was, upon returning to china, to be reassured by the chinese government that nothing had happened and all those earlier stories were merely western lies.
the disturbing part was how very intelligent this guy was in almost every other way.
it's funny. in the 90s i was talking to a chinese graduate student who was in school in france when tiananmen happened.
he told me how upset he was to hear about this on the french news, BBC, voice of America etc. -- and then how relieved he was, upon returning to china, to be reassured by the chinese government that nothing had happened and all those earlier stories were merely western lies.
the disturbing part was how very intelligent this guy was in almost every other way.
My wife was there. She was a student at a university in Beijing, and had visited the protestors several times. She had a major paper to turn in that day, so wasn't there when the tanks rolled in. Some months after that, she came to America on a student visa, and attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
Later President George H.W. Bush passed a law saying Chinese people who were students in Beijing during that time, and who later came to America on student visas during a certain interval, were eligible for a special green card. She had come in just 3 days inside that interval, so applied for a green card and got it. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen five years later, after we were married.
The policies of "communist in name only" China are neither "right wing" or "left wing" when using traditional terms. They are designed to maintain those in power and crush dissent. Rogue governments that had their origins in both "right wing" and "left wing" parties have used the same tactics in history, so it is grossly inaccurate to categorize China's behavior as "leftist."
The Chinese government does not fit easily into any Western definition. They could be considered progressive in the vast changes they've implemented to join the industrial world. They could be considered conservative in how they've restricted change in many ways and kept the same group in power forever. They could be considered tolerant of some forms of freedom - owning businesses, moving to new locations, etc. On the other hand, they clearly crush other types of freedom - freedom of the press, multiple political parties and real elections, etc.
Overall, their government is closed, controlling, and ripe to become a tyranny if anything went even slightly wrong. They are still not communist by any definition of the world - a capitalist oligarchy might be a good way to define them.
Long story short, the events of Tian An Men Square need to be remembered, but we need to recognize China for what it is today vs. trying to paint silly, Western labels on their government in a childish effort to blame "the other team" for their problems.
My wife relates how Deng's reforms were part of the reason why students felt they could stage protests like that, "western-style", and get away with it.
Deng informed them otherwise.
Nonetheless, Deng's reforms were what freed up the Chinese people and ignited a prosperous economy. Before his time, the streets of all major cities thronged with bicycles, with an occasional car threading their way through. When I went there several years ago, the streets were full of privately-owned cars - something unheard of throughout the 1900s when most industrial nations had them as a matter of course.
it's funny. in the 90s i was talking to a chinese graduate student who was in school in france when tiananmen happened.
he told me how upset he was to hear about this on the french news, BBC, voice of America etc. -- and then how relieved he was, upon returning to china, to be reassured by the chinese government that nothing had happened and all those earlier stories were merely western lies.
the disturbing part was how very intelligent this guy was in almost every other way.
My wife complained bitterly about the propeller-driven P-3 surveillance plane running down the poor, hapless supersonic Chinese fighter plane a decade or so ago. I told her that the Chinese pilot was a hot dog who had pulled those close-flybys on American planes before. She flat didn't believe it, until news reports started to show past footage a Chinese fighter with exactly identical markings, coming withing 10 feet of the cockpit of other American planes in past years.
She quieted down then. It was the beginning of her education AWAY from Chinese government "statements".
But most people in China still have no idea that anything ever happened on June 4 in Beijing.
Nonetheless, Deng's reforms were what freed up the Chinese people and ignited a prosperous economy.
And yet you accuse him of being a "leftist," no different from Obama or Nancy Pelosi or whomever.
Of course, this assumes you think the CCP must be a "leftist" organization, even though it is the very same organization whose full embrace of free-market policies resulted in the fastest and largest move out of poverty that the world has ever seen.
If not, then who exactly are the "leftists" in the scenario you've created in your head? The free-market-oriented but highly repressive Chinese government that slaughtered hundreds in Tiananmen, or the brave "Occupy" type protesters who stood up against them?
See my follow-up questions above. Who, in your opinion, were the "leftists" in Tiananmen -- the CCP or the protesters?
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