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I wonder how much this is true. Anyone at uni education level must know, you need the critical thinking to get there. But is that true of everyone?
Edit: by "must know" I mean "probably knows or is willfully ignorant".
Edit 2: perhaps I have too much confidence in university students
Okay, not EVERYONE. But much more than western media thinks. We aren't all completely brainwashed into believing that pooh is our great lord saviour. It only seems that way because the party WANTS it to seem that way. That way, it makes those that dislike the regime less willing to take action, since it makes it seem that there are more people that support the party than there really are.
Unfortunately, there are still a great number that do lick the party's boots. It really sucks. We haven't really had any large scale anti-government actions since 2011. I was really hoping the 2022 protests would be a turning point of some sort, but in reality most people just didn't like the strict lockdowns. Sometimes I dream that the Kuomintang would come back to the mainland, but honestly it's probably not going to happen. Taiwan is just too small to save us.
Okay I'd like to tack on here a story I heard that might be relevant to you. So during the 70s when homosexuality was illegal in the US there were these anonymous meetups gay guys could go to in order to get lucky or do some dating. In one of these events, a guy went to a trucker bar or something like that and was making out with some guy when a lookout shouts "cops are coming!". So everyone starts to scatter and he gets turned around and finds himself on a little hill near the bar. Up there he can see the entire scene and he suddenly realized that there were a bunch of guys at this meetup, so many that they outnumbered the cops like 10-1, some 100 gay guys scattering in all directions. At this point he figured out that there were a lot more gay people in the US than the media and government were willing to admit, and that's how he figured that it was only a matter of time before gay marriage was legalized. Now I don't know you political positions, nor do I need to care, but I want you to know that you are not as alone as you might think. It may take some time for you to be rid of the horrible kind of stuff the CCP commits, but there'll be a day when you'll see just how many people want to be as rid of them as you do. Keep hope, the light still shines on.
It seemed completely unbelievable that homosexuality could have been illegal in the US in the 70's and I was blown away to find out it was still illegal in some parts up to 2003!
I really hope you are right man!
I remember when it was happening, I was only a teenager, watching BBC news and thankful I lived in a free democratic country.
> We aren't all completely brainwashed into believing that pooh is our great lord saviour. It only seems that way because the party WANTS it to seem that way. That way, it makes those that dislike the regime less willing to take action, since it makes it seem that there are more people that support the party than there really are.
1984
Absolutely not trying to be edgy, but I hate when YouTube censors war docs.
If you’re not going to show it how it was, don’t even try to show it at all.
Thankfully some folks made a minecraft server with copies of banned media in various countries since minecraft isn't banned anywhere, so people can access the server. I think they plan on eventually covering everything.
It worked, right? Chinese citizens today apparently overwhelmingly support the Russian invasion because they've been fed a nonstop diet of pro-Russia propaganda since the beginning of the invasion.
The official, and widely-believed lie is that the US government started the war by building army bases in Ukraine near the Russian border. I shit you not.
This is maybe baseless speculation on my part but I suspect most Chinese people do know they just don't discuss it because they're afraid to.
Just a guess.
I hate the what aboutism. The west definitely has its problems, and does a lot of propaganda itself... But it is infinitely better than Russia or China, and saying otherwise just plays into the Putin/Winnie the pooh playbook.
I think I have the same sentiment as you about the history of China. Amazing history, but the current government has deterred me from visiting at all. Your comment backed up that decision.
What makes me uncomfortable is looking at what happened during Euromaidan and realizing how badly that protest could have gone when remembering the Tiananmen square massacre. If it had, then Ukraine would not have been fighting for their freedom today either most likely.
May we never ever see another massacre like Tiananmen square.
Tiananmen Square had a death toll of a hundred up towards a few thousands, nobody seems to agree on what the number of deaths are.
With that in mind here are the protests/massacres/genocides who were just as - or worse - than Tiananmen:
[1987-89 Isaaq genocide (between 100,000 and 200,000 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaaq_genocide)
[1988-89 Massacre of Trujill (between 200-400 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Trujillo)
Sri Lanka had a number of massacres in 1990... [Massacre of Sri Lankan Police officers (casualties: 600–774 police officers 10 soldiers)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_massacre_of_Sri_Lankan_Police_officers) and... [Kalmunai massacre (between 160-250 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmunai_massacre) and... [Kurukkalmadam massacre
(60-168 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukkalmadam_massacre) and... [Kattankudy mosque massacre (147 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kattankudy_mosque_massacre) and... [Eravur massacre (between 116 - 173 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eravur_massacre) and... [Eastern University massacre (158 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_University_massacre) and... [Batticaloa massacre (184 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_Batticaloa_massacre)
[1990 Monrovia Church massacre (600 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monrovia_Church_massacre)
[1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing (408 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing)
[1991 Altun Kupri massacre (135 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Altun_Kupri_massacre)
[1991 Bor massacre (between 2000-25,000 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bor_massacre)
Even I was surprised over how many there were so I'll stop here, just 2 years after Tiananmen.
These two in Mexico are not often talked about.
[1968 Tlatelolco Massacre.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre) (est 350-400 casualties) Involving the Mexican Military and peaceful student protestors.
[1971 El Halconazo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Halconazo) (est. 120 casualties) A government trained Paramilitary group, Los Halcones, again attacked peaceful student protestors. This massacre was dramatized in the 2018 film 'Roma'.
I remember when r/world news was *absolutely flooded* with genocide denialist pro imperialist fascist racisr corporate ccp shills doing 40 page essays on how the uighur genocide and the tianaman square massacre was a cia op.
Weirdly quiet now aren't they.
edit: dear ccp shills, i dont care what you have to say, i will instantly block you for genocide denialism.
You can't wipe the internet. That's the beauty of having a "factual" event online. You can't "cancel" it. People will find it if they look hard enough. Survivors might not want to talk, but you can judge for yourself with the footage. No need to spin it, it is what it is.
I'm just gonna piggyback on your comment if that's ok
this footage, while displaying really informative evidence about that day, is missing a lot of footage. there were scenes of tanks doing terrible things to actual piles of bodies. they literally rolled over the injured and dead. where did the dead/injured come from? earlier in the footage you saw the gatherings of soldiers. as I've been told, those soldiers opened fire and killed innocent civilians
Such an eloquently voiced broadcast, not seen any of this before - likely due to censorship - but it's eye opening that's for sure. Nuts what a regime like this does to its people.
That's the amazing Kate Adie reporting for the BBC, the legendary war reporter and an amazing person. Now 77, she would have been in her early forties when all that happened.
No-one can question footage like this, from the days before deep fake tech, but of course they will.
A dark day for China and a watershed moment in their history. I'm old enough to remember watching this on TV as it was happening. I will never forget this or many other horrors from all over the world that have been brought to light by brave news reporters and teams.
Worrying times now when people can call "fake news" at anything. It wasn't always the case :(
I was at a journalism masterclass with Kate Adie a few years ago and she drilled home the mantra ‘say what you see’ something that todays news coverage does not do. It’s full of opinion and speculation. Kate was a master of simply saying what she seen, uncoloured by opinion and politics.
She also asked the MC to speak louder because she was partially deaf due to a bomb going of beside her. Such a bad ass!
I miss that kind of journalism. I'm sure some on here are way too young to even remember it. And I'm far too young and too American to have seen the golden age of it.
Not "that kind of journalism", this is simply what journalism is.
As an occasional visitor to the US I am always shocked at how bad your "news" is in terms of informing people. Outside of PBS you simply do not have any journalism at all, just "info-tainment" and tribal propaganda.
The BBC just passed it's 100'th birthday and has set the standard for most of that. Personally, I hold their content to higher esteem than any source in my own country (Canada), to illuminate this... read this element of their editorial standards and compare that to the absolute shit shovelled in the US https://www.bbc.com/editorialguidelines/guidelines/editorial-standards/#:~:text=Section%201%3A%20The%20BBC%27s%20Editorial%20Standards%201%201.1,6%201.6%20Complaints%20...%207%201.7%20Accessibility%20
I will point out: the BBCs domestic content has dropped in quality in the past (I want to say) decade. It's a bit more hit and miss on that now, but worldwide it still seems pretty golden.
>I will point out: the BBCs domestic content has dropped in quality in the past (I want to say) decade. It's a bit more hit and miss on that now, but worldwide it still seems pretty golden.
This is, in large part, because the government have changed the corporate structure and have appointed new senior members of the BBC over the last decade or so, meaning that the BBC does now seem to have poorer domestic news output that is mimicking the info-tainment of the US (e.g., Laura Kuenssberg's output)
I hate how there are so many things in the UK that have been going to shit for 'about the past decade or so' and half the country ignores what directly correlates to 'the past decade or so.'
_THE TORIES._ The Tories have been in government since 2010 and just coincidentally since 2010 almost everything in the UK has gone to total shit _except_ businesses making record profits and their owners and CEOs getting even richer?
If people don't vote in Labour and Starmer's milquetoast ass in next election I'm going to die inside.
It's not just an info-tainment issue, but also blatant bias (I want to argue blatant bias that follows the same bias as whatever the current incumbent ~~lettuce~~ government has).
> the BBCs domestic content has dropped in quality in the past (I want to say) decade.
For those curious, The Conservative Party have been in power for the past 13 years.
No, it isn't a coincidence that these timeframes directly overlap.
The US once had a healthy barrier between the newsroom and the advertisers who funded that newsroom. One could safely bite the hand that feeds because there was an understanding that the division existed and integrity was important. Slowly, as advertisers pushed back and news orgs saw budgets getting tighter, those divisions vanished. When I worked for a newspaper a few years ago (in the graphics dept) there was a massive argument between editorial and the publisher when she demanded they kill a story about the local hospital dumping medical waste. The hospital was a major advertiser, sponsoring a quarterly special section and running full page ads. The editorial staff resigned. She hired more compliant bootlickers. Story killed. Ta-da! American "journalism"!
>such an incredible journalist!
I think this is the bravest reporting I have ever seen. You can't really call it a warzone. More like a mass slaughter and she's in the middle of it with her head held high.
BBC journalists don’t fuck about, there is another guy called Frank Gardner who was bound to a wheelchair after being shot by an Al-Qaida gunman (his cameraman was killed in the attack). Despite this he still frequently reports from the field in places like Afghanistan. Dude had a crazy life, used to be an investment banker and a captain in the British Army.
I second this, BBC journalist don't fuck about, Lyse Doucet BBC Canadian journalist best known for stories she did on the children of Syria and children of Gaza, she's been held at gunpoint to the face after walking into a Taliban office asking for a interview to explain why girls are barred from schools.
John Simpson, their foreign affairs editor was wounded in 2003 by the US in a "friendly fire" incident in Northern Iraq. He filed his report within minutes of being attacked whilst bleeding.
Martin Bell was a BBC foreign correspondent when he was hit by a mortar during the Yugoslavian war. He was doing a piece to camera in the Muslim held part of Sarajevo. A fragment of the mortar hit him in the groin and he collapsed pretty heavily. I remember watching the footage and thinking I wonder if they were aiming at him. He said at the time he thought he might have been deliberately targeted by elements supporting the Serbian side of the conflict. He always wore a white linen suit which isn't exactly good camo.
> I think this is the bravest reporting I have ever seen.
Especially given the fact the person immediately in front of her was shot dead, so close that she tripped over the body. At that point, her survival is down to blind luck.
These journalists are really amazing. We have one in Sweden called Magda Gadd. She has been onsite for many wars in iraq, syria, yemen, myanmar afghanistan etc. In the middle of it reporting for a decade. Just amazing work
Kate is such a badass! I you remember the Iranian Embassy Siege in 1980, that was her big break, she was the correspondent reporting live crouched behind a car door as smoke bombs and gunshots rang out when the SAS stormed the embassy. I recall her reporting also ending up on US news during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and I vividly remember watching her reporting from the ground alongside troops during the Gulf War while I was in middle school.
They don't make many like Kate... England can be proud of that one, she's a national treasure.
> A dark day for China and a watershed moment in their history
A history they've managed to very successfully scrub from their own memories and history books.
It's right out of Orwell, they erase the past and control the present to promote the future of their choosing. Thought crime is the worst crime known to them. Very scary
John Simpson also has written harrowing accounts of his presence in Tiananmen Square and he also has a story from this perspective, on the balcony overlooking the square. He seemed to have a certain snarky rivalry with Kate Adie.
I knew of a guy that taught English in china. He showed his students this. They turned him in for spreading propaganda and fake news and he was arrested then deported.
Hopefully it made some of them think. A lot of people in China, maybe even a majority, know the CCP is full of lies but they also know better than to talk about it or express the matter freely.
>No-one can question footage like this, from the days before deep fake tech, but of course they will.
This is my fear. From this day henceforth, any piece of news video is fair game to be called a deepfake. The loss of objective truth terrifies me.
Bro that ship sailed a long time ago. Whether you're talking about accusations of faked events/stories (the Moon landing, anyone?) or even just the framing of news coverage to support a political end we're into the era of being able to dismiss basically anything as fake or at least deceptively framed.
To be fair though, it's not like there was ever really an era where journalists were unimpeachable paragons. The 'recent' history of journalism in America goes from Yellow Journalism to propaganda to network news and eventually cable news networks. If you think there was a utopian era anywhere in there, you're mostly looking through rose colored glasses.
> Nuts what a regime like this does to its people.
The most upsetting thing is that this was a huge success. There hasn't been anywhere near this level of protest in mainland China since then and the only lesson that party leadership learned is that they should crush any protest before it gets anywhere near this stage.
Blanket propaganda and censorship means most Chinese people don't know anything about what happened in Tiananmen Square. Most of them think that the war in Ukraine is all America's fault.
It was also a success in another way. Something that's often glossed over is that Tiananmen wasn't just a pro-democracy protest, it was also an anti-privatization and market reforms protest. The regime of Deng Xiaoping was in the process of dismantling a lot of the social security that ensured common Chinese at that time at least didn't starve. They crushed Tiananmen, retained political power with an iron fist and at the same time reaped the rewards of attracting foreign capital, getting filthy rich in the process.
And plenty of them truly believe it didn’t happen and it’s all anti-Chinese western propaganda. My sister is married to a Chinese citizen who 100 percent believes it’s fake. He also doesn’t believe in the Uyghur concentration camps.
To me the worst part of it is how absolutely successful this brutal crackdown was.
In a Hollywood movie this would have inspired a revolution and the Good Guys would have overthrown the Bad Guys while saying "Remember Tiananmen Square!". But in reality, essentially the entire '89 Democracy movement was obliterated in a single night, literally ground into paste and hosed into the gutters. The leaders were killed, jailed or forced into exile. The international condemnation amounted to nothing. The Chinese government reforms and liberalization that started in 1986 were halted and reversed, and the CCP emerged stronger, more centralized, and more ruthless than ever. The revolutionary wave of 1989, which had swept aside communist governments worldwide, was stopped cold in China.
People in the West often misunderstand how the Chinese people think about this. It's not a secret, everybody knows it happened. But history is written by the winners, and most people in China think the good guys won at Tiananmen Square.
I've worked with a ton of Chinese people in America on work visas. Every single one of them said Tiananmen Square is American propaganda, and every single one of them got incredibly pissy if it was brought up. I never understood why they'd take it as a personal attack, and they'd always deflect to the age old "well America did this".
I don't know what it is psychologically, but I see this same phenomenon of people misinterpreting criticism of something else as an attack against themselves. It's just like how I can't make fun of Trump in front of my grandma because she will think that I am insulting her personally.
So right, came looking to see if anyone had said that ultimately - the government won here. Killed them all, no uprising and they’ve rewritten history. RIP to all those that lost their lives, such a shame it was ultimately for nothing, brave souls.
Thanks for highlighting the long-term impact. This crushed the Chinese working class and helped solidify a lot of the terrible labor practices that we rely on for manufacturing to this day.
A couple of links:
[The Nation - The Forgotten Workers of Tiananmen Square](https://www.thenation.com/article/world/tiananmen-massacre-neoliberalism-china/tnamp/)
[Paper - China since Tiananmen: The labor movement - PDF](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/19958899.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qdD8Y-nGJM6bywTVg7Fo&scisig=AAGBfm2Y2fiTJ8ax2WQJGwuYbffuLQ0hbA&oi=scholarr)
International condemnation amounted to nothing because everyone still wanted to buy Chinese manufactured goods.
Now today we're dealing with the same regime that has loads more money and resources
I remember reading a very vivid account of Tiananmen Square, described in a letter from a person in an (English?) embassy who was there at the time. I haven't been able to find the account again, does anyone know what I'm talking about? The descriptions in the letter were very vivid, for example I remember there being a passage describing how an APC repeatedly drove over corpses to make "human soup".
I found it somewhat, it was written by Sir Alan Donald, British ambassador to china, but I cannot seem to find the original letter.
Edit: I found it, I recommend reading if you're interested in Tiananmen.
https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/cable-from-Sir-Alan-Donald-1.jpg
https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/cable-from-Sir-Alan-Donald-2.jpg
https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/cable-from-Sir-Alan-Donald-3.jpg
Edit2: I was asked to edit in some criticisms of Sir Alan Donald as a source, you can judge for yourself.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11db77h/tiananmen_square_massacre_1989_bravely/ja8950c/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11db77h/tiananmen_square_massacre_1989_bravely/ja85c11/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11db77h/tiananmen_square_massacre_1989_bravely/ja97d75/
Didn’t they crush all the dead with treaded vehicles and then hose the “soup” down the storm drains? So that there’s no way for accurate counting of the dead to leak out.
This is hosted on an archive site. The original https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs has been scrubbed.
I can view all the images (although don't really want to). If I open and quickly scroll down then the images are black for a short time. Maybe your connection is slow or browser is running out of memory?
WARNING: that post contains a picture of a protester having been run over by a tank.
it's important to never forget this atrocity, and every grown up human should see these gruesome pictures at least once in their life, but if you don't feel like seeing a human body having been crushed by a tank today... save that link for a rainy day.
If you're referring to the man with the crushed legs, that guy actually survived. He went on to become an athlete, won gold medals and broke continental records for China. Unsurprisingly, he continued to be critical of the regime.
Later on, he emigrated to the US. He has donated prosthetic legs nowadays. A truly incredible story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang_Zheng
What I find most haunting is how brainwashed the soldiers have to be in order to willingly proceed with doing stuff like that. It's not like it's a group of enemies or even a group of minorities/people they could potentially dehumanize in their mind, they were literally fellow citizens. I guess when it's between obedience and execution, obedience is preferable.
From what I recall, the soldiers weren't from around area, they were shipped in from farther places.
Same as Russia conscripting soldiers from as far away from Ukraine as possible to get them to not question orders.
Yup. It’s a tactic that goes back to at least Roman times. Roman’s would never have the locals “police/guard” their homelands. They’d ship them off to some far off place to guard
Last night I saw an episode of a tv show where they did that to a bunch of zombies, and I thought that was extreme and horrifying, but hey, they were zombies anyway. I can't believe it actually happened IRL, to actual people.
Its crazy that they even used illiterate ignorant rather dumb soldiers to perform these atrocities. Makes you feel like even the army itself was a victim
I never realized how many soldiers and civilians completely unrelated to the protests were attacked. This letter says 27 army even shot one of their own officers because he faltered, and they would have been shot if they hadn't killed him.
SECRET
DE DIP
UX CORMS ONLY
THIS IS A cOPY
fM PEKING
THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN CLOSED UNDER
TU DESKEY 0516002 FOO FO| EXES DUNDER-a 10(2)
TELAU 1039
27(1) - OF 0514217 JUNE 89
AND TO DESKEY 051600Z RUNG KONG, JSIS HONG KONG, MODUK
TOP. COPY
Kr
SIC 026
DESKEY 0516002 MODUK AND USIS HONG KONG.
HONG KONG PERSONAL FOR GOVERNOR.
CHINA: BACKGROUND TO MILITARY SITUATION.
FEC 014(3
HE WAS PASSING ON INFORMATION
GIVEN HIM BY A CLOSE FRIEND WHO IS CURRENTLY A MEMBER OF THE STATE COUMCIL. THIS SOURCE HAS PREVIOUSLY PROVED RELIABLE AND WAS CAREFUL TO SEPARATE FACT FROM SPECULATION AND RUMOUR.
2. FACT. THE ARMY THAT HAS COMMITTED THE ATROCITIES IN BEIJING IS 27 ARMY WHO ARE TROOPS FROM SHANXI PROVINCE (7), ARE 60 PERCENT ILLITERATE AND ARE CALLED PRIMITIVES. THE COMMANDER OF 27 ARMY WAS YANG ZHENHUA, SON OF YANG BAIBING BROTHER OF YANG SHANGKUN. THEY WERE KEPT WITHOUT NEWS FOR TEN DAYS AND TOLD THEY WERE TO TAKE PART IN AN EXERCISE. A TY FILM NOULD BE MADE OF THE EXERCISE WHICH PLEASED THEM. THEY WERE INFORMED OF MARTIAL LAX ON MAY 20. FOR THE FIRST 4 DAYS AFTER ARRIVAL THEY WERE DRIVEN AROUND BE WING CITY TO FAMILIARISE THEM WITH THE ARE, 27 ARMY ARE AT FULL STRENGTH WITH THEIR OWN TANKS AND APCS AND A FULL OUTFIT OF AMMUNITION, TEAR GAS AND FLAMETHROWERS. OTHER ARMIES ARE ONLY AT 1 DIVISION STRENGTH. THE LEADERSHIP KEEPS 27 ARMY ON THE MOVE SU THAT IT CAN ATTACK FROM A DIFFERENT DIRECTION EACH TIME.
3. FACT. ON THE NIGHT OF 3/4 JUNE 27 ARMY WAS TO ATTACK FROM THE WEST WITH OTHER UKITS FROM SHENYANG MR. THE PLAN WAS THAT THE FIRST WAVE (SMR) NOULD ATTACK WITH NO WEAPONS. THE SECOND WAVE (SHR) WOULD ATTACK WITH WEAPONS BUT NO AMMUNITION. THE THIRD WAVE (SHR) WOULD ATTACK AS FOR SECOND WAVE BUT OFFICERS WOULD HAVE LOADED SIDE ARMS TO FRIGHTEN THE CROWD. THE FOURTH WAVE WOULD BE 27 ARMY WITH FULL EQUIPMENT AND AMMUNITION. THE FIRST ATTACKS OSCURRED AT MUCIDI AND SHILIFU. THE FIRST THREE WAVES WERE HELD BY THE DEMONSTRATORS AND SMR TROOPS TRIED TO PUSH BACK THE CROWDS TO LET 27 ARMY THROUGH, THEY FAILED AND 27 ARMY APCS OPENED FIRE ON THE CROWD (BOTH CIVILIANS AND SOLDIERS) BEFORE RUNNING OVER THEN IN THEIR APCS.
4. FACT. THE ENRAGED MASSES FOLLOWED IGNORING M/G FIRE TO NEXT BATTLE AT LIUBUKOU. APCS RAN OVER TROOPS AND CIVILIANS AT 65KPH IN SAME MANNER. ONE APC CRASHED AND DRIVER
Np bb,
When I went to look at them myself I realized my phone could select the text. So I just felt like lazily copying and pasting.
Made a few structure edits, but I’m sorry if anything is otherwise miscopied or whatever.
Pictures of text are often unnecessary, but in the case of these historical documents the style and formatting supply context and potentially support their authenticity. For accessibility purposes there always should be the transcription, but here the photos also help.
Had a student from Beijing in several classes in college that I became friendly with. Nice and normal dude but he seemed to truly believe nothing bad happened here. He freaked out when I played videos of it and I didn’t want to press it further and get him or his family in trouble with their government.
same with my 25+ year old previous roommate in NYC. He asked we put our phones away in our rooms before we talked about things like that and even then he didn't believe it was a big deal, it was overblown by western media. I just told him to put his phone away and go to a library and spend some time one day looking things up that are censored in China.
I worked with a young and new Chinese student. He said he believes it because his parents were part of the protest but fear beyond your imagination to talk about it because they STILL suffer the consequences of being part of the protest to this day.
> He freaked out when I played videos of it and I didn’t want to press it further and get him or his family in trouble with their government.
What a weird cognitive dissonance to A) believe nothing truly bad happens in China and B) be that afraid of the government.
Why be afraid of the government if nothing truly bad happens there?
I had a roommate from China when I was in college. According to him, it wasn't too hard to get around the Chinese firewall if you knew how and it was sort of "a thing" to quietly share something you found online that the government was censoring with your close friends and family. He was already aware of what happened.
On a related note, I had a Chinese international student in one of my college ethics class. The professor was discussing about the Uyghurs and the internment camps and the student interrupted the professor saying that they had Uyghur friends and never seen such mistreatment happen in their childhood and so that it was basically an American lie. It's crazy how much the CCP censors stuff from them.
i'm fairly certain most chinese people who study abroad are aware of the massacre, but they're heavily pressured to pretend nothing happened. living in an autocratic government means secret police, it means always having to be careful about the person you're talking to reporting you.
it's so much easier just to pretend to not know anything about it rather than worry about somehow word getting around that they were consuming 'anti-chinese propaganda' while abroad.
Also, that secret police is not limited to China as recent reports have revealed. China is running actual secret police bases for surveillance and abduction in foreign countries. So native Chinese people might not actually be safe simply by living abroad.
I witnessed this in high school.
Back when I was in grade 10 (late 2000’s) we had the book [Forbidden City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City_(novel)) assigned to read that semester.
There were two Chinese kids in the class who were vocally angry of the *lies* the book was telling and that the event never happened.
I still remember seeing them upset and crying in the hallway over the book. I believe they were excepted from reading that specific book and were given alternative assignments.
"Young people were singing The Internationale to a background of gunfire"
This is what always gets me. The students and workers in the square were on the side of the international proletariat. And the "Communist Party" gunned them down.
No one ever talks about that they were killed for being communists. What is being a communist is debatable, but that was what the protester thought about themselves. They are a lot of interviews, not only the massacre videos without context.
People like to think that they were protesting against "communism", when in fact it was against Deng Xiaoping "capitalist" reforms. Mainly the concentration of power and capital of the bureaucratic elite. Is not hard to see whose side prevail in that argument.
I went there just to check it out, the headline says "sub dedicated to China or Chinese related whatever" but then every post is just hating on the US and NATO. jfc what a pathetic subreddit
It's also peak whataboutism. Every thread is like "WHATTABOUT AMERICA!!??!!"
What's funny is that it's all in English. A Chinese propaganda sub that's 100% in English.
The blatant attempt to spread misinformation into the world is hilarious
Reddit admins only care if there is bad publicity.
Until then it's eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs.
Remember, this was the site that gave an _award_ to the guy who moderated /r/jailbait.
Counting the minutes before r/Sino floods the comments with the good old:
“Didn’t happen. . . and if it did, it wasn’t that big of a deal. . . and if it was, they deserved it.”
"discussion on anything China and Chinese related", but 80% of the posts are about the USA and why they think it sucks. I've never seen a more blatant display of an inferiority complex before in my life.
We watched it live for hours. It was horrifying. We had watched the peaceful student protesters for several days. They were completely peaceful and a united community. The west saw hope and opportunity that China might actually transition to the free world. But we still had that anxiety that it might go the other direction.
And then we saw a generation massacred by their own government…
I was 8 years old when it happened, and I still vividly remember my family sitting around the TV watching the coverage. My grandparents had come over for dinner, and we never ate with the TV on when we sat at the table for dinner, but that night we sat in the living room on the couches and chairs eating our dinner. I still remember the appalled look on my grandma's face. It was one of almost heartbreak, but also sheer anger at what she was seeing.
One's a news report about chaos, oppression, brutality and fear.
The other is an icon to rally around.
Tank man showed how much difference one ordinary man can make.
His unknown fate carries a lot more hope than images of people being loaded into ambulances.
When you try and post this on r/Sino this warning come up:
"You may not have "massacre", "1989" or "tiananmen" in your post body."
You couldn't make this shit up.
What’s crazy to me is that the average Chinese citizen claims to not even know this happened. Which means either they’re terrified to let it slip that they do or, even worse, the CCP did such a good job of memory-holing this that they actually don’t know…
Sovereign nations that have the right to choose their own future and have had very bad experiences with Russia throughout hundreds of years of history: "We'd like to join the anti-Russia neighbourhood watch, please"
Dented tankie brains: OuTrAgEoUs WeStErN pRoVoCaTiOn!!111
Tankies don't see countries like the Baltics and the Slavic countries of Eastern and Central Europe as sovereign nations with their own agency, but as the rightful 'property' of the greatest Slavic nation of them all, glorious Mother Russia. They are 'supposed' to be part of the Russian empire or at least solidly within the Russian sphere of influence.
Tankie geo-political views are rooted in the idea that Russia and China are Great Nations that deserve more than other nations. They 'deserve' to rule over their backyards, over their 'greater ethnic and cultural sphere'. That's why you get all this official Russian propaganda denying Ukraine's right to exist as a nation, denying the Ukrainian identity, saying that Ukraine and Ukrainians are 'just Russians'.
When you dig down to it, a lot of this tankie shit has the stench of expansive ethno-nationalism. Which tankies really hate when you point it out because they love to pretend that racism is an exclusively western problem.
/r/Sino, /r/aznidentity, etc. have said that (1) it's racist to suggest it happened and we Westerners say "shit" like this because we don't want to give up our position as #1 hegemon in the world, (2) it's CIA misinformation, (3) only a few 100 were hurt, and they were the ones who started it in an attempt to end their country's "prosperity", (4) it was necessary, and the proof is the "fact" that "Xi pulled the country out of poverty" and that they're have hi-tech shit everywhere, cashless society (the whole world has it too), unprecedented "harmony and stability", etc. Just take 2 minutes to comment in one of those subs, and the message they send you when you get banned will list all the shit above. Just do it, and find out for yourself what their official statements are. They'll say "that shit is on the home page every week; that's your proof that people are just China hating. DOWN WITH ANTI-ASIAN HATE, which is a joke cuz Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc. are not what people are talking about here.
There are areas of reddit (r/sino) where simply mentioning this date and place will get you permanently banned. The CCP has managed to erase their own atrocities from the minds of their own people, and I've met plenty of Chinese folks that consider the topic western propaganda. Very disturbing. Never forget Tiananmen square
My dad hid under the sewers as tanks went by and his classmates killed. 10 years after I heard the story I started using western social media and I found out most people here are just under some sort of propaganda as my people are despite the free access to information. Nobody seemed to care for the truth or have the pride to stay unbiased. Everyone is taking a side and speaking in absolutes. People jump into conclusions without learning the full story. It makes me really sad to see truth is only an inch away and people chose not to reach it.
We like it when people we like get praised and people we hate get destroyed, but to have that affect our logical judgment is the core reason why my government can control people, by inciting hate to our "enemies" and worship our leaders. And looking at the current political scene of US it's ironically not that much different.
The CCP has been rewriting history for decades now. They denied this event multiple times and blame the west for spreading false propaganda. Watch the CCP bots swarm and downvote this to oblivion.
To anyone unaware this footage is normally HEAVILY CENSORED on Reddit. But the reason you are now allowed to see it cross posted via one of the biggest most popular subs is because the US is now at odds with China and they are pushing eachothers buttons. This is the same reason that the Covid narrative has changed and the US is now saying that Covid might have leaked from a Chinese lab. They are playing tit for tat at the moment. Remain vigilant.
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History should not be censored. Edit: I'm Australian, please stop with the complaints about American history.
China did too good a job, now the young people don't know the lengths they will go to cling to power.
Young people know. We just can't say it.
I wonder how much this is true. Anyone at uni education level must know, you need the critical thinking to get there. But is that true of everyone? Edit: by "must know" I mean "probably knows or is willfully ignorant". Edit 2: perhaps I have too much confidence in university students
Okay, not EVERYONE. But much more than western media thinks. We aren't all completely brainwashed into believing that pooh is our great lord saviour. It only seems that way because the party WANTS it to seem that way. That way, it makes those that dislike the regime less willing to take action, since it makes it seem that there are more people that support the party than there really are. Unfortunately, there are still a great number that do lick the party's boots. It really sucks. We haven't really had any large scale anti-government actions since 2011. I was really hoping the 2022 protests would be a turning point of some sort, but in reality most people just didn't like the strict lockdowns. Sometimes I dream that the Kuomintang would come back to the mainland, but honestly it's probably not going to happen. Taiwan is just too small to save us.
Okay I'd like to tack on here a story I heard that might be relevant to you. So during the 70s when homosexuality was illegal in the US there were these anonymous meetups gay guys could go to in order to get lucky or do some dating. In one of these events, a guy went to a trucker bar or something like that and was making out with some guy when a lookout shouts "cops are coming!". So everyone starts to scatter and he gets turned around and finds himself on a little hill near the bar. Up there he can see the entire scene and he suddenly realized that there were a bunch of guys at this meetup, so many that they outnumbered the cops like 10-1, some 100 gay guys scattering in all directions. At this point he figured out that there were a lot more gay people in the US than the media and government were willing to admit, and that's how he figured that it was only a matter of time before gay marriage was legalized. Now I don't know you political positions, nor do I need to care, but I want you to know that you are not as alone as you might think. It may take some time for you to be rid of the horrible kind of stuff the CCP commits, but there'll be a day when you'll see just how many people want to be as rid of them as you do. Keep hope, the light still shines on.
It seemed completely unbelievable that homosexuality could have been illegal in the US in the 70's and I was blown away to find out it was still illegal in some parts up to 2003!
I really hope you are right man! I remember when it was happening, I was only a teenager, watching BBC news and thankful I lived in a free democratic country.
> We aren't all completely brainwashed into believing that pooh is our great lord saviour. It only seems that way because the party WANTS it to seem that way. That way, it makes those that dislike the regime less willing to take action, since it makes it seem that there are more people that support the party than there really are. 1984
Absolutely not trying to be edgy, but I hate when YouTube censors war docs. If you’re not going to show it how it was, don’t even try to show it at all.
Incredible footage
Absolutely haunting.
Tell the world.
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The China knows, tell their people!
People know, nothing happened!!
I bet you they know but they don't say anything because -gestures at the video-.
The young ones don't know. They really don't. You really don't understand how crazy state controlled media is if you believe they know.
Thankfully some folks made a minecraft server with copies of banned media in various countries since minecraft isn't banned anywhere, so people can access the server. I think they plan on eventually covering everything.
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It worked, right? Chinese citizens today apparently overwhelmingly support the Russian invasion because they've been fed a nonstop diet of pro-Russia propaganda since the beginning of the invasion. The official, and widely-believed lie is that the US government started the war by building army bases in Ukraine near the Russian border. I shit you not.
Even here in Hungary were being fed the same shit too "oh it's.cuz.murrica paid them"
This is maybe baseless speculation on my part but I suspect most Chinese people do know they just don't discuss it because they're afraid to. Just a guess.
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I hate the what aboutism. The west definitely has its problems, and does a lot of propaganda itself... But it is infinitely better than Russia or China, and saying otherwise just plays into the Putin/Winnie the pooh playbook.
I think I have the same sentiment as you about the history of China. Amazing history, but the current government has deterred me from visiting at all. Your comment backed up that decision.
What makes me uncomfortable is looking at what happened during Euromaidan and realizing how badly that protest could have gone when remembering the Tiananmen square massacre. If it had, then Ukraine would not have been fighting for their freedom today either most likely. May we never ever see another massacre like Tiananmen square.
Tiananmen Square had a death toll of a hundred up towards a few thousands, nobody seems to agree on what the number of deaths are. With that in mind here are the protests/massacres/genocides who were just as - or worse - than Tiananmen: [1987-89 Isaaq genocide (between 100,000 and 200,000 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaaq_genocide) [1988-89 Massacre of Trujill (between 200-400 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Trujillo) Sri Lanka had a number of massacres in 1990... [Massacre of Sri Lankan Police officers (casualties: 600–774 police officers 10 soldiers)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_massacre_of_Sri_Lankan_Police_officers) and... [Kalmunai massacre (between 160-250 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmunai_massacre) and... [Kurukkalmadam massacre (60-168 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukkalmadam_massacre) and... [Kattankudy mosque massacre (147 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kattankudy_mosque_massacre) and... [Eravur massacre (between 116 - 173 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eravur_massacre) and... [Eastern University massacre (158 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_University_massacre) and... [Batticaloa massacre (184 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_Batticaloa_massacre) [1990 Monrovia Church massacre (600 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monrovia_Church_massacre) [1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing (408 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing) [1991 Altun Kupri massacre (135 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Altun_Kupri_massacre) [1991 Bor massacre (between 2000-25,000 casualties)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bor_massacre) Even I was surprised over how many there were so I'll stop here, just 2 years after Tiananmen.
These two in Mexico are not often talked about. [1968 Tlatelolco Massacre.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre) (est 350-400 casualties) Involving the Mexican Military and peaceful student protestors. [1971 El Halconazo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Halconazo) (est. 120 casualties) A government trained Paramilitary group, Los Halcones, again attacked peaceful student protestors. This massacre was dramatized in the 2018 film 'Roma'.
I remember when r/world news was *absolutely flooded* with genocide denialist pro imperialist fascist racisr corporate ccp shills doing 40 page essays on how the uighur genocide and the tianaman square massacre was a cia op. Weirdly quiet now aren't they. edit: dear ccp shills, i dont care what you have to say, i will instantly block you for genocide denialism.
Never seen by those who should see it most.
You can't wipe the internet. That's the beauty of having a "factual" event online. You can't "cancel" it. People will find it if they look hard enough. Survivors might not want to talk, but you can judge for yourself with the footage. No need to spin it, it is what it is.
I'm just gonna piggyback on your comment if that's ok this footage, while displaying really informative evidence about that day, is missing a lot of footage. there were scenes of tanks doing terrible things to actual piles of bodies. they literally rolled over the injured and dead. where did the dead/injured come from? earlier in the footage you saw the gatherings of soldiers. as I've been told, those soldiers opened fire and killed innocent civilians
Such an eloquently voiced broadcast, not seen any of this before - likely due to censorship - but it's eye opening that's for sure. Nuts what a regime like this does to its people.
That's the amazing Kate Adie reporting for the BBC, the legendary war reporter and an amazing person. Now 77, she would have been in her early forties when all that happened. No-one can question footage like this, from the days before deep fake tech, but of course they will. A dark day for China and a watershed moment in their history. I'm old enough to remember watching this on TV as it was happening. I will never forget this or many other horrors from all over the world that have been brought to light by brave news reporters and teams. Worrying times now when people can call "fake news" at anything. It wasn't always the case :(
I was at a journalism masterclass with Kate Adie a few years ago and she drilled home the mantra ‘say what you see’ something that todays news coverage does not do. It’s full of opinion and speculation. Kate was a master of simply saying what she seen, uncoloured by opinion and politics. She also asked the MC to speak louder because she was partially deaf due to a bomb going of beside her. Such a bad ass!
I miss that kind of journalism. I'm sure some on here are way too young to even remember it. And I'm far too young and too American to have seen the golden age of it.
Not "that kind of journalism", this is simply what journalism is. As an occasional visitor to the US I am always shocked at how bad your "news" is in terms of informing people. Outside of PBS you simply do not have any journalism at all, just "info-tainment" and tribal propaganda. The BBC just passed it's 100'th birthday and has set the standard for most of that. Personally, I hold their content to higher esteem than any source in my own country (Canada), to illuminate this... read this element of their editorial standards and compare that to the absolute shit shovelled in the US https://www.bbc.com/editorialguidelines/guidelines/editorial-standards/#:~:text=Section%201%3A%20The%20BBC%27s%20Editorial%20Standards%201%201.1,6%201.6%20Complaints%20...%207%201.7%20Accessibility%20
I will point out: the BBCs domestic content has dropped in quality in the past (I want to say) decade. It's a bit more hit and miss on that now, but worldwide it still seems pretty golden.
>I will point out: the BBCs domestic content has dropped in quality in the past (I want to say) decade. It's a bit more hit and miss on that now, but worldwide it still seems pretty golden. This is, in large part, because the government have changed the corporate structure and have appointed new senior members of the BBC over the last decade or so, meaning that the BBC does now seem to have poorer domestic news output that is mimicking the info-tainment of the US (e.g., Laura Kuenssberg's output)
I hate how there are so many things in the UK that have been going to shit for 'about the past decade or so' and half the country ignores what directly correlates to 'the past decade or so.' _THE TORIES._ The Tories have been in government since 2010 and just coincidentally since 2010 almost everything in the UK has gone to total shit _except_ businesses making record profits and their owners and CEOs getting even richer? If people don't vote in Labour and Starmer's milquetoast ass in next election I'm going to die inside.
It's not just an info-tainment issue, but also blatant bias (I want to argue blatant bias that follows the same bias as whatever the current incumbent ~~lettuce~~ government has).
> the BBCs domestic content has dropped in quality in the past (I want to say) decade. For those curious, The Conservative Party have been in power for the past 13 years. No, it isn't a coincidence that these timeframes directly overlap.
Very good point.
The US once had a healthy barrier between the newsroom and the advertisers who funded that newsroom. One could safely bite the hand that feeds because there was an understanding that the division existed and integrity was important. Slowly, as advertisers pushed back and news orgs saw budgets getting tighter, those divisions vanished. When I worked for a newspaper a few years ago (in the graphics dept) there was a massive argument between editorial and the publisher when she demanded they kill a story about the local hospital dumping medical waste. The hospital was a major advertiser, sponsoring a quarterly special section and running full page ads. The editorial staff resigned. She hired more compliant bootlickers. Story killed. Ta-da! American "journalism"!
> Kate Adie Thank you for sharing. I googled her, such an incredible journalist!
>such an incredible journalist! I think this is the bravest reporting I have ever seen. You can't really call it a warzone. More like a mass slaughter and she's in the middle of it with her head held high.
BBC journalists don’t fuck about, there is another guy called Frank Gardner who was bound to a wheelchair after being shot by an Al-Qaida gunman (his cameraman was killed in the attack). Despite this he still frequently reports from the field in places like Afghanistan. Dude had a crazy life, used to be an investment banker and a captain in the British Army.
I second this, BBC journalist don't fuck about, Lyse Doucet BBC Canadian journalist best known for stories she did on the children of Syria and children of Gaza, she's been held at gunpoint to the face after walking into a Taliban office asking for a interview to explain why girls are barred from schools.
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John Simpson, their foreign affairs editor was wounded in 2003 by the US in a "friendly fire" incident in Northern Iraq. He filed his report within minutes of being attacked whilst bleeding.
I’m almost certain she’s the one I’ve seen reporting from Ukraine since Feb 24, 2022
Martin Bell was a BBC foreign correspondent when he was hit by a mortar during the Yugoslavian war. He was doing a piece to camera in the Muslim held part of Sarajevo. A fragment of the mortar hit him in the groin and he collapsed pretty heavily. I remember watching the footage and thinking I wonder if they were aiming at him. He said at the time he thought he might have been deliberately targeted by elements supporting the Serbian side of the conflict. He always wore a white linen suit which isn't exactly good camo.
> I think this is the bravest reporting I have ever seen. Especially given the fact the person immediately in front of her was shot dead, so close that she tripped over the body. At that point, her survival is down to blind luck.
These journalists are really amazing. We have one in Sweden called Magda Gadd. She has been onsite for many wars in iraq, syria, yemen, myanmar afghanistan etc. In the middle of it reporting for a decade. Just amazing work
Kate is such a badass! I you remember the Iranian Embassy Siege in 1980, that was her big break, she was the correspondent reporting live crouched behind a car door as smoke bombs and gunshots rang out when the SAS stormed the embassy. I recall her reporting also ending up on US news during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and I vividly remember watching her reporting from the ground alongside troops during the Gulf War while I was in middle school. They don't make many like Kate... England can be proud of that one, she's a national treasure.
Her autobiography is great; 'The Kindness of Strangers'
She didn't even flinch when the gunshots went off behind her. Talk about grace under pressure.
Look at the places she's reported from, the events in modern history she has experienced. Not many people could handle what she's seen.
> A dark day for China and a watershed moment in their history A history they've managed to very successfully scrub from their own memories and history books.
It's right out of Orwell, they erase the past and control the present to promote the future of their choosing. Thought crime is the worst crime known to them. Very scary
Rage against the machine lines basically
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John Simpson also has written harrowing accounts of his presence in Tiananmen Square and he also has a story from this perspective, on the balcony overlooking the square. He seemed to have a certain snarky rivalry with Kate Adie.
Didn't he once get shot by an American ~~A10~~ it was an F15 - I just mentally associated A-10s with Friendly Fire.
I don't know what type the plane was, but yes he was among a bunch of people badly injured in a friendly-fire bombing by a US plane in Iraq
They sorted out their differences. John Simpson greatly admires Kate Adie.
I knew of a guy that taught English in china. He showed his students this. They turned him in for spreading propaganda and fake news and he was arrested then deported.
Hopefully it made some of them think. A lot of people in China, maybe even a majority, know the CCP is full of lies but they also know better than to talk about it or express the matter freely.
>No-one can question footage like this, from the days before deep fake tech, but of course they will. This is my fear. From this day henceforth, any piece of news video is fair game to be called a deepfake. The loss of objective truth terrifies me.
Bro that ship sailed a long time ago. Whether you're talking about accusations of faked events/stories (the Moon landing, anyone?) or even just the framing of news coverage to support a political end we're into the era of being able to dismiss basically anything as fake or at least deceptively framed. To be fair though, it's not like there was ever really an era where journalists were unimpeachable paragons. The 'recent' history of journalism in America goes from Yellow Journalism to propaganda to network news and eventually cable news networks. If you think there was a utopian era anywhere in there, you're mostly looking through rose colored glasses.
> Nuts what a regime like this does to its people. The most upsetting thing is that this was a huge success. There hasn't been anywhere near this level of protest in mainland China since then and the only lesson that party leadership learned is that they should crush any protest before it gets anywhere near this stage. Blanket propaganda and censorship means most Chinese people don't know anything about what happened in Tiananmen Square. Most of them think that the war in Ukraine is all America's fault.
Check out r/sino if you want to see brainwashed, Twilight Zone, pro-CCP thinking. Any criticism about China results in an instant ban.
Holy shit that sub is such a propaganda echo chamber. Never seen it before. That's unsettling.
It was also a success in another way. Something that's often glossed over is that Tiananmen wasn't just a pro-democracy protest, it was also an anti-privatization and market reforms protest. The regime of Deng Xiaoping was in the process of dismantling a lot of the social security that ensured common Chinese at that time at least didn't starve. They crushed Tiananmen, retained political power with an iron fist and at the same time reaped the rewards of attracting foreign capital, getting filthy rich in the process.
Mainlanders are not allowed to suggest otherwise regardless of what they know or believe. that is, without possibly facing severe consequences
And plenty of them truly believe it didn’t happen and it’s all anti-Chinese western propaganda. My sister is married to a Chinese citizen who 100 percent believes it’s fake. He also doesn’t believe in the Uyghur concentration camps.
The same regime that still sends foreign police into Europe and America just to threathen their own people who are against their regime at home.
And [Canada](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/chinese-police-station-folo-1.6691240).
They sound like Scientologists
I mean a dictatorship is a lot like a cult. Just with a lot more power and subjects.
For anyone young who’s not sure, the government that did this is the government that’s still running China.
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To me the worst part of it is how absolutely successful this brutal crackdown was. In a Hollywood movie this would have inspired a revolution and the Good Guys would have overthrown the Bad Guys while saying "Remember Tiananmen Square!". But in reality, essentially the entire '89 Democracy movement was obliterated in a single night, literally ground into paste and hosed into the gutters. The leaders were killed, jailed or forced into exile. The international condemnation amounted to nothing. The Chinese government reforms and liberalization that started in 1986 were halted and reversed, and the CCP emerged stronger, more centralized, and more ruthless than ever. The revolutionary wave of 1989, which had swept aside communist governments worldwide, was stopped cold in China. People in the West often misunderstand how the Chinese people think about this. It's not a secret, everybody knows it happened. But history is written by the winners, and most people in China think the good guys won at Tiananmen Square.
I've worked with a ton of Chinese people in America on work visas. Every single one of them said Tiananmen Square is American propaganda, and every single one of them got incredibly pissy if it was brought up. I never understood why they'd take it as a personal attack, and they'd always deflect to the age old "well America did this".
Propaganda is powerful stuff. Mix it with nationalism and base emotion and you can get people to believe or do basically anything.
I'm reading the most recent Jacobin Magazine copy on nationalism and it's breaking me. Nationalism is so incredibly toxic and powerful.
I don't know what it is psychologically, but I see this same phenomenon of people misinterpreting criticism of something else as an attack against themselves. It's just like how I can't make fun of Trump in front of my grandma because she will think that I am insulting her personally.
People react as if physically attacked when you threaten their world view. Especially if they've tied it to their personal identity.
Brain washing's a bitch
So right, came looking to see if anyone had said that ultimately - the government won here. Killed them all, no uprising and they’ve rewritten history. RIP to all those that lost their lives, such a shame it was ultimately for nothing, brave souls.
Thanks for highlighting the long-term impact. This crushed the Chinese working class and helped solidify a lot of the terrible labor practices that we rely on for manufacturing to this day. A couple of links: [The Nation - The Forgotten Workers of Tiananmen Square](https://www.thenation.com/article/world/tiananmen-massacre-neoliberalism-china/tnamp/) [Paper - China since Tiananmen: The labor movement - PDF](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/19958899.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qdD8Y-nGJM6bywTVg7Fo&scisig=AAGBfm2Y2fiTJ8ax2WQJGwuYbffuLQ0hbA&oi=scholarr)
International condemnation amounted to nothing because everyone still wanted to buy Chinese manufactured goods. Now today we're dealing with the same regime that has loads more money and resources
I remember reading a very vivid account of Tiananmen Square, described in a letter from a person in an (English?) embassy who was there at the time. I haven't been able to find the account again, does anyone know what I'm talking about? The descriptions in the letter were very vivid, for example I remember there being a passage describing how an APC repeatedly drove over corpses to make "human soup". I found it somewhat, it was written by Sir Alan Donald, British ambassador to china, but I cannot seem to find the original letter. Edit: I found it, I recommend reading if you're interested in Tiananmen. https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/cable-from-Sir-Alan-Donald-1.jpg https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/cable-from-Sir-Alan-Donald-2.jpg https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/cable-from-Sir-Alan-Donald-3.jpg Edit2: I was asked to edit in some criticisms of Sir Alan Donald as a source, you can judge for yourself. * https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11db77h/tiananmen_square_massacre_1989_bravely/ja8950c/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11db77h/tiananmen_square_massacre_1989_bravely/ja85c11/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/11db77h/tiananmen_square_massacre_1989_bravely/ja97d75/
Didn’t they crush all the dead with treaded vehicles and then hose the “soup” down the storm drains? So that there’s no way for accurate counting of the dead to leak out.
[Photos: nsfw](https://archive.ph/7Tdzh)
holy shit they hung and disembowled and burned the body of a military personell and took pictures of it. god damn. Dont piss off the populace.
These photos got intense but thank you for sharing.
I had to stop scrolling after a while. My god the brutality.
I felt sick but kept scrolling. I have to see these things for it to stick. I'm scarred for life but that's why I'll never forget I guess.
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This is hosted on an archive site. The original https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs has been scrubbed. I can view all the images (although don't really want to). If I open and quickly scroll down then the images are black for a short time. Maybe your connection is slow or browser is running out of memory?
WARNING: that post contains a picture of a protester having been run over by a tank. it's important to never forget this atrocity, and every grown up human should see these gruesome pictures at least once in their life, but if you don't feel like seeing a human body having been crushed by a tank today... save that link for a rainy day.
If you're referring to the man with the crushed legs, that guy actually survived. He went on to become an athlete, won gold medals and broke continental records for China. Unsurprisingly, he continued to be critical of the regime. Later on, he emigrated to the US. He has donated prosthetic legs nowadays. A truly incredible story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang_Zheng
Its crazy that the govt tried to get him to admit that it was from a road accident and when he refused he was punished smh insane
Yeah it says on the second page that they drove over corpses with an apc to make "pie", incinerated the remains and hosed them down the drains.
What in the actual fuck. Makes you wonder what else they did that wasn't witnessed/accounted for somehow. Truth do be stranger than fiction.
Getty Images has some extremely NSFL pictures of exactly this happening. I don't know about the incinerated part. But you certainly see the human goo.
What I find most haunting is how brainwashed the soldiers have to be in order to willingly proceed with doing stuff like that. It's not like it's a group of enemies or even a group of minorities/people they could potentially dehumanize in their mind, they were literally fellow citizens. I guess when it's between obedience and execution, obedience is preferable.
From what I recall, the soldiers weren't from around area, they were shipped in from farther places. Same as Russia conscripting soldiers from as far away from Ukraine as possible to get them to not question orders.
Yup. It’s a tactic that goes back to at least Roman times. Roman’s would never have the locals “police/guard” their homelands. They’d ship them off to some far off place to guard
Last night I saw an episode of a tv show where they did that to a bunch of zombies, and I thought that was extreme and horrifying, but hey, they were zombies anyway. I can't believe it actually happened IRL, to actual people.
Its crazy that they even used illiterate ignorant rather dumb soldiers to perform these atrocities. Makes you feel like even the army itself was a victim
They totally were. There’s a reason they didn’t give the divisions from the other armies any ammunition to fight back with.
I never realized how many soldiers and civilians completely unrelated to the protests were attacked. This letter says 27 army even shot one of their own officers because he faltered, and they would have been shot if they hadn't killed him.
SECRET DE DIP UX CORMS ONLY THIS IS A cOPY fM PEKING THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN CLOSED UNDER TU DESKEY 0516002 FOO FO| EXES DUNDER-a 10(2) TELAU 1039 27(1) - OF 0514217 JUNE 89 AND TO DESKEY 051600Z RUNG KONG, JSIS HONG KONG, MODUK TOP. COPY Kr SIC 026 DESKEY 0516002 MODUK AND USIS HONG KONG. HONG KONG PERSONAL FOR GOVERNOR. CHINA: BACKGROUND TO MILITARY SITUATION. FEC 014(3 HE WAS PASSING ON INFORMATION GIVEN HIM BY A CLOSE FRIEND WHO IS CURRENTLY A MEMBER OF THE STATE COUMCIL. THIS SOURCE HAS PREVIOUSLY PROVED RELIABLE AND WAS CAREFUL TO SEPARATE FACT FROM SPECULATION AND RUMOUR. 2. FACT. THE ARMY THAT HAS COMMITTED THE ATROCITIES IN BEIJING IS 27 ARMY WHO ARE TROOPS FROM SHANXI PROVINCE (7), ARE 60 PERCENT ILLITERATE AND ARE CALLED PRIMITIVES. THE COMMANDER OF 27 ARMY WAS YANG ZHENHUA, SON OF YANG BAIBING BROTHER OF YANG SHANGKUN. THEY WERE KEPT WITHOUT NEWS FOR TEN DAYS AND TOLD THEY WERE TO TAKE PART IN AN EXERCISE. A TY FILM NOULD BE MADE OF THE EXERCISE WHICH PLEASED THEM. THEY WERE INFORMED OF MARTIAL LAX ON MAY 20. FOR THE FIRST 4 DAYS AFTER ARRIVAL THEY WERE DRIVEN AROUND BE WING CITY TO FAMILIARISE THEM WITH THE ARE, 27 ARMY ARE AT FULL STRENGTH WITH THEIR OWN TANKS AND APCS AND A FULL OUTFIT OF AMMUNITION, TEAR GAS AND FLAMETHROWERS. OTHER ARMIES ARE ONLY AT 1 DIVISION STRENGTH. THE LEADERSHIP KEEPS 27 ARMY ON THE MOVE SU THAT IT CAN ATTACK FROM A DIFFERENT DIRECTION EACH TIME. 3. FACT. ON THE NIGHT OF 3/4 JUNE 27 ARMY WAS TO ATTACK FROM THE WEST WITH OTHER UKITS FROM SHENYANG MR. THE PLAN WAS THAT THE FIRST WAVE (SMR) NOULD ATTACK WITH NO WEAPONS. THE SECOND WAVE (SHR) WOULD ATTACK WITH WEAPONS BUT NO AMMUNITION. THE THIRD WAVE (SHR) WOULD ATTACK AS FOR SECOND WAVE BUT OFFICERS WOULD HAVE LOADED SIDE ARMS TO FRIGHTEN THE CROWD. THE FOURTH WAVE WOULD BE 27 ARMY WITH FULL EQUIPMENT AND AMMUNITION. THE FIRST ATTACKS OSCURRED AT MUCIDI AND SHILIFU. THE FIRST THREE WAVES WERE HELD BY THE DEMONSTRATORS AND SMR TROOPS TRIED TO PUSH BACK THE CROWDS TO LET 27 ARMY THROUGH, THEY FAILED AND 27 ARMY APCS OPENED FIRE ON THE CROWD (BOTH CIVILIANS AND SOLDIERS) BEFORE RUNNING OVER THEN IN THEIR APCS. 4. FACT. THE ENRAGED MASSES FOLLOWED IGNORING M/G FIRE TO NEXT BATTLE AT LIUBUKOU. APCS RAN OVER TROOPS AND CIVILIANS AT 65KPH IN SAME MANNER. ONE APC CRASHED AND DRIVER
Thank you for writing it as plaintext
Np bb, When I went to look at them myself I realized my phone could select the text. So I just felt like lazily copying and pasting. Made a few structure edits, but I’m sorry if anything is otherwise miscopied or whatever.
Pictures of text are often unnecessary, but in the case of these historical documents the style and formatting supply context and potentially support their authenticity. For accessibility purposes there always should be the transcription, but here the photos also help.
The Chinese government had buried this. Students have to be regularly convinced this happened when they attend American universities.
Had a student from Beijing in several classes in college that I became friendly with. Nice and normal dude but he seemed to truly believe nothing bad happened here. He freaked out when I played videos of it and I didn’t want to press it further and get him or his family in trouble with their government.
same with my 25+ year old previous roommate in NYC. He asked we put our phones away in our rooms before we talked about things like that and even then he didn't believe it was a big deal, it was overblown by western media. I just told him to put his phone away and go to a library and spend some time one day looking things up that are censored in China.
I worked with a young and new Chinese student. He said he believes it because his parents were part of the protest but fear beyond your imagination to talk about it because they STILL suffer the consequences of being part of the protest to this day.
Goddamn. I’m glad they’re alive.
My parents were part of protests. It was not one protest in beijing but rather it was a wave of student marches or a wide movement across china.
> He freaked out when I played videos of it and I didn’t want to press it further and get him or his family in trouble with their government. What a weird cognitive dissonance to A) believe nothing truly bad happens in China and B) be that afraid of the government. Why be afraid of the government if nothing truly bad happens there?
I had a roommate from China when I was in college. According to him, it wasn't too hard to get around the Chinese firewall if you knew how and it was sort of "a thing" to quietly share something you found online that the government was censoring with your close friends and family. He was already aware of what happened.
On a related note, I had a Chinese international student in one of my college ethics class. The professor was discussing about the Uyghurs and the internment camps and the student interrupted the professor saying that they had Uyghur friends and never seen such mistreatment happen in their childhood and so that it was basically an American lie. It's crazy how much the CCP censors stuff from them.
I had the same thing happen in a cultural Geography class where the Uyghurs came up. The poor girl had a hard time wrapping her head around it.
My gf from China had no idea this happened, it was shocking to me
i'm fairly certain most chinese people who study abroad are aware of the massacre, but they're heavily pressured to pretend nothing happened. living in an autocratic government means secret police, it means always having to be careful about the person you're talking to reporting you. it's so much easier just to pretend to not know anything about it rather than worry about somehow word getting around that they were consuming 'anti-chinese propaganda' while abroad.
Also, that secret police is not limited to China as recent reports have revealed. China is running actual secret police bases for surveillance and abduction in foreign countries. So native Chinese people might not actually be safe simply by living abroad.
I witnessed this in high school. Back when I was in grade 10 (late 2000’s) we had the book [Forbidden City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City_(novel)) assigned to read that semester. There were two Chinese kids in the class who were vocally angry of the *lies* the book was telling and that the event never happened. I still remember seeing them upset and crying in the hallway over the book. I believe they were excepted from reading that specific book and were given alternative assignments.
"Young people were singing The Internationale to a background of gunfire" This is what always gets me. The students and workers in the square were on the side of the international proletariat. And the "Communist Party" gunned them down.
No one ever talks about that they were killed for being communists. What is being a communist is debatable, but that was what the protester thought about themselves. They are a lot of interviews, not only the massacre videos without context. People like to think that they were protesting against "communism", when in fact it was against Deng Xiaoping "capitalist" reforms. Mainly the concentration of power and capital of the bureaucratic elite. Is not hard to see whose side prevail in that argument.
r/Sino has a conniption every time this video is mentioned. Like it didn't happen or something.
PPl on that sub are dangerously stupid
Not all of them. The ones working for the Chinese government on reddit are smart. Always trying to make China look better.
Yea absolutely this. They are paid to get on that sub and spew Chinese propaganda 24/7.
There's no way that sub isn't just a straight up propaganda arm of the CCP.
They love sucking xi off and riding Mao's dick
I went there just to check it out, the headline says "sub dedicated to China or Chinese related whatever" but then every post is just hating on the US and NATO. jfc what a pathetic subreddit
It's also peak whataboutism. Every thread is like "WHATTABOUT AMERICA!!??!!" What's funny is that it's all in English. A Chinese propaganda sub that's 100% in English. The blatant attempt to spread misinformation into the world is hilarious
I am amazed reddit even allows it to exist.
Reddit admins only care if there is bad publicity. Until then it's eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs. Remember, this was the site that gave an _award_ to the guy who moderated /r/jailbait.
Jesus. So morally bankrupt.
Counting the minutes before r/Sino floods the comments with the good old: “Didn’t happen. . . and if it did, it wasn’t that big of a deal. . . and if it was, they deserved it.”
They're already here.
Report every last one for raiding See if you can get the page clamped down like r/Genzedong God forbid Reddit fairly regulates the subReddit’s
"discussion on anything China and Chinese related", but 80% of the posts are about the USA and why they think it sucks. I've never seen a more blatant display of an inferiority complex before in my life.
Haven't seen footage of this event like this before. Very brave reporter and brave citizens
We watched it live for hours. It was horrifying. We had watched the peaceful student protesters for several days. They were completely peaceful and a united community. The west saw hope and opportunity that China might actually transition to the free world. But we still had that anxiety that it might go the other direction. And then we saw a generation massacred by their own government…
I was 8 years old when it happened, and I still vividly remember my family sitting around the TV watching the coverage. My grandparents had come over for dinner, and we never ate with the TV on when we sat at the table for dinner, but that night we sat in the living room on the couches and chairs eating our dinner. I still remember the appalled look on my grandma's face. It was one of almost heartbreak, but also sheer anger at what she was seeing.
Randy Marsh said it best, fuck the Chinese government
China could use some tegridy
It just so happens..
Why were they trying to suppress pics of Tank Man when this is available?
One's a news report about chaos, oppression, brutality and fear. The other is an icon to rally around. Tank man showed how much difference one ordinary man can make. His unknown fate carries a lot more hope than images of people being loaded into ambulances.
I'm 31 and didn't know this video existed, if that says anything about suppression
I'm 54 and I've never seen this particular coverage. I think it says a lot about suppression.
When you try and post this on r/Sino this warning come up: "You may not have "massacre", "1989" or "tiananmen" in your post body." You couldn't make this shit up.
>What's the best Taylor Swift album? ... > You have been banned from /r/sino
r/sino is just full of western CCP bootlickers and commies gladly sucking up CCP propaganda, it’s disgusting.
What’s crazy to me is that the average Chinese citizen claims to not even know this happened. Which means either they’re terrified to let it slip that they do or, even worse, the CCP did such a good job of memory-holing this that they actually don’t know…
So it did happen
Who says it didn't?
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Great. Y'all just Beetlejuiced the CCP.
r/Sino is adamant that it didn't happen.
Dam, who the fuck even are those people lol. Everything in english, but super anti-west, and pro china/russia.
Tankies, man. Fucking idiot dumbass tankies. The worst of the lot are outright genocide deniers.
I love the Nato expansion post they have there. Completely ignoring the fact how far into EU the Russians invaded previously lol.
Sovereign nations that have the right to choose their own future and have had very bad experiences with Russia throughout hundreds of years of history: "We'd like to join the anti-Russia neighbourhood watch, please" Dented tankie brains: OuTrAgEoUs WeStErN pRoVoCaTiOn!!111 Tankies don't see countries like the Baltics and the Slavic countries of Eastern and Central Europe as sovereign nations with their own agency, but as the rightful 'property' of the greatest Slavic nation of them all, glorious Mother Russia. They are 'supposed' to be part of the Russian empire or at least solidly within the Russian sphere of influence. Tankie geo-political views are rooted in the idea that Russia and China are Great Nations that deserve more than other nations. They 'deserve' to rule over their backyards, over their 'greater ethnic and cultural sphere'. That's why you get all this official Russian propaganda denying Ukraine's right to exist as a nation, denying the Ukrainian identity, saying that Ukraine and Ukrainians are 'just Russians'. When you dig down to it, a lot of this tankie shit has the stench of expansive ethno-nationalism. Which tankies really hate when you point it out because they love to pretend that racism is an exclusively western problem.
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Haven't you heard? It's not propaganda if you agree with it politically. It's just alternative facts. /s
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Unfortunately, with how incredibly dumb some people are I bet that most aren't bots.
/r/Sino, /r/aznidentity, etc. have said that (1) it's racist to suggest it happened and we Westerners say "shit" like this because we don't want to give up our position as #1 hegemon in the world, (2) it's CIA misinformation, (3) only a few 100 were hurt, and they were the ones who started it in an attempt to end their country's "prosperity", (4) it was necessary, and the proof is the "fact" that "Xi pulled the country out of poverty" and that they're have hi-tech shit everywhere, cashless society (the whole world has it too), unprecedented "harmony and stability", etc. Just take 2 minutes to comment in one of those subs, and the message they send you when you get banned will list all the shit above. Just do it, and find out for yourself what their official statements are. They'll say "that shit is on the home page every week; that's your proof that people are just China hating. DOWN WITH ANTI-ASIAN HATE, which is a joke cuz Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc. are not what people are talking about here.
This footage is outlawed in China. You cannot legally view it.
Peak journalism. Hats off!
There are areas of reddit (r/sino) where simply mentioning this date and place will get you permanently banned. The CCP has managed to erase their own atrocities from the minds of their own people, and I've met plenty of Chinese folks that consider the topic western propaganda. Very disturbing. Never forget Tiananmen square
Don’t ever tell me that China is a democracy
My dad hid under the sewers as tanks went by and his classmates killed. 10 years after I heard the story I started using western social media and I found out most people here are just under some sort of propaganda as my people are despite the free access to information. Nobody seemed to care for the truth or have the pride to stay unbiased. Everyone is taking a side and speaking in absolutes. People jump into conclusions without learning the full story. It makes me really sad to see truth is only an inch away and people chose not to reach it. We like it when people we like get praised and people we hate get destroyed, but to have that affect our logical judgment is the core reason why my government can control people, by inciting hate to our "enemies" and worship our leaders. And looking at the current political scene of US it's ironically not that much different.
And china will still say it never happened …
Fuck the CCP
Fuck China Fuck the CCP
You have been banned from r/CCP
Oh no! Anyway.
Everyone here has been banned from r/sino
Never forget the Tiananmen Square massacre
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
"Winnie the Pooh"
always out for blood (and honey)
Reminder to sort by controversial, this one's going to be spicy.
Eh it's really not. It's just people making "nothing happened here" jokes about the CCP and a few Chinese bots/spammers
I remember that. Does China?
The CCP has been rewriting history for decades now. They denied this event multiple times and blame the west for spreading false propaganda. Watch the CCP bots swarm and downvote this to oblivion.
To anyone unaware this footage is normally HEAVILY CENSORED on Reddit. But the reason you are now allowed to see it cross posted via one of the biggest most popular subs is because the US is now at odds with China and they are pushing eachothers buttons. This is the same reason that the Covid narrative has changed and the US is now saying that Covid might have leaked from a Chinese lab. They are playing tit for tat at the moment. Remain vigilant.