20 Years After Tiananmen, China Stifles Online Dissent 235
alphadogg writes with this snippet from Network World: "The Internet has brought new hope to reformists in China since the country crushed pro-democracy protests in the capital 20 years ago. But as dissidents have gone high-tech, the government in turn has worked to restrict free speech on the Internet, stifling threats to its rule that could grow online. China has stepped up monitoring of dissidents and Internet censorship ahead of June 4, when hundreds were killed in 1989 after Beijing sent soldiers to its central Tiananmen Square to disperse protestors. The authoritarian government wants to ensure that date and other sensitive anniversaries this year pass without public disturbances, observers say. In recent months, China has blocked YouTube and closed two blog hosting sites, bullog.cn and fatianxia.com, known for their liberal content."
Re:It's still inconvenient? (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's still inconvenient? (Score:5, Interesting)
[Shrug] It took many years before China admitted the great depths of mistakes [wikipedia.org] made many decades ago [wikipedia.org], and yet the main guy responsible is still revered and there's still a lot of glossing over of the real effects (e.g., tens of millions of deaths). Denial of one's mistakes is naturally popular. Why wouldn't they continue the tradition? Maybe they'll be ready to face the reality of the massacre at Tiananmen Square in a few more decades.
Re:It's still inconvenient? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And the secret sauce is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolute rubbish. But actually it's even more scary.
Joe public in China don't live in a state of fear, because of mass surveillance; they live in a state of ignorance because of the governments cultural sandbox.
The government is widely seen as doing a good job of solving those "unique Chinese problems", imaginary or otherwise.
Take note (Score:3, Interesting)
This is one of the countries that people want to let control DNS.
Some surprising results searching google.cn (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's my search: http://images.google.cn/images?gbv=2&hl=zh-CN&sa=1&q=Tiananmen+Square+(massacre+OR+killing+OR+event) [google.cn]
Re:China is the product of Chinese culture. (Score:5, Interesting)
'The Chinese people support the CCP'
It is not so straightforward as this. There is plenty of discontent. Corrupt officials and police are hated. The CCP do a good job of getting the glory of the Chinese people's fervent nationalistic feeling. Control of the media makes this not too difficult a task.
'This government has existed for decades because a majority of Chinese support it'
Not really - it has existed by control, through force, fear and a growing economy. There is no way of testing how many people actually support the government.
'By contrast, in one day of 1989 June, about 1 million people gathered in Tiananmen Square to demand the creation of a Western democracy'
Wrong on a number of details. The gathering happened throughout the preceding 6 weeks, at least. Many, many more gathered in major cities throughout China at the same time. (I witnessed demonstrations in May 1989 in Beijing,Shanghai,Wuhan,Chongqing, Chengdu).
There was no 'demand for the creation of a Western democracy' (ok - individuals might have said this, but no definite concept demanded). The people were fed up with the system, lack of opportunity, corruption - it was an outpouring of many grievances.
However, I suppose your point is that, if the people were fed up then they could have/should have overthrown the government. The fact they didn't is more to do with the fact that China is a big place, with a mix of cultures,languages, poor communication (especially in 1989), with no environment for establishing a concerted opposition. You cannot infer that, because the people did not overthrow the government, the people support it.
(signed: a long term foreign resident of China)
Re:China is the product of Chinese culture. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, you don't complain in China if you know what's good for you. How many stories do we see every year about prominent protestors being thrown into labor camps?
Take Hong Kong for a recent example of how life in China works. As soon as the transition was complete - Basic Law, Special Administrative Region or not - the newspapers and politicians made fast 180's and self-censored to avoid bringing the wrath of the Chinese government down on them. Are you saying that a majority of people in Hong Kong love communism and the CCP, since there isn't any public protest?
Certainly some of the Chinese people have been indoctrinated by the Communist Party. And some accept it because it "doesn't affect them" (moderate capitalism and "openness" has kept the wealthy people in the cities from complaining). But you'd probably find a lot of them are unhappy with it - although probably for the same reasons we're unhappy with our governments (rampant corruption, bureaucracy, and inattentiveness) than the limitations on their freedom of speech, thought, and lives.
Re:It's still inconvenient? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:China is the product of Chinese culture. (Score:1, Interesting)
You say the transfer was peaceful in Eastern Europe, and for the most part it was, but you forget all the rallies that were brutally suppressed before hand. Also the Governments of EE didn't keep this knowledge from the masses, and didn't even appear to try to do so. So unrest was able to gather and people never forgot.
In China they were just as suppressive, Tiananmem wasn't the 1st and will not be the last. Case in point I see you already forgotten the Tibetan peoples recent unrest nor the Uighurs constant unrest. Also to say that the "Chinese" people support the CCP is willfully ignorant.
The Tibetans certainly don't, the Uighurs certainly don't and I can bet you there are probably are few other cultures and peoples in China that would love to have their voice heard.
Also your claim that your claim about needing sufficient people to protest and insinuating is poor at best. Considering how the CCP is in continuous control mode gettting 5 MILLION people to demonstrate at one point in place is unrealistic. Multiple co-ordinated protests across the country might reach that number, but again, the problem is you lump in everyone as Chinese.
The Tibetans are protesting against the CCP the simply don't want to be part of China, the same as the Uighurs and to expect them to line for pro-democracy presentantions with Han Chinese the population responsible for supressing and displacing them in their own lands is extremely unlikely.
Re:It's still inconvenient? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's still inconvenient? (Score:3, Interesting)
The strangest thing about the Government of China's censorship over the last twenty years, in remained in place and even tightened up as the government transitioned from a communist country to a corporate fascist country. So a country that switched from blind political ideology and the unquestioning worship and obedience of those in power to blind greed and the unquestioning worship and obedience of those in power.
So in the last twenty years the 'currency' of power has changed but they have remained locked in the absence of freedom and democracy, for the majority of course. The minority who run things are still driven by greed, lust for power and bloated destructive ego's, a rogue government by any ones description.
So you have censorship occurring in western mass media where no change is highlighted in the political system of China because it suits the greed of those western corporations who participate in the ruthless exploitation of the majority of Chinese people and the long term destruction of China's ecosystem through pollution. So 'communist' propaganda has been gone for some time to be replaced by the more slick slime of modern corporate PR.
Re:No Brutal Authoritarian Government Required (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok: I guess I'm a little older than both of you... now I am wondering what the difference is between the collective creating a false narrative and Authority doing so. Obviously when you have men of power engaging in the deliberate re-writing of history you are soundly in George Orwell's 1984 scenario: "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.". But how is that different than actions of Tobacco Industry 10 years ago or the deification of Ronald Reagan in popular conservative culture? Besides the obvious: Those in Authority do so to retain and extend power, those in industry do it to increase profit, and the proletariat do it because they are told to.
In the end the result is pretty similar, is it? Americans & The American Federal Government: made and broke treaties at whim; engaged in ethnic cleansing & genocide: and all the other horrific historical events surrounding our dealings with the native Americans. To this day native Americans are among the most disadvantaged, and the Federal Government 'lost' trillions of dollars which it was supposedly managing on their behalf. To this day the only real apology forthcoming was a symbolical statement of contrition and by now I think most rational people would say that it's too late for any real action.
Much the same can be said of the slavery in United States. Functional slavery was practiced in the United States up to the 2nd world war. The prevailing attitudes and policies of centuries created a culture within American Blacks which as best could be described as dysfunctional and self defeating. This is world that civil rights leaders of the '60s were born into. Yet this is completely unrecognized in popular history in the South Eastern United States.
In that light; I don't see the functional difference in the Chinese sitting on the Tienanmen Square Massacre until a generation or two has past. Perhaps I could also say that we in the west have no moral authority to voice a condemnation when we also do those things.
I should also add that in my opinion the Chinese Authorities have already created a dangerous nationalistic undercurrent which they neither fully understand or fully control. And it's that which posses the greatest threat to them... not anything out here in the rest of the world.
Do you understand implications of the word "ban"? (Score:1, Interesting)
> I fail to see the hypocrisy in people who believe religion == bad idea && gitmo == bad idea since both can be used as tools of repression.
You're distorting what he said. He didn't say that they merely think that religion is a bad idea, he spoke of people who wanted to ban it. That goes far beyond merely calling religion a "bad idea." A ban on religion is also a tool of repression (and therein lies the hypocrisy).
Yes, I have seen people seriously express a desire to outlaw religion in the same ways that China does. And they don't technically even ban religion entirely (like some wish to), they "merely" regulate what you can believe and require a license from the government for your church. Even though that's somewhat less than the ban he was mentioning which I have also witnessed people calling for, jackbooted thugs will crash any unlicensed private prayer meetings you're holding.
If you've never met that kind of atheist [cracked.com], I can only say that you must get out even less than I do.
Re:Ignorance of recent history (Score:2, Interesting)
Tiananmen Square is very much ongoing for China. Zhao Ziyang - who was effectively the Chinese Gorbachev - was planning to liberalise Chinese society substantially. Students were demonstrating peacefully. A handful of hardliners used the army to crush the students, illegally deposed Zhao and have turned China into a vicious police state where old ladies get sent for reeducation camps for requesting permission to complain that developers have kicked them out of their houses [msn.com]. Before Tiananmen most people thought that China would liberalise just like Eastern Europe. After there was no chance of that. All the tensions with Taiwan and Japan greatly intensified following Tiananmen. It was a coup, plain and simple and a noticably fascist regime took over from a much more liberal one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15zhao-transcript.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1 [nytimes.com]
Based on this, we can say that if a country wishes to modernize, not only should it implement a market economy, it must also adopt a parliamentary democracy as its political system. Otherwise, this nation will not be able to have a market economy that is healthy and modern, nor can it become a modern society with a rule of law. Instead it will run into the situations that have occurred in so many developing countries, including China: commercialization of power, rampant corruption, a society polarized between rich and poor.
Zhao Ziyang, RIP.
More to the point one year after Tiananmen similar demonstrations broke out in Taiwan, which was at that point a one party state and effectively a mirror image on China where the KMT was the ruling party instead of the CCP. President Lee Teng Hui met the students and agreed to their demands for free elections, which he proceeded to win until he run into newly reintroduced term limits. Now Taiwan is a vibrant democracy and China isn't.
If it hadn't been for Tiananmen I'm quite sure China would have gone the same way. I also think Lee Teng Hui and Zhao Ziyang would have been able to negotiate some sort of way for Taiwan and China to coexist. Reading Zhao's book, the similarities with LTH seem quite striking. I think they would have got on pretty well.
You should read his book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_the_State:_The_Secret_Journal_of_Premier_Zhao_Ziyang [wikipedia.org]
I bought the English edition in Taiwan. I had to reserve a copy because it had sold out in both Chinese and English. I'm told the Chinese edition has sold out in Hong Kong. Inevitably it's been scanned as a pdf and is circulating on the internet inside China where equally inevitably it has been banned. A great injustice happened to the Chinese people at Tiananmen and has continued in the years since. While most people are scared to talk about it, it most certainly has not been forgotten.