Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Tiananmen Square Massacre

[Kléber]

Hey everyone, if you can handle poor video quality, I found this documentary about the crisis of 1989. It has some incredible footage. If you don't know much about the subject, this will inform you and/or completely change your mind about it. It also analyzes rifts among the Party-State and the protesters, and the historical context.

Nobody who sees this for themselves can honestly repeat the lies of the Chinese government and their opportunist defenders that this was anything other than a mass demonstration of students and workers.

Warning: there is a lot of violence and some of it is very difficult to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ou2-Kv4UA
(This is part 1 of 20)

About the incident from the WSWS:
Two decades ago, on June 4 1989, Beijing resembled a war zone, with trucks ablaze, rapid and continuous gunfire and tanks rolling through streets strewn with dead bodies. During the previous weeks, around 200,000 troops from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had been brought into the capital following the imposition of martial law. On the orders of China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, the army crushed the two month-long protests by workers and students against the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime.

Although the events of June 3-4 are generally referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre, most of the killings occurred when 40,000 heavily-armed troops forced their way through densely-populated working class districts to reach Tiananmen Square on the evening of June 3 and the following morning. Roadblocks were set up in the surrounding suburbs and pitched street battles took place between workers and the mechanised PLA.

Students began their protests in Beijing in April 1989, demanding democratic reforms. These opened the floodgates for a nationwide upheaval of the urban working class, which began to advance far more radical social demands. About 100 million people, encompassing virtually every higher-learning institution, half the country’s technical schools and countless factories, mines and offices in some 400 cities participated in one form or another. By strangling the movement in Beijing, then unleashing a countrywide crackdown, including the arrest of tens of thousands of activists, the regime survived the revolutionary crisis.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/tien-j04.shtml

[Red Commissar]

One thing that the foreign media tends to omit about the Tienanmen protesters is that some of them were socialistic in nature. Westerners tend to overlook that fact. I've even read that those sung the Internationale.

[Kléber]

Yep, they are constantly singing the internationale in the footage.

[RedStarOverChina]

One thing that the foreign media tends to omit about the Tienanmen protesters is that some of them were socialistic in nature. Westerners tend to overlook that fact. I've even read that those sung the Internationale.
They weren't really thinking of socialism when they sang the Internationale. Everyone in China used to sing it, so it was for them, an unifying rallying song rather than a socialist song.

I've had some good conversations with one of former the leaders of the students, Orkesh Dolet, now living in exile in Taiwan. He famously said in 1989 that they wanted a China in which young people could wear Nike shoes. He clearly was not aware that what he was proposing (and what indeed, happened) would bring in Nike sweatshops as well.

They were a confused generation back then. Most of them were nationalist and emotionally pro-socialist. They were anti-corruption, but were also very much influenced by American propaganda broadcasts.


Oh, and you're barking at the wrong tree, calling Deng a Stalinist. He wasn't a Stalinist, no matter how loosely one defines the term.

[ls]

They weren't really thinking of socialism when they sang the Internationale. Everyone in China used to sing it, so it was for them, an unifying rallying song rather than a socialist song.

I've had some good conversations with one of former the leaders of the students, Orkesh Dolet, now living in exile in Taiwan. He famously said in 1989 that they wanted a China in which young people could wear Nike shoes. He clearly was not aware that what he was proposing (and what indeed, happened) would bring in Nike sweatshops as well.

They were a confused generation back then. Most of them were nationalist and emotionally pro-socialist. They were anti-corruption, but were also very much influenced by American propaganda broadcasts.


Oh, and you're barking at the wrong tree, calling Deng a Stalinist. He wasn't a Stalinist, no matter how loosely one defines the term.

I can just about accept much of that, but don't you feel in 1986 the student protests based on clearcut demands for better things were genuine and not in any way pro-Western? With that in mind, do you not think that communists should have been intervening to turn the movement firmly and unbreakably leftward in its demands against the revisionist and by now, pro-capitalist CPC?

[RedStarOverChina]

First of all, there were no leftists among students...even if there were, they wouldn't be able to speak up. Back then, leftist rhetorics remind people of the Culture Revolution, so unlike guitars and Rock music, they weren't "hip" in 1989.

I can just about accept much of that, but don't you feel in 1986 the student protests based on clearcut demands for better things were genuine and not in any way pro-Western?

Much of the protests came out of dissatisfaction against CPC corruption and the ills of economic reforms.

Who could be against that?

That's the sole reason why Chinese people are so conflicted about this whole thing. It's the most intriguing thing, really. Chiniese people don't talk about Tian'an'men at all, not to each other, and not to their children---No one. It's clearly not just because of government censorship---It's not THAT effective. It's because it is confusing as it is painful for those who had experienced it as well as those who learned about it afterwards.

Much of what the students demanded was fair and (at least initially) cautious. But that was the Cold War, despite thawing US-China relations. A defeat of the Chinese government is a victory for the US. The students were placed in that awkward situation in which everything they did had international consequences which will be exploited by US imperialism.

The Chinese government was divided and self-contradictory, which only led to more anger among the students, and the sheer retardedness (not to mention douchebaggery) of the Premier Li Peng didn't help either. So they failed to reach an agreement, and everything else became inevitable.

If it had been me, I'd also be marching out there against the CPC and speaking with Radio Free Asia; so I don't want to criticise the students' ideas too much. But in hindsight, the majority of the Chinese population, despite what happened, don't want China to become another Soviet Union or East Germany, for obvious reason.

That's where the conflicting emotions come from.

On top of that, there's the fact that the "People's Army" was shooting the people indiscriminantely. In China before 1989, there was a strong bond between the population and the Liberation Army that was rarely seen elsewhere. The army enjoyed enormous support from all sectors of the society, including students. So you can imagine how big of a shocker it was to see what happened in June 4th, 1989.

The whole relation between the army and the population changed overnight. The people have never forgiven them, and to this day the troops are forbidden to leave their barracks and interact with people with uniforms on.

[Agnapostate]

One thing that the foreign media tends to omit about the Tienanmen protesters is that some of them were socialistic in nature. Westerners tend to overlook that fact. I've even read that those sung the Internationale.

I made that exact point in my DebatePolitics thread (http://www.debatepolitics.com/history/59826-fall-wall.html) about the Berlin Wall, regarding dissident movements in the USSR and other self-described socialist countries:


But there's also a sound point to be made in response to the fact that libertarian dissidents in "socialist" countries were often depicted as pro-capitalist figures protesting the godless reds in favor of glorious free markets and enterprise. In reality, they were usually socialists --- legitimate socialists who typically recognized the bankrupt, ethically flawed, and anti-socialist nature of the politico-economic arrangement in place. This is well-indicated by the aforementioned polling on the topic. But beyond that, there were a substantial number of supporters of this arrangement, many of them likely hesitant to attack "socialism" or "communism" because of their affinity with such ideology, and belief that attacks on the ruling political regime would constitute attacks on such ideology...

There was never any actual discussion of the thread topic, inasmuch as it was such a bruising smashing of the propaganda that we've become accustomed to, and I was eventually banned.

[RedStarOverChina]

Everyone whitewashes this event for their convenience. No, it can't be pinned down as a "pro-capitalist" or "pro-socialist" movement. Down to the roots, it's a patriotic movement in the tradition of the May 4th Movement.

All those supposedly socialist elements you see in the protests were merely a reflection of the Chinese society at the time. The students and workers were fundamentally for the reforms, but against its ills.

[khad]

All those supposedly socialist elements you see in the protests were merely a reflection of the Chinese society at the time. The students and workers were fundamentally for the reforms, but against its ills.
This. The legacy of the political education of the PRC up to that point was not able to create a greater consciousness. Everywhere in China today, you see protests and mass riots, but all these appear to be containable since they lack any real political objective beyond immediate justice.

At the core, almost all of these protesters, even the most violent ones, uphold and fetishize the nation. Many are more reactionary and corrupt than the corrupt elites they are reacting against.

[La Comédie Noire]

Had me in tears, thank you.

[ls]

Fair enough, I can see the logic in the replies by khad and rsoc here.

What do you propose to fight revisionism/corruption in China? Some people have said that the CPC is 'turning left' on this very forum, saying that the CPC has made moves to more rigorously regulate foreign investment and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/18/AR2009041801939.html. Thoughts?