Tiananmen

[Organic Revolution]

what happened there... im reealy not sure.

[Organic Revolution]

does nobody know?

[Martin Blank]

A potential proletarian revolution ruthlessly and mercilessly crushed by so-called "Communists". What else do you need to know?

Miles

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

www.wikipedia.org

[martingale]

What passes for conventional wisdom about Tiananmen is deliberate western propaganda:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/opini...o20040915gc.htm (http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/opinion/eo2004/eo20040915gc.htm)

Quote:
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The Tiananmen Square massacre myth

By GREGORY CLARK

China's recent ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of former leader Deng Xiaoping have given the Tiananmen massacre myth yet another lease of life. Most media commentators, the BBC especially, have rehashed the standard condemnation of Deng as a hardliner who instigated a massacre of harmless demonstrating students in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
Why someone who had suffered cruelly at the hands of Cultural Revolution hardliners and who did so much to push China on the path of liberalization should himself become a hardliner is not explained. Even less does anyone seem to have felt any need to check out just what actually happened in Tiananmen in 1989. Eyewitness accounts that say there was no massacre have been conveniently ignored. Blatantly anti-Beijing propaganda accounts have been unquestioningly accepted. Fortunately we now have a source whose sober impartiality cannot possibly be doubted, namely the de-classified reports from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing at the time (see Google under Tiananmen, Document 30 especially).

They confirm that there was no massacre in the square, that almost all the students who had been demonstrating there for two weeks had left the square quietly in the early hours of June 4, and that the real incident was panicky fighting triggered by crowds attacking troops, initially unarmed, as they headed for the square on June 3.

In the process a still indefinite number of troops, students and civilians were killed and many military vehicles were torched. Call it a mini civil war if you like, with troops eventually getting the upper hand over unarmed insurgents. But that is not a deliberate massacre of innocent students.

Curiously, the photo that most media use to illustrate the alleged student massacre shows a row of blazing army vehicles, some with crews trapped inside, in a long avenue that clearly is not part of Tiananmen Square. Indeed, the U.S. Embassy material speaks of troops only finally entering the square after some students attacked and killed a soldier in a vehicle at the entrance.

True, the Communist Party leadership under Deng later rounded up and imposed severe jail terms on student leaders involved in the Tiananmen demonstrations. But the same leadership had tried in vain to offer concessions to the students when they were camped in the square, and some of the student leaders have since admitted they were foolish to reject those concessions. Troops were only sent to remove the students when things were getting out of hand and the square needed to be cleaned up in advance of a Beijing visit by Soviet leader, Mikail Gorbachev.

Leader Li Peng later admitted that the real problem had been Beijing's inexperience in crowd control. Lacking the devices and trained police squads commonly used in the West for such control, it had had to rely on inexperienced troops.

If Beijing is to be faulted, it is for creating the conditions that encouraged the June 3 fighting outside the square. Years of insane Cultural Revolution economic policies and political oppression had created a sullen and impoverished proletariat only too willing to seize any excuse for antiregime violence. The attempt to remove the students from Tiananmen gave them that excuse.

Surprisingly, the media moralists so upset over the nonexistent Tiananmen massacre have little to say about the very brutal massacres of student demonstrators in Mexico (1968) and Thailand (1973). There, no effort was made to negotiate with or tolerate the students. They were rounded up immediately and killed in the hundreds. Yet both governments continued to enjoy Western approval. Meanwhile Beijing has had to suffer more than a decade of Western odium and sanctions for a non-massacre.

The New York Times, which should know better, recently ran an article by David Brooks opposing a EU move to lift some of these sanctions. He writes blandly of Beijing killing 3,000 students in the square. No sources are quoted. It is taken for granted that a massacre occurred.

This is not the first time Beijing has been condemned for something that did not happen. Perhaps the worst example was the Sino-Indian 1962 frontier war. As China desk officer in Canberra's foreign affairs bureaucracy at the time, I had to watch on impotently as the world, including Canberra, accused China of making an unprovoked attack on India when the evidence in front of me proved clearly that it was India that had first attacked China, across even the furthermost line of control demanded by India. It would be more than a decade before that evidence finally found the light of day. In the meantime, the myth of Chinese aggressiveness would be used to justify a raft of Western atrocities in Asia, the Vietnam intervention especially.

Another favorite of the anti-Beijing media has been alleged genocide in Tibet. This, when Tibetans, along with other minority peoples, have been allowed to have as many children as they wanted and Chinese have been subject to Beijing's one-child policies.

The latest sledgehammer aimed against Beijing, and a major reason for perpetuating the Tiananmen myth, is a claimed lack of Western-style political freedom. Whether Sinitic-culture nations with collective leaderships able to claim moral or revolutionary legitimacy -- Singapore is a good example -- should have to abide by Western-imposed standards of political conduct is debatable, particularly given the political circus we are seeing now in the U.S. But that aside, has anyone thought seriously of what would happen if China had our system of rival political parties competing for votes? First victim would be Beijing's one-child policy. The next victim would be the rest of the world as it tried to cope with the resource shortages and pollution created by a booming Chinese population. China is already destined to become a leading economic and political force in the world. The Western media should try harder to take it seriously.

Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat and vice president of Akita International University.
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[Martin Blank]

It may be that there was no massacre, but that does not negate the fact that it was an incipient proletarian uprising brutally crushed.


Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 07:22 AM
...

They confirm that there was no massacre in the square, that almost all the students who had been demonstrating there for two weeks had left the square quietly in the early hours of June 4, and that the real incident was panicky fighting triggered by crowds attacking troops, initially unarmed, as they headed for the square on June 3.

In the process a still indefinite number of troops, students and civilians were killed and many military vehicles were torched. Call it a mini civil war if you like, with troops eventually getting the upper hand over unarmed insurgents. But that is not a deliberate massacre of innocent students.

...

If Beijing is to be faulted, it is for creating the conditions that encouraged the June 3 fighting outside the square. Years of insane Cultural Revolution economic policies and political oppression had created a sullen and impoverished proletariat only too willing to seize any excuse for antiregime violence. The attempt to remove the students from Tiananmen gave them that excuse....

What is often not talked about in terms of the Tiananmen demonstrations is that thousands of workers joined the demonstrations under their own banners and with their own demands. Truckloads of miners, steelworkers and such rolled into Tiananmen singing the Internationale and flying red flags. These are the "unarmed insurgents" that Mr. Clark says were "willing to seize [on] any excuse for antiregime violence". To this day, the underground Workers' Party of China is banned for its role in Tiananmen.

Miles

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

Leader Li Peng later admitted that the real problem had been Beijing's inexperience in crowd control. Lacking the devices and trained police squads commonly used in the West for such control, it had had to rely on inexperienced troops.

This is like pretty much admitting that China is the same bourgeoisie scum as the west, only less experienced in repressing people. Anyway, google or wikipedia for information and don't believe most of what you read.

[Xiao Banfa]

My Dad was there with some NZ-China meat trading company and then as a carpet layer in the various state-foreign joint venture hotels.
He fucking saw people getting massacred before his very eyes.
He reckons that there was a miscommunication at politburo level- that Deng believed there was an attempted armed insurrection. The journalists were holed up and as a result of the war crimes that took place- there were revenge attacks by students on the millitary.
The western mass-media belief that Deng ordered the shootings needs serious questioning. But I don't bloody well know.

[Xiao Banfa]

Spelling is -Tiananmen. Xie xie wo men de tong shi!
PS you guys have got to see the wickedist propaganda movie by the Canadian Film Unit (I Think it's called that) It's called "China, A Land Transformed". Some cool maoists obviously hijacked the resources of the thing.
It's great, it details the development of the Hai Ho river valley from a barren flood conduit into a terraced paradise. Take it with a grain of salt. Good to get stoned and drunk to. I've seen it about 20 times (On 16mm film reel!).

[LSD]

Title fixed. ;)

[bolshevik butcher]

It is one of the msot shocking acts of all time that has been aloud to be forgotten because china has gone capitalist.

[kingbee]

my dad was out there reporting for s4c (welsh news channel) until a day or two before it happened. apparently, the workers marched united under banners of mao, and actually wanted to reverse the reforms that were going on, and wanted MORE socialism. the media have hijacked the event and claim it was a completely pro capitalist democracy protest!

also, jeremy bowen, the bbc reporter was there, but left a few weeks before it all happened- just as my dad was arriving. he said to my dad "you welsh are so far behind. its all dying down now!". ha. gutted, mr bowen.

[Camarada]

It was a brutal massacre

[Red Heretic]

http://rwor.org/a/v21/1005-009/1009/tianed.htm

^an analysis of the massacre from a Maoist perspective^

In short though, it was a massacre committed by revisionists against both Maoists and pro-American students who were protesting against the regime. At the protest, before being massacred, everyone sang The Internationale and raised red books to the sky.

[Roses in the Hospital]

Although I'm in no way trying to defend the actions of the Chinese government, the events of Tianamen square were not as bad as is commonly percieved. The protests had been going peacefully for about a week if I remember rightly, and were supported by liberal faction within the government, one man in particular, though I can't remember his name off hand, it was only after he was removed from influence that the army was sent in. It was only when the majority of crowd had gradually dispersed that the massacre occured, so the thousands who had occupied the square over that week were not all killed, at most I think there would have been a few hundred killed (though clearly that's a few hundred to many.) Interstingly the only military district who did not support the suppression was that of Beijing itself.
Also, the famous footage of the student and the tank was not actually of the massacre, journalists being strictly excluded, but from a protest which errupted a few days afterwards in responce to the events.
The poster who claimed it was a potential proletariat revolution is exagerating a little, it was a campiegn for certain reforms supported by at most a few thousand students, it was never intended, nor did it have enough widespread support to be a serious challenge to the authority of the government...

[Hiero]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 06:19 PM
A potential proletarian revolution ruthlessly and mercilessly crushed by so-called "Communists". What else do you need to know?

Miles
There was not potentional for proleteriat revolution. Alot of the protesters were liberals. The only revolutionaires were the Maoist there.

[Martin Blank]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2005, 07:52 PM
There was not potentional for proleteriat revolution. Alot of the protesters were liberals. The only revolutionaires were the Maoist there.
... In your opinion. There were also members of the underground Workers' Party of China, which is a proletarian socialist organization that does not subscribe to Maoism as a doctrine.

And, the Tienanmen events were not confined to Beijing. At the same time as the students were camping out in the Square, and the workers of Beijing were fraternizing with soldiers of the PLA, workers in most of the other major cities of China were holding illegal meetings and planning similar mass protests in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the capital.

The potential did exist. It was small and undeveloped, but it was potential.

Miles

[comradestephen]

"A potential proletarian revolution ruthlessly and mercilessly crushed by so-called "Communists". What else do you need to know?

Miles"

Oh give me a break. Ok, so you've got a protest going on...fair enough. Now add a side of CIA infiltration. Suddenly it's a different story, wouldn't you say? Trots always seem very excited to promote "proletarian revolutions" in socialist countries it goes right back to the days of Trotsky calling for the Soviet workers to overthrow the "Stalinist bureaucracy". Of course, the workers ignored Trotsky who had a very tiny following in the Soviet Union by that point while oddly enough; the workers were supporting the "evil Stalinist bureaucracy".

Anyhow, I’m not saying China is perfect. I'm just saying that demonstration that may have started out very innocently was turned into an attempt to over-throw socialism in China by the CIA. No doubt that some ultra-leftists were out in full force to help it along with some hair brained idea that they would slip into power somehow in the midst of it all.

I'm not pretending that this is an in depth analysis nor claiming to know all the answers nor saying that all the things that took place at Tiananmen are justifiable. But this was no almost proletarian revolution nor a plain old black and white story of poor innocent demonstrators being crushed by evil communist monsters.

All I’m saying is that once you have socialism you defend it. If you don't, then you’re wasting your time fighting for it in the first place and betraying the working class.

Sadly since then socialism in China has been under an even worse attack from within; market socialism.

An actual in depth analysis of this, among other things, from a Marxist-Leninist point of view is needed.

[JC1]

Anyhow, I’m not saying China is perfect. I'm just saying that demonstration that may have started out very innocently was turned into an attempt to over-throw socialism in China by the CIA. No doubt that some ultra-leftists were out in full force to help it along with some hair brained idea that they would slip into power somehow in the midst of it all.

I'm not pretending that this is an in depth analysis nor claiming to know all the answers nor saying that all the things that took place at Tiananmen are justifiable. But this was no almost proletarian revolution nor a plain old black and white story of poor innocent demonstrators being crushed by evil communist monsters.

All I’m saying is that once you have socialism you defend it. If you don't, then you’re wasting your time fighting for it in the first place and betraying the working class.

Sadly since then socialism in China has been under an even worse attack from within; market socialism.

An actual in depth analysis of this, among other things, from a Marxist-Leninist point of view is needed.


Comrade Stephan,

The PRC was obviously capitalist in 1989. Also, Miles here is no trotskyist. The CL has renounced Trotskyism.

P.S. Its also somewhat ridiculos to say a Intelegenince Orginization can reverse an epoch (Socialism). However, It & Imperialist Capial in general was a factor in the crushing of the gang of four.

[Red Heretic]

Regardless of whether or not his party formally rejects Trotskyism, it reeks of it in reality.

Even if it weren't a Trotskyite party, it would still be dogmatic and based off of economism. If the masses are going to be led forward to revolution, they must throw off dogmatic economism, and take up a real revolutionary ideology that strives for revolution in all spheres of society.

[Martin Blank]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2005, 11:20 PM
Regardless of whether or not his party formally rejects Trotskyism, it reeks of it in reality.

Even if it weren't a Trotskyite party, it would still be dogmatic and based off of economism. If the masses are going to be led forward to revolution, they must throw off dogmatic economism, and take up a real revolutionary ideology that strives for revolution in all spheres of society.

Show and prove how we stand on economism, dogmatism or Trotskyism. Hic rhodes, hic salta!

I find it funny that a self-described Maoist, called "Makhno" (!!!), is accusing us of being dogmatic or economistic. (I do expect the "Trotskyist" charge, however. Whenever petty-bourgeois socialists are confronted by a proletarian opposition, charges like "Trotskyism", "ultraleftism", "anarchism", etc., are always thrown around like mudpies.)

Miles

[Fidelbrand]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 04:19 PM
A potential proletarian revolution ruthlessly and mercilessly crushed by so-called "Communists". What else do you need to know?

Miles
I donate-buy a t-shirt form Tianamen Mothers, and my mom gave me a good spank..

Living only miles from Bejing, and to tell you the truth:
The students were right in some sense, but they were restless, directionless and too euphoric at the later stages of their protests. They only play guitars and were doing nothing and there were intra-conflicts. E.g. The student leader said she knew the students would be killed but she chose to rang away because she think she is an "important" figure. dry.gif

One of the student leaders even said, " What do we want? We want time with our girlfriends and we want nike shoes! They are not distributed equally!"

See the video, it's in cassette:

The Gate of heavenly peace
San Francisco, Calif. : Distributed by NAATA/CrossCurrent Media, c1996.

I cried heart-achingly after watching it and know much more as regards to this ambivalent subject. But one point has to be noted, It&#39;s not as shallow and clear as we see it is. Annd if one wants to say it&#39;s a proletarian revolution, I will just laugh it off since it isn&#39;t one. People wanted to have a more equal distribution of goods in command capitalism and they were dissatisfied with the corruption going on. period. <_<