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Tiananmen Square: China minister defends 1989 crackdown

131 points by Ennis 7y ago

Ennis 7y ago
I posted for the long Kate Adie video in the article which I had not seen before. The other reason is my concern at a defence minister even mentioning this event when everyone is aware of the state position already. It seems to be an expansion of the conversation from trade and market access to ideology which is unfortunate. There's enough to sort out with just market access, currency flows and IP.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  As detailed in the article, he didn't "mention" the event but was replying to a specific question about it during an event in Singapore.
marak830 7y ago
"That incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence, which is a correct policy," he told the forum. Gunning down protesters then grinding into a mulch with tanks and aocs, so that you can wash the remains down the gutters is never a solution. Trying to push this incident into the background only shows how little change has happened. Once more - this isn't a situation you can ever forgive a government for. There is no ifs, buts or collateral reasons for this.
- imglorp 7y ago
  Right. And it's not like the Dalai Lama can go home either. The only thing that's changed is they dictate more of the groupthink than they did in 89. The social credit system is probably going to be more effective than that tanks were.
- Causality1 7y ago
  We act like we find it so unacceptable but we're still perfectly willing to do business with them. Why should they change if they know they can get away with anything since $100 televisions matter more to us than our principles?
dmix 7y ago
I wonder who asked the Tiananmen question to the minister from the audience in Singapore. That guy has some backbone, I like it. They should be challenged on the topic of their political repression more. And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to dismiss as western propaganda. It's a pretty simple equation. Why would any state have to spend so much explicit effort on making no one mention it, if there was nothing really wrong with it? It will forever be the giant elephant in the room, regardless of how big and successful China makes itself. Few westerners really understanding how completely thorough and effective it was. The near universal obedience seen among the population would seem very foreign to most people in the west. Which is in itself an interesting cultural question.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  >I wonder who asked the Tiananmen question to the minister from the audience in Singapore. That guy has some backbone, I like it. They should be challenged on the topic of their political repression more. And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to dismiss as western propaganda. In contrast to the man in the audience Singapore was one of the first countries to normalise relationships with China, and in his biography From third world to First, Lee Kuan Yew actually seems somewhat supportive of it because he contrasts China's handling of the situation with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And realistically a country like Singapore is always going to be best positioned by keeping its relationships to opposing forces like the USA and China ambiguous. Committing to one side will draw a reaction from the other, and for smaller countries that's devastating. The space for most freedom and autonomy for a country like Singapore is right in the middle, in a competition between two large nations, choosing sides is a bad move.
- state-sponsored 7y ago
  Not to worry, 30 years is still on the young side of a cover up. At or around the 50 year mark, you'll start to see things loosen up (if 50 year-olds did the deeds, 50 years later they'd be 100), as most of the adults clenching their death grip on the yoke of popular discussion will start dying off. Once no one with skin in the game remains alive to defend the bad decisions, less effort will be invested in denial. Kind of like the way bad science works. It takes a while for a graduating class to grow into their credentials and take a giant shit on the more hated principles that their predeccesors tortured them with. That is, of course, unless blood relatives of the ones with blood on their hands are still floating around throughout the power structurers. In authoritarian regimes, personnel churn is slower, and dynastic succession can prolong even craptacular totalitarianism like Juche. With a singular leader, deposing the face of authority can unravel a movement like Baathism, with Saddam Hussein, but you have to take out the Udays and the Qusays too. China is bigger though, and power is more distributed and has been handed off to descendents, so it's more durable than any simple dictatorship. A process of changing the guard will have to play out across several terms until the retired personnel actually die, and grandma and grandpa's "legacies" are looked back on with bored indifference.
nickysielicki 7y ago
Same sort of response I'd expect an American Government Diplomat to give if asked about what happened to the 82 men/women/children of the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX. Governments defend their actions, usually.
- gesticulator 7y ago
  Isn’t the suppression of the event in media the key difference, though? The Waco massacre was widely discussed and publicized, and you can find plenty of information on it if you’d like - including people that defend the Waco standoff.
  - scotty79 7y ago
    It seems to me like Orwell vs. Huxley difference. In the end thing is mostly forgotten in both cases.
    - DFHippie 7y ago
      Here is the difference: in one case it is forgotten because the government is actively imprisoning people who mention it; in the other, because people are apathetic and easily distracted and perhaps disagree that this is an event of similar import. It seems a rather important difference to me.
      - scotty79 7y ago
        It is a difference but when I read what you wrote I have trouble deciding which is worse.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  Janet Reno admitted the storming of the compound was a mistake and regretted the loss of life. She also took full responsibility for the actions. You can also find Waco testimony all over the internet, including hours and hours of footage. That's a far cry from what we see here.
peisistratos 7y ago
It sounds like the US government ministers who defended the 1992 crackdown in Los Angeles at the Republican National Convention and elsewhere. The US army marched in to quell the upset, and dozens were killed. Although we do not hear much about that in the US other than praise of the army. Just endless rehashes of Beijing events before LA happened, in the middle of Trump's trade and South China sea war with China.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  The 1992 Republican National Convention was in Houston and AFAIK no one died
  - peisistratos 7y ago
    I said Los Angeles, not Houston. It was defended at the 1992 RNC as I said - https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/patrickbuchanan1992rnc.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/patrickbuchanan199... In fact the Republicans have this speaker saying an almost word for word echo of what the Chinese minister said.
    - peisistratos 7y ago
      The two replies are completely puzzled about what I mean by the US army marching into Los Angeles in 1992, with dozens dead in the wake. It makes me think of people who are "shocked" that Chinese college students don't know about Beijing in 1989, and they say how the Chinese elite have suppressed events. But I talk about the US army marching into Los Angeles in 1992 and dozens dead in the wake, and it is a complete mystery to multiple people here, they have no idea what I'm talking about.
      - dionian 7y ago
        I mean, it's like 0.0001 tiananmens. the US government never ran over hundreds of peaceful pro-democracy protesters with motherfucking tanks.
      - 7y ago
aaron695 7y ago
China has pulled more people out of poverty since the 1989 crackdown than all the other counties combined. Given western style governments have shown they are incapable of doing it, a brutal crackdown seems fair enough. Long term it may turn out different, but to the people born and living in China today, it seems to me they did the right thing or at the very least it's defensible.
Nasrudith 7y ago
This sadly isn't news - authoritarians never admit their mistakes. They unironically invoked Mao's pest campaign when the last time they did that they created mass famine because in the absense of chemical pesticides it is far preferable to pay the "sparrow tax" than have uneaten locust grubs eat everything. The best they have for Mao is doublethink where they abandoned his views and suppress Maoists while refusing to condemn him and his mistakes for fear of it harming their "legitimacy".
thrwwayy1905 7y ago
I am trying to understand what it feels like to Chinese people. As Americans, is there any past government action we can't criticize? I am sure there is some example but I can't think of it. Is there something similar for us?
- felipemnoa 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    Good point, no one ever criticizes that. But it's a good point to bring up when someone plays the moral relativism card. Imagine if our government sent armed thugs after anyone who posts or even mentions the famous photo of the students at Kent State. Not even Nixon would have tried that, but it's business as usual in China.
    - khuey 7y ago
      Er, the reason we rarely talk about Kent State anymore is because nobody defends that. What's the point in "criticizing" something when everyone agrees with the critics? Nobody criticizes the geocentric model of the solar system these days either.
      - ncmncm 7y ago
        Spherical Earth, on the other hand... I have not found an explanation for that epiphenomenon, although I have concluded that it is not meant ironically.
        wavefunction 7y ago
        Some of that is a put on, trolling people over something obviously silly. And some is real.
hajile 7y ago
If you want to learn about the incident, here's a great documentary (NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt5cYU70ujs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt5cYU70ujs
- Dramatize 7y ago
  NSFL might be more appropriate?
mrtimo 7y ago
I'm reading this thread while in a hotel a block away from the square in China (not on VPN, because that has not been working due to political events). Of course the BBC article is blocked. The thirtieth anniversary of the event is tomorrow. Interesting that HN is not blocked.
- godelski 7y ago
  Let's test it: is this blocked? https://outline.com/99a78v https://outline.com/99a78v What about this (expires in 7 days, but does require an actual download. It is a FF screenshot of the BBC page): https://send.firefox.com/download/0fc126b73012ee50/#o_bILCxPlonNXbETPbroRA https://send.firefox.com/download/0fc126b73012ee50/#o_bILCxP... I'm curious, because if they analyze these links (or even this message) I figure it would be easy to identify.
  - mrtimo 7y ago
    Neither were blocked.
    - godelski 7y ago
      Well then it looks like you can use outline to read things that are being censored.
      - EForEndeavour 7y ago
        For now, at least. The Chinese firewall may eventually whack that mole, too.
bitbatbangboo 7y ago
"Crackdown", in 10 years it'll be "Trouble" then "Protest" then "Revolt"
m0zg 7y ago
I feel like China has learned from Perestroika and made a conscious choice not to go down that path, but instead focus on economic freedoms rather than political. To offer some perspective: the 90's were a dark time in Russia. The Soviet Union disintegrated, taking large chunks of deliberately decentralized economy with it, there was hunger, hyperinflation, deficit of basic goods (same shit you're seeing in Venezuela right now), and the poorer, older, less economically nimble part of society was disproportionately impacted. This was, in large part, because people were given near total freedom (far more of it than you see in the US today) in one fell swoop, and _way_ before they knew what to do with it. Naturally, some people were much better than others at turning this to their advantage, opportunistically injecting themselves into the corridors of power, buying up previously state-owned factories for fractions of a penny on the dollar, swindling the common people out of whatever breadcrumbs the government threw to them during privatization. This shit was allowed to run unabated for a decade or so, and ended up with Yeltsin hanging up his hat and apologizing on TV, before de-facto installing Putin as his successor. The people behind this were Siloviki: the powerful folks who run or otherwise control Russia's several security services. In retrospect, given the amount of pain, death, and suffering inflicted on the general public, it could be that shooting a few hotheads early on would be an objectively better option. The country could then proceed to a much more controlled and measured liberalization, with law and order carefully enforced throughout, rather than a decade-long free-for-all (or rather "a few") that ensued in practice. That's not to say that Tiananmen suppression was justified. I grew up in Russia, so I was a direct observer and participant of the events I describe above, so in the case of Russia I can tell you with a good degree of confidence that if the wild 90's weren't allowed to happen there to the extent that they did, Russia would be far better off. Stuff like this also can't be judged by reading propaganda, foreign or domestic, so those who haven't been there at that time should refrain from commenting one way or the other. That'd be just regurgitating someone else's talking points: an entirely pointless exercise. I'd love to hear from someone who lived in China at that time and for whom this is not something they've read about on the Internet.
- partingshots 7y ago
  Were you still a child/teenager during the 90s while living in Russia? Or were you already an adult and working at that point? It’s always very interesting to hear from someone who’s directly lived through experience. Thanks for offering your perspective.
muterad_murilax 7y ago
Man, this entry disappeared from the frontpage quickly! Anyone knows why?
smacke 7y ago
As of this writing, this post is 2 hours old, ranked #96 (4th page of HN), and has 117 points. I believe it was on the front page 30 minutes ago. This is a steep drop in ranking -- what are the factors in the HN ranking algorithm that could contribute to this?
megous 7y ago
Meanwhile, the same thing is repeating in Sudan at the exact same day and nobody cares. Peaceful months long sit-in met with violence. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SudanUprising&src=tyah https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SudanUprising&src=tyah

131 points by Ennis 7y ago

I posted for the long Kate Adie video in the article which I had not seen before. The other reason is my concern at a defence minister even mentioning this event when everyone is aware of the state position already. It seems to be an expansion of the conversation from trade and market access to ideology which is unfortunate. There's enough to sort out with just market access, currency flows and IP.

NotPaidToPost 7y ago
As detailed in the article, he didn't "mention" the event but was replying to a specific question about it during an event in Singapore.

marak830 7y ago

"That incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence, which is a correct policy," he told the forum. Gunning down protesters then grinding into a mulch with tanks and aocs, so that you can wash the remains down the gutters is never a solution. Trying to push this incident into the background only shows how little change has happened. Once more - this isn't a situation you can ever forgive a government for. There is no ifs, buts or collateral reasons for this.

imglorp 7y ago
Right. And it's not like the Dalai Lama can go home either. The only thing that's changed is they dictate more of the groupthink than they did in 89. The social credit system is probably going to be more effective than that tanks were.
Causality1 7y ago
We act like we find it so unacceptable but we're still perfectly willing to do business with them. Why should they change if they know they can get away with anything since $100 televisions matter more to us than our principles?

dmix 7y ago

I wonder who asked the Tiananmen question to the minister from the audience in Singapore. That guy has some backbone, I like it. They should be challenged on the topic of their political repression more. And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to dismiss as western propaganda. It's a pretty simple equation. Why would any state have to spend so much explicit effort on making no one mention it, if there was nothing really wrong with it? It will forever be the giant elephant in the room, regardless of how big and successful China makes itself. Few westerners really understanding how completely thorough and effective it was. The near universal obedience seen among the population would seem very foreign to most people in the west. Which is in itself an interesting cultural question.

Barrin92 7y ago
>I wonder who asked the Tiananmen question to the minister from the audience in Singapore. That guy has some backbone, I like it. They should be challenged on the topic of their political repression more. And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to dismiss as western propaganda. In contrast to the man in the audience Singapore was one of the first countries to normalise relationships with China, and in his biography From third world to First, Lee Kuan Yew actually seems somewhat supportive of it because he contrasts China's handling of the situation with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And realistically a country like Singapore is always going to be best positioned by keeping its relationships to opposing forces like the USA and China ambiguous. Committing to one side will draw a reaction from the other, and for smaller countries that's devastating. The space for most freedom and autonomy for a country like Singapore is right in the middle, in a competition between two large nations, choosing sides is a bad move.
state-sponsored 7y ago
Not to worry, 30 years is still on the young side of a cover up. At or around the 50 year mark, you'll start to see things loosen up (if 50 year-olds did the deeds, 50 years later they'd be 100), as most of the adults clenching their death grip on the yoke of popular discussion will start dying off. Once no one with skin in the game remains alive to defend the bad decisions, less effort will be invested in denial. Kind of like the way bad science works. It takes a while for a graduating class to grow into their credentials and take a giant shit on the more hated principles that their predeccesors tortured them with. That is, of course, unless blood relatives of the ones with blood on their hands are still floating around throughout the power structurers. In authoritarian regimes, personnel churn is slower, and dynastic succession can prolong even craptacular totalitarianism like Juche. With a singular leader, deposing the face of authority can unravel a movement like Baathism, with Saddam Hussein, but you have to take out the Udays and the Qusays too. China is bigger though, and power is more distributed and has been handed off to descendents, so it's more durable than any simple dictatorship. A process of changing the guard will have to play out across several terms until the retired personnel actually die, and grandma and grandpa's "legacies" are looked back on with bored indifference.

nickysielicki 7y ago

Same sort of response I'd expect an American Government Diplomat to give if asked about what happened to the 82 men/women/children of the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX. Governments defend their actions, usually.

gesticulator 7y ago
Isn’t the suppression of the event in media the key difference, though? The Waco massacre was widely discussed and publicized, and you can find plenty of information on it if you’d like - including people that defend the Waco standoff.
- scotty79 7y ago
  It seems to me like Orwell vs. Huxley difference. In the end thing is mostly forgotten in both cases.
  - DFHippie 7y ago
    Here is the difference: in one case it is forgotten because the government is actively imprisoning people who mention it; in the other, because people are apathetic and easily distracted and perhaps disagree that this is an event of similar import. It seems a rather important difference to me.
    - scotty79 7y ago
      It is a difference but when I read what you wrote I have trouble deciding which is worse.
jorblumesea 7y ago
Janet Reno admitted the storming of the compound was a mistake and regretted the loss of life. She also took full responsibility for the actions. You can also find Waco testimony all over the internet, including hours and hours of footage. That's a far cry from what we see here.

peisistratos 7y ago

It sounds like the US government ministers who defended the 1992 crackdown in Los Angeles at the Republican National Convention and elsewhere. The US army marched in to quell the upset, and dozens were killed. Although we do not hear much about that in the US other than praise of the army. Just endless rehashes of Beijing events before LA happened, in the middle of Trump's trade and South China sea war with China.

Rebelgecko 7y ago
The 1992 Republican National Convention was in Houston and AFAIK no one died
- peisistratos 7y ago
  I said Los Angeles, not Houston. It was defended at the 1992 RNC as I said - https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/patrickbuchanan1992rnc.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/patrickbuchanan199... In fact the Republicans have this speaker saying an almost word for word echo of what the Chinese minister said.
  - peisistratos 7y ago
    The two replies are completely puzzled about what I mean by the US army marching into Los Angeles in 1992, with dozens dead in the wake. It makes me think of people who are "shocked" that Chinese college students don't know about Beijing in 1989, and they say how the Chinese elite have suppressed events. But I talk about the US army marching into Los Angeles in 1992 and dozens dead in the wake, and it is a complete mystery to multiple people here, they have no idea what I'm talking about.
    - dionian 7y ago
      I mean, it's like 0.0001 tiananmens. the US government never ran over hundreds of peaceful pro-democracy protesters with motherfucking tanks.
    - 7y ago

aaron695 7y ago

China has pulled more people out of poverty since the 1989 crackdown than all the other counties combined. Given western style governments have shown they are incapable of doing it, a brutal crackdown seems fair enough. Long term it may turn out different, but to the people born and living in China today, it seems to me they did the right thing or at the very least it's defensible.

Nasrudith 7y ago

This sadly isn't news - authoritarians never admit their mistakes. They unironically invoked Mao's pest campaign when the last time they did that they created mass famine because in the absense of chemical pesticides it is far preferable to pay the "sparrow tax" than have uneaten locust grubs eat everything. The best they have for Mao is doublethink where they abandoned his views and suppress Maoists while refusing to condemn him and his mistakes for fear of it harming their "legitimacy".

thrwwayy1905 7y ago

I am trying to understand what it feels like to Chinese people. As Americans, is there any past government action we can't criticize? I am sure there is some example but I can't think of it. Is there something similar for us?

felipemnoa 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  Good point, no one ever criticizes that. But it's a good point to bring up when someone plays the moral relativism card. Imagine if our government sent armed thugs after anyone who posts or even mentions the famous photo of the students at Kent State. Not even Nixon would have tried that, but it's business as usual in China.
  - khuey 7y ago
    Er, the reason we rarely talk about Kent State anymore is because nobody defends that. What's the point in "criticizing" something when everyone agrees with the critics? Nobody criticizes the geocentric model of the solar system these days either.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      Spherical Earth, on the other hand... I have not found an explanation for that epiphenomenon, although I have concluded that it is not meant ironically.
      - wavefunction 7y ago
        Some of that is a put on, trolling people over something obviously silly. And some is real.

hajile 7y ago

If you want to learn about the incident, here's a great documentary (NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt5cYU70ujs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt5cYU70ujs

Dramatize 7y ago
NSFL might be more appropriate?

mrtimo 7y ago

I'm reading this thread while in a hotel a block away from the square in China (not on VPN, because that has not been working due to political events). Of course the BBC article is blocked. The thirtieth anniversary of the event is tomorrow. Interesting that HN is not blocked.

godelski 7y ago
Let's test it: is this blocked? https://outline.com/99a78v https://outline.com/99a78v What about this (expires in 7 days, but does require an actual download. It is a FF screenshot of the BBC page): https://send.firefox.com/download/0fc126b73012ee50/#o_bILCxPlonNXbETPbroRA https://send.firefox.com/download/0fc126b73012ee50/#o_bILCxP... I'm curious, because if they analyze these links (or even this message) I figure it would be easy to identify.
- mrtimo 7y ago
  Neither were blocked.
  - godelski 7y ago
    Well then it looks like you can use outline to read things that are being censored.
    - EForEndeavour 7y ago
      For now, at least. The Chinese firewall may eventually whack that mole, too.

bitbatbangboo 7y ago

"Crackdown", in 10 years it'll be "Trouble" then "Protest" then "Revolt"

m0zg 7y ago

I feel like China has learned from Perestroika and made a conscious choice not to go down that path, but instead focus on economic freedoms rather than political. To offer some perspective: the 90's were a dark time in Russia. The Soviet Union disintegrated, taking large chunks of deliberately decentralized economy with it, there was hunger, hyperinflation, deficit of basic goods (same shit you're seeing in Venezuela right now), and the poorer, older, less economically nimble part of society was disproportionately impacted. This was, in large part, because people were given near total freedom (far more of it than you see in the US today) in one fell swoop, and _way_ before they knew what to do with it. Naturally, some people were much better than others at turning this to their advantage, opportunistically injecting themselves into the corridors of power, buying up previously state-owned factories for fractions of a penny on the dollar, swindling the common people out of whatever breadcrumbs the government threw to them during privatization. This shit was allowed to run unabated for a decade or so, and ended up with Yeltsin hanging up his hat and apologizing on TV, before de-facto installing Putin as his successor. The people behind this were Siloviki: the powerful folks who run or otherwise control Russia's several security services. In retrospect, given the amount of pain, death, and suffering inflicted on the general public, it could be that shooting a few hotheads early on would be an objectively better option. The country could then proceed to a much more controlled and measured liberalization, with law and order carefully enforced throughout, rather than a decade-long free-for-all (or rather "a few") that ensued in practice. That's not to say that Tiananmen suppression was justified. I grew up in Russia, so I was a direct observer and participant of the events I describe above, so in the case of Russia I can tell you with a good degree of confidence that if the wild 90's weren't allowed to happen there to the extent that they did, Russia would be far better off. Stuff like this also can't be judged by reading propaganda, foreign or domestic, so those who haven't been there at that time should refrain from commenting one way or the other. That'd be just regurgitating someone else's talking points: an entirely pointless exercise. I'd love to hear from someone who lived in China at that time and for whom this is not something they've read about on the Internet.

partingshots 7y ago
Were you still a child/teenager during the 90s while living in Russia? Or were you already an adult and working at that point? It’s always very interesting to hear from someone who’s directly lived through experience. Thanks for offering your perspective.

muterad_murilax 7y ago

Man, this entry disappeared from the frontpage quickly! Anyone knows why?

smacke 7y ago

As of this writing, this post is 2 hours old, ranked #96 (4th page of HN), and has 117 points. I believe it was on the front page 30 minutes ago. This is a steep drop in ranking -- what are the factors in the HN ranking algorithm that could contribute to this?

megous 7y ago

Meanwhile, the same thing is repeating in Sudan at the exact same day and nobody cares. Peaceful months long sit-in met with violence. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SudanUprising&src=tyah https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SudanUprising&src=tyah