7 ms·

1989 Tiananmen Square Protests

202 points by sebastianconcpt 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago
Is there a reason this was posted today?
- kediz 7y ago
  It's 4/20 so I guess we should expect all kinds of things
- toomanyrichies 7y ago
  Not the OP, but it's possible that the reason was that (according to Wikipedia) the protests began on April 15 1989, so the anniversary was pretty recently.
  - bluejekyll 7y ago
    It's been used as a comparison with some photos of the nurses counter-protesting the stay-at-home protests on some social media sites. I'm not suggesting they are comparable, just that one evoked images of the other. Might be why it's being posted?
- pedrocx486 7y ago
  Probably OP trying to "test" if HN is controlled by China. Some weird logic I've seen recently where if you post something about China being bad, and it gets deleted, then that place is "tarnished".
  - sgillen 7y ago
    I mean if everything bad about one country gets deleted, but this treatment is not given to other countries, I would call that a problem. Not saying that’s where HN is at at all.
    - lukifer 7y ago
      It's plausible that individual users are simply downvoting for not finding it interesting: information that isn't new, preaching to the choir, etc. While it's possible, I'd be very skeptical that YC/admins are intentionally silencing anti-China messaging; I've certainly seen many posts critical of CCP. It certainly seems plausible that the Chinese state has agents and/or bots that nudge online content in accordance with the party line; if so, I'd be curious to know to what extent HN is on their radar, compared with more highly-trafficked sites like Reddit.
      - yters 7y ago
        Yes, I don't think HN leadership is pro-CCP. However, I do think there is some kind of CCP influence at work. Whether it is normal HN participants that are more understanding of CCP, and dislike the blanket dismissal they get, or there are actual CCP agents at work, is unclear to me. It is clear there is dislike of the outright criticism that CCP gets. My comments critical of the CCP get many more downvotes than even I am used to getting. I also think that HN mods should have access to enough user data to be able to run some tests and see if particular accounts are more targeted towards CCP critical posts and comments than would be expected by a normal HN reader.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - Causality1 7y ago
    There are certain groups and entities that have packs of rabid fanboys who mass-downvote critical comments but in my experience China and Chinese people are not one of those groups of HN. There also tends to be a lot more hard evidence when a company genuinely tows the CCP line like Tiktok, and again there's no such thing for HN.
  - yters 7y ago
    I have received more downvotes than normal for crticising the CCP. Whether that is due to a pro CCP bias or not is up for debate. I talked with dang (mod), and he says it is due to the thread being high profile and contentious, not due to a sitewide pro-CCP bias. Seems like a plausible counter argument.
- grecy 7y ago
  In these strange times I'm seeing more people question our current setup (Capitalism/Democracy) and wonder about how we should make it better when we eventually re-open. With that in mind, I'm seeing more and more "Socialism/Communism = bad" posts all across the internet. Even the videos posted yesterday of nurses in Denver blocking protesters showed a lady screaming "If you want communism, go to China!!"
  - trhway 7y ago
    > lady screaming "If you want communism, go to China!!" the lady was making a very misleading claim. I think the only country with something resembling communism left is NK and probably Cuba.
    - FpUser 7y ago
      Among the other things Communism assumes absence of social classes, money and the state. Nothing ever came anywhere close to accomplishing it.
  - FpUser 7y ago
    "If you want communism, go to China!!" - They should be yelling it to people who have concocted communism state for large companies/industries. Take airlines for example - they're getting this giant bailout at taxpayer's expense. Those were running profit for the last 10 years and managed to save nothing for the rainy days. Now they're crying and want taxpayers to bail them out.
- thereare5lights 7y ago
  OP thinks they're being edgy
- downerending 7y ago
  I've been thinking about it a lot lately, in the context of how much to trust the Chinese government's reporting of fatalities.
  - JamesG124 7y ago
    I think a good rule of thumb is that if the official number is n, the true number is something in the neighborhood of n to the nth power
Pako 7y ago
But nothing happened there? I don't get why "nothing" needs a Wikipedia article.
tehjoker 7y ago
Note that the protests occurred in the backdrop of market reforms to the economy. Not an expert on Tienamen Square, but that seems important. "The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy which benefited some people but seriously disaffected others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge of legitimacy."
- supernova87a 7y ago
  Of course this opinion will not be popular here, but I think that there are legitimate historical assessments to be made on whether the Chinese leadership did this (and not to excuse them by the way), because they saw they were in danger of falling down the USSR route. I.e. allowing the form (but not substance) of democracy to come in before people were ready for it, just as they making some progress on the constructive path of controlled economic liberalization, and derailing it to produce a oligarchic kleptocracy that would plunge the country into long-feared poverty and chaos. Which we can now see what happened to the USSR. If you think of that as the choice that was facing those leaders at the time, their actions are more understandable. Just like how we look back now at the Soviet scare era of our history and wonder how we ever got caught up in that ridiculous hysteria. Again, I say understandable, not excusable. Of course there likely were aspects of preserving power for its own sake, but looking at Deng's intentions and actions (other than Tiananmen Square) throughout his career, one has a hard time saying that he was motivated mostly for maintenance of power and not some public good. It is a complicated story, and worthy of more than just a knee-jerk reaction. And yes, the important democracy movement and its terrible tragedy ought to be commemorated.
  - HenryBemis 7y ago
    One of the problems with the "freedom of speech" (lack of) is that in western countries, sooner or later (most) records open and we find out the Truth. In other cases we have whistleblowers (i.e. Wikileaks), and/or kick-ass journalists that expose scandals, and we get a glimpse of the Truth on the very important issues. I feel that in China a guy like Snowden would have been tortured and executed, his family imprisoned, his neighbours interrogated, everyone in his vicinity would have everything confiscated and searched. With that said I fear that we will never learn the truth about what happened to those captured in the protests. China's history is drenched in blood, and current government doesn't seem to want to change this.
anoplus 7y ago
I see similarities to the <edit>wikipedia picture</edit> protest in Israel's Tel Aviv main square from yesterday, in terms of social distancing. https://www.rt.com/news/486269-israel-protest-social-distance/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS https://www.rt.com/news/486269-israel-protest-social-distanc... And also, I was just having philosophical thoughts about the distribution of power in the world. I wonder if advances in technology will one day create a coalition of super powerful people who will control the world and will make the rest of humanity slaves at best and completely worthless at worst. I mean, do ethical people naturally gravitate toward power? or does power tend to attract the less empathetic (to put it nicely)? [edit] I even fear one day we won't be even able to post about this topic.
- codegladiator 7y ago
  power tends to corruption
  - Zenst 7y ago
    People tend towards corruption, power just enables that tendency. But not always the case and few examples of people in power throughout history who have been shining examples of showing us that it can be done right.
    - codegladiator 7y ago
      i am sure every rule has exceptions.
      - Zenst 7y ago
        It does, hence tends encapsulates that niche. But then nothing is perfect so their will always be an exception. Reminds me of an old IT joke - We finally made the perfect code, it debugs itself. Alas when we run it, it electriculted the programmer.
  - HenryBemis 7y ago
    "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" - John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
cm2187 7y ago
Is hackernews still accessible from China?
- yorwba 7y ago
  It's been at least partially blocked since August last year: https://en.greatfire.org/https/news.ycombinator.com https://en.greatfire.org/https/news.ycombinator.com
rwmj 7y ago
His style is not for everyone but the BBC recently repeated Clive James in Shanghai, from 1989. You can see the protests going on and he comments on how the police and army are completely absent (which I guess was around April/early May). It's also interesting to see China in 1989, so massively different from when I visited last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gx15 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gx15
duxup 7y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/opinion/tiananmen-square-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/opinion/tiananmen-square-... It's interesting to see that after all that a new generation is out there, some willing to simply dismiss the value of knowing that such an event even happend.
yters 7y ago
Curious why this is flagged. pro-CCP bias on the site? Currently it is at 178 votes, so obviously it is of interest to HN readers.
- downerending 7y ago
  Arguably it's off-topic. Beyond that, almost anything contentious (in the view of the HN crowd) has a non-zero chance of getting flagged away. Try posting an argument for dumping Python 3 in favor of Python 2... :-)
  - yters 7y ago
    On other posts I see the "off topic" argument met with the "anything hn readers like is on topic". Not sure why it is different in this case. 178 likes indicates a decent amount of the HN readership.

saagarjha 7y ago

Is there a reason this was posted today?

kediz 7y ago
It's 4/20 so I guess we should expect all kinds of things
toomanyrichies 7y ago
Not the OP, but it's possible that the reason was that (according to Wikipedia) the protests began on April 15 1989, so the anniversary was pretty recently.
- bluejekyll 7y ago
  It's been used as a comparison with some photos of the nurses counter-protesting the stay-at-home protests on some social media sites. I'm not suggesting they are comparable, just that one evoked images of the other. Might be why it's being posted?
pedrocx486 7y ago
Probably OP trying to "test" if HN is controlled by China. Some weird logic I've seen recently where if you post something about China being bad, and it gets deleted, then that place is "tarnished".
- sgillen 7y ago
  I mean if everything bad about one country gets deleted, but this treatment is not given to other countries, I would call that a problem. Not saying that’s where HN is at at all.
  - lukifer 7y ago
    It's plausible that individual users are simply downvoting for not finding it interesting: information that isn't new, preaching to the choir, etc. While it's possible, I'd be very skeptical that YC/admins are intentionally silencing anti-China messaging; I've certainly seen many posts critical of CCP. It certainly seems plausible that the Chinese state has agents and/or bots that nudge online content in accordance with the party line; if so, I'd be curious to know to what extent HN is on their radar, compared with more highly-trafficked sites like Reddit.
    - yters 7y ago
      Yes, I don't think HN leadership is pro-CCP. However, I do think there is some kind of CCP influence at work. Whether it is normal HN participants that are more understanding of CCP, and dislike the blanket dismissal they get, or there are actual CCP agents at work, is unclear to me. It is clear there is dislike of the outright criticism that CCP gets. My comments critical of the CCP get many more downvotes than even I am used to getting. I also think that HN mods should have access to enough user data to be able to run some tests and see if particular accounts are more targeted towards CCP critical posts and comments than would be expected by a normal HN reader.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- Causality1 7y ago
  There are certain groups and entities that have packs of rabid fanboys who mass-downvote critical comments but in my experience China and Chinese people are not one of those groups of HN. There also tends to be a lot more hard evidence when a company genuinely tows the CCP line like Tiktok, and again there's no such thing for HN.
- yters 7y ago
  I have received more downvotes than normal for crticising the CCP. Whether that is due to a pro CCP bias or not is up for debate. I talked with dang (mod), and he says it is due to the thread being high profile and contentious, not due to a sitewide pro-CCP bias. Seems like a plausible counter argument.
grecy 7y ago
In these strange times I'm seeing more people question our current setup (Capitalism/Democracy) and wonder about how we should make it better when we eventually re-open. With that in mind, I'm seeing more and more "Socialism/Communism = bad" posts all across the internet. Even the videos posted yesterday of nurses in Denver blocking protesters showed a lady screaming "If you want communism, go to China!!"
- trhway 7y ago
  > lady screaming "If you want communism, go to China!!" the lady was making a very misleading claim. I think the only country with something resembling communism left is NK and probably Cuba.
  - FpUser 7y ago
    Among the other things Communism assumes absence of social classes, money and the state. Nothing ever came anywhere close to accomplishing it.
- FpUser 7y ago
  "If you want communism, go to China!!" - They should be yelling it to people who have concocted communism state for large companies/industries. Take airlines for example - they're getting this giant bailout at taxpayer's expense. Those were running profit for the last 10 years and managed to save nothing for the rainy days. Now they're crying and want taxpayers to bail them out.
thereare5lights 7y ago
OP thinks they're being edgy
downerending 7y ago
I've been thinking about it a lot lately, in the context of how much to trust the Chinese government's reporting of fatalities.
- JamesG124 7y ago
  I think a good rule of thumb is that if the official number is n, the true number is something in the neighborhood of n to the nth power

Pako 7y ago

But nothing happened there? I don't get why "nothing" needs a Wikipedia article.

tehjoker 7y ago

Note that the protests occurred in the backdrop of market reforms to the economy. Not an expert on Tienamen Square, but that seems important. "The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy which benefited some people but seriously disaffected others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge of legitimacy."

supernova87a 7y ago
Of course this opinion will not be popular here, but I think that there are legitimate historical assessments to be made on whether the Chinese leadership did this (and not to excuse them by the way), because they saw they were in danger of falling down the USSR route. I.e. allowing the form (but not substance) of democracy to come in before people were ready for it, just as they making some progress on the constructive path of controlled economic liberalization, and derailing it to produce a oligarchic kleptocracy that would plunge the country into long-feared poverty and chaos. Which we can now see what happened to the USSR. If you think of that as the choice that was facing those leaders at the time, their actions are more understandable. Just like how we look back now at the Soviet scare era of our history and wonder how we ever got caught up in that ridiculous hysteria. Again, I say understandable, not excusable. Of course there likely were aspects of preserving power for its own sake, but looking at Deng's intentions and actions (other than Tiananmen Square) throughout his career, one has a hard time saying that he was motivated mostly for maintenance of power and not some public good. It is a complicated story, and worthy of more than just a knee-jerk reaction. And yes, the important democracy movement and its terrible tragedy ought to be commemorated.
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  One of the problems with the "freedom of speech" (lack of) is that in western countries, sooner or later (most) records open and we find out the Truth. In other cases we have whistleblowers (i.e. Wikileaks), and/or kick-ass journalists that expose scandals, and we get a glimpse of the Truth on the very important issues. I feel that in China a guy like Snowden would have been tortured and executed, his family imprisoned, his neighbours interrogated, everyone in his vicinity would have everything confiscated and searched. With that said I fear that we will never learn the truth about what happened to those captured in the protests. China's history is drenched in blood, and current government doesn't seem to want to change this.

anoplus 7y ago

I see similarities to the <edit>wikipedia picture</edit> protest in Israel's Tel Aviv main square from yesterday, in terms of social distancing. https://www.rt.com/news/486269-israel-protest-social-distance/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS https://www.rt.com/news/486269-israel-protest-social-distanc... And also, I was just having philosophical thoughts about the distribution of power in the world. I wonder if advances in technology will one day create a coalition of super powerful people who will control the world and will make the rest of humanity slaves at best and completely worthless at worst. I mean, do ethical people naturally gravitate toward power? or does power tend to attract the less empathetic (to put it nicely)? [edit] I even fear one day we won't be even able to post about this topic.

codegladiator 7y ago
power tends to corruption
- Zenst 7y ago
  People tend towards corruption, power just enables that tendency. But not always the case and few examples of people in power throughout history who have been shining examples of showing us that it can be done right.
  - codegladiator 7y ago
    i am sure every rule has exceptions.
    - Zenst 7y ago
      It does, hence tends encapsulates that niche. But then nothing is perfect so their will always be an exception. Reminds me of an old IT joke - We finally made the perfect code, it debugs itself. Alas when we run it, it electriculted the programmer.
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" - John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

cm2187 7y ago

Is hackernews still accessible from China?

yorwba 7y ago
It's been at least partially blocked since August last year: https://en.greatfire.org/https/news.ycombinator.com https://en.greatfire.org/https/news.ycombinator.com

rwmj 7y ago

His style is not for everyone but the BBC recently repeated Clive James in Shanghai, from 1989. You can see the protests going on and he comments on how the police and army are completely absent (which I guess was around April/early May). It's also interesting to see China in 1989, so massively different from when I visited last year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gx15 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gx15

duxup 7y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/opinion/tiananmen-square-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/opinion/tiananmen-square-... It's interesting to see that after all that a new generation is out there, some willing to simply dismiss the value of knowing that such an event even happend.

yters 7y ago

Curious why this is flagged. pro-CCP bias on the site? Currently it is at 178 votes, so obviously it is of interest to HN readers.

downerending 7y ago
Arguably it's off-topic. Beyond that, almost anything contentious (in the view of the HN crowd) has a non-zero chance of getting flagged away. Try posting an argument for dumping Python 3 in favor of Python 2... :-)
- yters 7y ago
  On other posts I see the "off topic" argument met with the "anything hn readers like is on topic". Not sure why it is different in this case. 178 likes indicates a decent amount of the HN readership.