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The terrifying reality of censorship, as told through the lens of that of China: "I knew of some Chinese migrants to Australia who watched a Tiananmen 10-year
by markbao 13y ago
The terrifying reality of censorship, as told through the lens of that of China:
"I knew of some Chinese migrants to Australia who watched a Tiananmen 10-year anniversary documentary, and apparently tears just streamed down their faces.
They had no clue that it ever happened."
- anonymous 13y agoDo you have any source for this? Google shows nothing and Duck Duck Go only points me to a reddit thread with that exact same comment and no source. I mean just about the specific case, I know that the Tiananmen square incident is unknown to almost all Chinese.
- luminiferous 13y agoThe source is the reddit comment. It was a reply to an askreddit thread.
- markbao 13y agoIndeed. It's anecdotal, but given the 1.3 billion people in China, I'm inclined to believe that this isn't a one-time case.
- westicle 13y agoI can also confirm from personal experience that many, many educated Chinese locals are not aware of this portion of their history. Even those whom I suspect may be aware of it seem to confine it to a cultural blindspot approaching wilful ignorance. It is something you simply _do not talk about_ in China.
- tomhschmidt 13y agoUhhh maybe they came from a Tier 3 city or something. Most Chinese I have talked to know about Tiananmen
- jlgreco 13y agoMaybe they did. Does that explanation mute the concern?
- markbao 13y agoIt was a crazy thought for me, too, but something to also consider is that there's some selection bias in the Chinese that you might talk to (i.e. Chinese people that talk to foreigners regularly) vs. ones that don't; the ones that do probably tend to know more, whereas the ones that don't probably fall into the "never heard of Tiananmen" category.
- Aloisius 13y agoI know at least one person who moved to the US from China for graduate school and had no idea about Tiananmen. Mind you, it is not something I bring up, she just happened to bring it up during a conversation It is pretty easy to find Chinese people talking about how few people (specially younger people) know about it too: http://www.quora.com/China/What-percentage-of-Chinese-know-about-the-Tiananmen-Square-incident http://www.quora.com/China/What-percentage-of-Chinese-know-a... http://observers.france24.com/content/20080605-tiananmen-square-china-censorship-media http://observers.france24.com/content/20080605-tiananmen-squ... Even those who have heard about it though, many probably haven't seen the pictures to truly understand the scale of it.
- Oculus 13y agoThat thought just gave me goosebumps all over my arm.
- ams6110 13y agoThere are people in the USA who have no idea who the president is.
- ppog 13y agoThat's probably not down to a censorship 'lens' though. A more apt US analogy might be how many people were aware of the scale of protests against the Iraq war -- especially the vast opposition to it in Europe. My impression is that US mass media self-censored and barely reported those protests. (I may be mistaken: I don't live in the US, but that's what I've heard from people who do.) Of course it's a far cry from self-censorship by the mass media to state censorship of the Internet. But for many people it results in the same distorted view of the world.
- smsm42 13y agoMost of the people in the US are not very interested in what happens in Europe unless it is something extraordinary. So European protests against Iraq war may be scarcely reported by US media for the mere reason that the customers of US media don't care too much if people somewhere in Lissabon like their government or not. You don't need to censor something that nobody of your audience cares about. Protests against Iraq war in the US itself was very amply reported by the media.