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Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#121

Post by glenstein »

jbooth wrote: post #110
glenstein wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right that all three parties have been subject to a certain degree of drift. However, applying that back to the original point (is the current regime the same one that did Tiananmen), to me that's an argument that, for the most part , this is the same regime. And if the original commenter wasn't arguing about a continuity in ideology or personnel, then I'm not sure what they were arguing.

It's like saying Hollande and Chirac are both part of the 5th Republic regime. Technically true but not indicative of anything and probably a red herring.

I think there is substantial, non-trivial overlap between (a) China's views about dissent in 1989 and (b) China's views about the same subject in 2017, to the point that they're nearly the same in all respects pertinent to Tiananmen. It was carried out by (a), while criticism of it is censored by (b).

The views of the same party on a narrow subject in the same country are more similar to each other than can be captured by analogy to the full spectrum of ideology of a western first world democracy.

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#122

Post by mutteraloo »

tw04 wrote: post #77
lozenge wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same government. Those in power at the time chose who would succeed them, and so on to this day.

Good point, whereas in America the Republican and Democratic parties have since been dismantled and replaced... Yang Shangkun must have had one heck of an influence if he was able to dictate who would be president of the country 15 years after his death... Of course Yang was forced out of the party in 1993 (the last time he had any influence), but don't let history and facts get in your way.

Xijingping this year heavily emphasized the communist ideals in the country, to a point where the civil servants have to pass tests on the ccp ideals

Also China is still the censoring, authoritarian regime it was before. Look at their citizen scores, monitoring, threatening South Korea, Taiwan, us, Australia, etc

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#123

Post by Pica_soO »

Its not reasonable, and certainly not humane what happened on Tienanmen. But it is understandable. Those government cadres feared the return of the red brigade- they had seen what happened with 'elite' that fall from grace during the rule of the mob by Mao. If a democratic uprising would show the same behavior tendencies as the red brigades, a - its either us or them - mindset would have governed most decisions.

How did the students talk and negotiate with the CCP on Tienanmen?

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#124

Post by jbooth »

mutteraloo wrote: post #117
rorykoehler wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America and the UK have a track record of propping up plenty of dictatorships too which is fairly odd for supposed democratic ideologues.

Whataboutusm. The adults are talking about China

It's not whataboutism to point out that every great power, for thousands of years, has done that same thing.

Why's it worse in this case?

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#125

Post by yorwba »

bufordsharkley wrote: post #65
glenstein wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a serious problem with our own (US) culture's ability to think clearly about the problem posed by Chinese authoritarianism in the 21st century. I would attribute the problem to our tendency for centrism, both-sideism, and probably to the just-world hypothesis. People are tempted to bury it in a larger narrative of global complexity, thinking that treating it like a trick question is evidence of sophistication…

Some things are not cut-and-dry. Some are. Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society. I'm curious how China currently views Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People"[0], one of which is Democracy. Does his philosophy attract any attention today? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People

China takes Democracy (民主) very seriously. You'll see it on propaganda banners everywhere. You see, the leadership is democratically appointed by the will of the people. The 100% majority of the CCP is completely justified by its benevolent rule.

/s

There is no need to abandon old principles when you can just use doublethink to make them mean whatever you want them to mean.

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#126

Post by yorwba »

jbooth wrote: post #124
mutteraloo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whataboutusm. The adults are talking about China

It's not whataboutism to point out that every great power, for thousands of years, has done that same thing. Why's it worse in this case?

It's not worse. It's just bad and it'd be better if they'd stop. The US too.

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#127

Post by greggarious »

kchoudhu wrote: post #76
greggarious wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> obsolete language >Huh? This is an oversimplification, but basically Cantonese is the main language in Hong Kong and Macau and in parts of southern China (Guangdong) that border whereas other parts of China use Mandarin. You can probably work out why someone who speaks Mandarin would call Cantonese a "dead language" in a thread about Tiananmen Square.

Oh, I understood exactly what he was getting at. I was hoping he would use the opportunity to apologize, but hey, internet.

Oh, my bad. Sorry for chinasplaining :)

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#128

Post by marcosdumay »

bufordsharkley wrote: post #65
glenstein wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a serious problem with our own (US) culture's ability to think clearly about the problem posed by Chinese authoritarianism in the 21st century. I would attribute the problem to our tendency for centrism, both-sideism, and probably to the just-world hypothesis. People are tempted to bury it in a larger narrative of global complexity, thinking that treating it like a trick question is evidence of sophistication…

Some things are not cut-and-dry. Some are. Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society. I'm curious how China currently views Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People"[0], one of which is Democracy. Does his philosophy attract any attention today? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People

> Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society.

If taxation by a non-representative government isn't as much common sense as abolitionism, it's only because of a huge amount of propaganda. It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery.

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#129

Post by bostik »

pwaai wrote: post #67
mutteraloo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Altman loves China; he'll ignore everything bad about it except the (certain) libertarian aspects (which doesn't conflict with the government) EDIT: whoever modded me down, take a look at http://blog.samaltman.com/china or https://techcrunch.com/video/sam-altman-of-yc-china-remains-...

I think this shows the underlying naivety in American optimism in Chinese markets. Their sole purpose is to learn, take as much as they can possibly get away, turn around and create entire industries overnight by creating a domestic bubble shielding it from foreign competition. It's similar to how South Korea propped up it's economy in the 70s, by imposing high tariffs on imports and restricting consumer choice to on…

> Their sole purpose is to learn, take as much as they can possibly get away, turn around and create entire industries overnight by creating a domestic bubble shielding it from foreign competition.

Which, according to Bad Samaritans, is the rational choice of any still developing country.[0]

This of course doesn't absolve China (or the US for that matter) of their abhorrent actions in any other realm.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Fr...

Re: Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

#130

Post by glenstein »

Fricken wrote: post #108
glenstein wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who is it exactly that we should never forgive forever? For starters, whoever decides to delete references to Tiananmen from the Chinese internet, and the surrounding bureaucratic system that permits (or probably demands) it to happen. Whoever orders the media to omit reference to it every anniversary. Whoever continues to order that parents and/or spouses of the victims are placed under house arrest or removed from…

We should forgive. It's not an easy thing to do. The notion of forgiving was a revolutionary idea 2000 years ago, and in spite of lying at the bedrock of western morality, it's still a revolutionary idea today. The regime in China also brought 650 million people out of extreme poverty in span of a generation. Somewhat unprecedented in world history, and definitely not something that gets dredged up time and time agai…

When some effort is made to stop erasing history and start learning lessons from it, we can talk about forgiveness.

Until then "forgiveness" is an aloof and silly gesture that serves only to whitewash history and trivialize the concept of forgiveness.

Edit (since I can't reply any further): @Fricken: you're right. I feel perfectly comfortable making "overtures" that we not whitewash the massacre of 10,000 civilians. If that's to be redeemed it's going to take a lot more than vague exhortations about how the world is complicated.

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