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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

#131

Post by vermontdevil »

glenstein wrote: post #73
LV-426 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving Tiananmen Square aside - since nobody can disagree it was a terrible, indefensible crime - can you explain further how you think China is threatening democracy and freedom "worldwide"? They're certainly a threat in Hong Kong, where they have a degree of control and influence, but how and where else? While they lay claim to Taiwan, what harm do you think they are going to cause to South Korea and why would the…

China is projecting their influence across the world in myriad ways. They are experimenting with soft power in Australia, with money and increasingly combative diplomacy. There are increasingly significant trade agreements and loans with Latin America. They are striking deals across Africa for oil and minerals, and have a permanent naval installation in Djibouti, and seem comfortable supporting antidemocratic regimes…

Right from America’s playbook

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

#132

Post by jbooth »

glenstein wrote: post #121
jbooth wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 captur…

It's a billion people and a big political system that we don't have a lot of visibility into. This whole thread is filled with simplistic, black and white dumbassery.

From my limited view, there's actually been a lot of movement on freedom in expression in China, and Xi has been pushing the pendulum back towards the less free side. Which is bad. It's silly to paint all of that as a single overarching 'china'.

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

#133

Post by ceejayoz »

jbooth wrote: post #46
ceejayoz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You ever see the shock and awe videos of Baghdad? The ones using precision munitions on generally evacuated government buildings? You're really going to try comparing that to massacring unarmed protesters?

Yeah, those. Watch the video and tell me how bloodless it was. Or how it's not a massacre. I'm not defending a thing about Tiananmen square, I'm just marvelling at the power of nationalism to excuse anything. Bunch of snakes in suits with American flag pins declare a war for no reason, knowing that hundreds of thousands will die, but it's all Legitimate State Behavior. I'm sure it's a huge comfort to the orphans.

Looks pretty bloodless. Are there specific videos you're looking for me to peruse?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yr-LaMhvro

Now, the Iraq War and it's aftermath as a whole weren't bloodless, for sure. The "they'll greet us as liberators and there'll be a Western-style democracy in 90 days!" stuff was transparent bullshit.

Shock and awe was a specific bombing campaign, hitting palaces, military HQs, communications nexuses, etc. The targets chosen made it easy to avoid large numbers of civilian casualties, and trying to compare it to stuff like Tiananmen Square is just silly.

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

#134

Post by duncanawoods »

greggarious wrote: post #70
duncanawoods wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a particularly political event so reports from both sides need to be treated with scepticism. It doesn't sound terribly plausible as a disposal method to me. Not something I would believe without more sources / evidence.

>This is a particularly political event so reports from both sides need to be treated with scepticism. So basically, you don't like these facts so we must be skeptical of them? These were not two hostile countries in a war of whataboutism like the US and USSR. China ≠ USSR - this was long after the Sino-Soviet split and by the late 80s the UK and China had good relations. The Sino-British Joint Declaration (which wou…

> So basically, you don't like these facts so we must be skeptical of them?

You appear to be uncritically accepting rumours on a leaked cable as a fact - instead I only urge caution on such emotional matters.

Were people run over? Were bodies moved by bulldozer? Those statements can be true without that particularly gruesome scene being accurate. It is its gruesomeness that makes me suspect - a property that makes urban legends infectious - the sensationalism outweighs the substance, evidence and rationality e.g. who saw it, when did it happen, how many people were subject to it, why was that a rational thing to do etc.

> These were not two hostile countries in a war of whataboutism like the US and USSR.

We are not discussing an official statement from the British government so geopolictical relationships are hardly relevant. Governments and civil services are full of agendas in every direction but more likely this is an embassy doing its job i.e. reporting on the various rumours circulating in the host nation.

The reason for caution is that people are describing their emotional reactions to these words without considering the grounds. At the best of times there is some pretty horrid anti-Chinese xenophobia on this board. People want the worst things to be true irrespective of evidence. US citizen's casually describe Russia and China as enemies today. Something you only have to say enough times for it to become true.

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

#135

Post by ceejayoz »

intro-b wrote: post #109
rayiner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that we're trying to do something about it. Kids learn about many of the bad things America did (slavery, extermination of the native Americans, Vietnam war atrocities, nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc.). They're taking down civil war monuments all over the country. The same will happen with Columbus soon--Los Angeles has already renamed Columbus Day in favor of the indigenous people he exterminat…

Exactly - part of America's heritage of a free, unusually aggressive, and intellectually combative free press (on both sides of the political spectrum) is that criticism of our government, history, and society is widely studied and disseminated, both domestically and abroad. Knowledge of American human rights injustices, ranging from slavery to Guantanamo Bay, is promoted, shared, taught in schools.

It should be noted that American schools teach plenty of revisionist history or gloss over the worst excesses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/opinion/how-texas-teaches...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/150-years-lat...

https://jezebel.com/heres-how-new-texas-public-school-textbo...

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

#136

Post by hungerstrike »

mutteraloo wrote: post #35

Lest we forget, this is still the same government that mowed down 10,000 innocent lives, that still runs China today. They've gotten better at hiding behind marketing, propaganda, and strong arming other countries, but they're still ruled by a small, powerful group of elders that control every aspects of Chinese people's lives. It's sad that we keep feeding this dangerous psychopath which threatens democracy and free…

Yale helped Mao Zedong into power.

The truth about who really controls China is obscured.

Just a century ago, China was a backwater nation that got conquered by Great Britain. Within 60-80 years, they got nukes and became a super-power. Within 30 years, every nation sold out to China by giving them all the manufacturing technology. Bill Clinton sold them nuclear secrets. Israel regularly funnels intelligence and technological secrets to China.

What do you think is going on? Does anyone think the Brits who worked very hard to rule the world 200 years ago and had an advanced intelligence network just gave up and walked away? I don't.

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

#137

Post by igravious »

mutteraloo wrote: post #35

Lest we forget, this is still the same government that mowed down 10,000 innocent lives, that still runs China today. They've gotten better at hiding behind marketing, propaganda, and strong arming other countries, but they're still ruled by a small, powerful group of elders that control every aspects of Chinese people's lives. It's sad that we keep feeding this dangerous psychopath which threatens democracy and free…

You have a new account. You use inflammatory language: 'mowed down', 'strong arming', 'dangerous psychopath', 'nuclear missiles'. We try not to do that here.

That 10,000 number is contested, you do the truth a disservice by assuming it to be true. We hold ourselves to higher standards here. Other sources assert the figure was in the hundreds, still a lot but two orders of magnitude different.

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

#138

Post by laretluval »

glenstein wrote: post #97
mutteraloo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe you're just under their marketing and propaganda. here are some things the authoritarian government did just this year - China puts a freeze on burning coal, leaving millions of families shivering in the cold http://shanghaiist.com/2017/12/05/coal-ban.php - China Blowing Major Bubbles In 2017 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2016/12/19/china-bubb... - In locked-down Xinjiang, China is tracking kitchen…

I think you misunderstood my comment. I'm saying the U.S. has a cultural problem preventing it from confronting the very real authoritarian excesses of China. I think your articles are excellent evidence of those excesses and I agree with you about the problems posed by their marketing and propaganda.

I'd say the US's cultural problem is they think it's their business to "confront" other countries on their domestic issues.

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

#139

Post by hungerstrike »

rqs wrote: post #92
bufordsharkley wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, but it's pretty clear that China is unwilling to deny trade with North Korea, effectively propping up the Kim regime. Kim is engaging in increasingly dangerous provocations (admittedly provoked by the fact that the United States is still fighting the Korean War).

Just that? Chinese here. I could say, if our government proves capitalism can be very well integrated and become more productive in an authoritarianism society, then that is a really bad news for democracy. On the other hand though, after watching many Fox News clips on Youtube, I don't think you guys are doing very well on democracy, especially the people in the US. Democracy is much harder to maintain than authorit…

Your country already got hijacked by outsiders. You just don't know it because it's a secret.

Yale put Mao Zedong into power. Every US ambassador to China after that has been a member of Skull and Bones.

You are correct that maintaining power in a Democracy is more difficult. That is why the secret society wants to make China the model for a new world government. The US must be destroyed for this to happen.

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

#140

Post by kchoudhu »

greggarious wrote: post #127
kchoudhu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Not at all -- lots of opportunities for misunderstanding in this thread.
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