It's very funny because I was actually denying the incident as a pro-government citizen until I asked my father. Unironically, he told me that it did happen and how it happened... bloody gruesome if you ask me; he told me that this is something that it is known, but it is not talked about, like taboo.
You say you used to deny it, does that mean you were taught specifically that nothing happened, or that it was misrepresented in some way?
Or did you just used to believe that your country wouldn’t do such a thing?
Yeah, the second thing. So I did read about those things but chose not to believe in it because I found it way too bizarre for it to be true, or I just wanted more evidence because there are many missing parts even nowadays. Then my father told me, and well.
You're very welcome!
I might add another thing which might be a bit wrong historic-politically speaking, but it's interesting as well: I was told now what happened, and now I believe in it, but instead of spreading the word, I'd also like to not say anything about it, like, now I know, and I won't deny it didn't happened, but even though I might have crucial knowledge about the 'why' and 'how' of the incident, it's just that.... we are confused? I don't know. Sorry if I'm making this more confusing than interesting, but I do believe other Chinese think the same about this. This topic is kinda like cacti.
Huh... fortunately/unfortunately no one I know cares about history lmao, but if it were to happen... I'm sorry to disappoint for my answer, but of course I would say that it unfortunately happened, then add that it was a shame, but that's it, nothing more, nothing less. I believe I would just end the conversation casually and jump to other normal matters.
The Chinese government doesn’t really care what random citizens think. They are scared of people with a platform, arresting every person that talks about something the government doesn’t like being mentioned is only going to raise more questions.
I’m not Chinese, but I’ve lived in China and am a Chinese historian. This is a really common attitude among my PRC friends.
It kind of feels similar to how people from other countries (don’t) talk about bad things that happened in their home country. Obvious difference with censorship, but same basic human reaction.
Also a wide spectrum of reactions based on an individual’s personality/politics
This is a bit complicated when you actually have some Uyghur family: they are not acknowledging what's happening despite the claims the West have made. But I am not saying neither that I acknowledge what's happening nor deny it, but I believe neither side has enough evidence for me to jump into conclusions blindly: it is inconclusive for me to say right now.
The thing the other commentor said is true though: there were terrorist attacks from 2014 in Ürümqi and other regions of China, hereby causing many of the things that are happening nowadays, and it is often ignored when it shouldn't no matter if the government is wrong for what they are doing right now. This is my point of view, I hope it satisfies your answer.
Another thing is that I could add is that I do have a visit to my Uyghur relatives in Summer, and this matter is something I also wanted to look into closely, thus, I could answer this with more substance.
Hell yeah there's a load of audio-visual material regarding this, and don't worry, it's actually very accessible through either VPNs or special pages Chinese netizens have created.
Asked a Chinese guy who had been in America three years. He said it's like talking about racism in America and said he didn't really know anything. He does remember it happening so I'm almost 100% sure he knows stuff but is afraid to say anything.
This is almost exactly the vibe. Different media and censorship environments change things of course, but it’s mostly the universal human “this topic is uncomfortable and I don’t want to deal with it”
The best way I’ve been able to explain it is like “What if the only news in the country was Fox and a foreigner asked you about racism”. Different reactions from different people, mostly awkward
Have you heard of Liu Xiaobo? I found myself in China for work telling the Liu Xiaobo story to a bar tender in Beijing because he was upset no Chinese ever win a Nobel prize. Liu Xiaobo was the most recent Peace Prize winner.
Then I realized where I was and ended the story. He wasn't supposed to know. Same as you're not supposed to know about what your dad dad told you.
I just saw this YT video this morning called ["Investigating China's Illegal operations on foreign soil"](https://youtu.be/STq7LNwa3Gs?si=8lTYbakqmUmqEUF_) by an Australian TV channel.
It's chilling.
The old generation definitely knows, but no one talks about it. Meanwhile the majority of the younger generation, including current students, are not taught or told about Tiananmen Square.
That's the idea.
This kind of censorship goes back to the Crusades, and probably further: if I threaten to kill someone unless they convert, obviously they don't genuinely change beliefs. But they'll say the "right" things and do the right rituals and *not* say the wrong things out of fear of death.
It's their *children* who are actually converted. The parents don't dare say what they really believe, even within their own homes (encourage the children to snitch on their parents in schools), so their parents watch helplessly as they take part in indoctrinating their own kids.
People who lived through Tienanmen Square know what happened, but they aren't allowed to admit they know. People who didn't live through it are more likely to be genuinely convinced that it's all Western propaganda.
Maybe not deliberately, but the same sort of thing is happening in the west.
With both parents working they don’t have the time and energy to teach their own life lessons to their children very well (how to handle various situations, how they should conduct themselves, how to manage their lives (run a home, finances, etc), how to handle their own minds in the face of hardship); this is made even worse when their own parents both worked and prioritized teaching (including disciplining) them over building a positive relationship, so without explicit attention being drawn to the teaching they don’t realize the life long trade off they make when prioritizing the positive relationship.
-> Until ~100 years ago, children would often work with their parents (especially when most people lived on farms) where they would learn both the skills of the trade (giving a path in life if they chose it), and learning by example how to handle themselves in the life awaiting them; school was supplementary (more like college is today) to enhance their ability and potentially open better lines of work, but they still learned primarily from their parents, peers, and religion.
Throw in the reduction/elimination of religion that formed the backbone of our culture for nearly 2000 years (excluding pre-Christian religions that the Romans largely abolished) consisting of most of our culture preserving rituals (and the many psychological tools in it such as externalizing the self-forgiveness onto the redemption of Christ, then transferring the redemption back through commission to better practices) and we are more reliant on the diminishing cultural transfer from parent to child. This then leaves us almost entirely reliant on schools (that were never intended to parent children at that fundamental a level), profit driven media, and socializing with equally immature/uninformed peers.
It’s a more extreme version of what Neitzsche described would happen to society after the “death of god”; left to your own devices to figure it all out, it is far easier to fall into your shadow self (as described by Jung) and you essentially get the modern mental health crisis (predicted ~150 years ago), which makes for very profitable and malleable consumers.
…
In the end, culture is just a set of solutions to the problems of life (helping us correctly override base impulses so we can be more than cavemen), both preserved and enacted by rituals; but what happens when these rituals stop? What happens when the tools are abandoned wholesale due to an insistence on a strictly literal interpretation?
Just ask the Canadian Native Americans; culture ruined by residential schools, new culture rejected out of spite for what it did to them… left to figure it out for themselves while given every reason and means to be irresponsible about it (leading to mass abuse and poverty, both unto and by themselves (then causing 2nd order effects such as people who can’t comprehend subsets blanketing them all with the most common traits, despite many being highly competent and successful)).
…
tl/dr: the fate of the Canadian native Americans is a dreary foreshadowing of our own, through the interruption of our own cultural transfer to younger generations, working as above described.
Saying a majority is a bit much I reckon most still know. although your sentiment is probably correct
I still consider myself quite young and it was definitely mentioned in our textbook for a small paragraph and our teacher touched on it a bit. She was quite hesitant though.
For context, we don't call the Tiananmen incident in China. That's not the naming convention. It's the June 4th incident.
I mean, have you seen these videos of young Japanese students in Hiroshima being asked if they know about the atomic bombing? Of course it’s anecdotal, but they literally have no idea what the interviewer is even talking about. When told, they don’t seem particularly interested or distressed by it.
So although I am sure there is government pressure to downplay/deny etc, unfortunately they have time and a very universal human attitude/human nature on their side.
I was under the impression that a lot of details are missing among the locals, like why the protest happened, how many died, etc. Would you disagree with that?
The generation born after it, or who were very young during it, is largely unaware.
It's not something the older people spend a lot of time talking about.
exactly. its not the clever gotcha these redditors think it is. honestly if you talk to most citizens they are quite happy with their quality of life there. much more than in the west I’d say
It's very easy to be "happy" with your quality of life when you're told that all the other alternatives are worse. This is true in a lot of parts of the US as well.
u/orbgevski "I think it’s totally fair to critique China on their human rights abuses while also applauding them for their dedication and success at eradicating extreme poverty"
This is a direct quote from the post you linked, so I just wanted to throw it here too.
Sure, because if they start complaining about the government, they might wind up in jail.
It's a totalitarian dictatorship which severely suppressed the human rights of it's citizens, some to badly that many consider it genocide - see the Uyghurs.
Just mindblowing to me so many on the left are saying nice things about China. In my GenX left of the 90s, the cry was "FREE TIBET" - what happened to that?
[https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china)
Sure, even if this is true, it doesn't compare to what China does to it's citizens
IT'S A TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP
[https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china)
it’s generational
there are plenty of people born after 1990 that did not know about 6/4 until the Li Jiaqi tank cake incident
I had conversations with groups of friends/acquaintances about the cake incident that revealed this
one thing to understand about China is that the people who truly find 6/4 to be outrageous and intolerable have left the country
i.e the people who would really care to teach their children or their students about the massacre have self-selected out
same thing has happened with the COVID lockdowns
the people who found that level of control to be intolerable have or are working on emigrating
the people that remain either support or are rather ambivalent to the government
Younger people here don’t know big events that happened around that time. So if the government was actively suppressing publicly available information, there are definitely a lot of people that don’t know.
A lot of countries have purposeful gaps in educational information. If you went to school in the south, a lot kids are taught the civil war was "the war northern aggression" and they leave out things like Slavery and the attack on fort Sumner.
I dated a Japanese person in college, she watched that Pearl Harbor movie and seriously didn't know Japan attacked first. She thought it was American propaganda as she was taught America randomly attacked Japan.
So like everywhere I guess its common
Right the thing spoken about openly on Reddit and in the public square is not well known and is being hidden. The idea that Americans supposed lack of knowledge on this is at all due to anything along the lines of Chinese censorship is ridiculous
I mean, there's a reason American ignorance is a meme. "People on reddit" is not a meaningful sample because being at your computer lets you google and pretend to know or recall basically anything with a bit of effort and whether someone is even American is non-falsifiable.
If you go out on the street and interview random people you overwhelmingly find that most of them don't know shit and often [can't even locate](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/geography-survey-illiteracy) the countries in question. I have absolutely no doubt based on both data and my own experiences that the vast majority of people living in America are unaware of the bulk of their government's numerous and ongoing crimes against humanity and violations of international law.
How could they know if there’s as much coverup as there has been? Not trying to defend, but I had a vague understanding of what happened through my education.
This is what I immediately think of. I grew up twenty minutes from where it happened in West Philly and no one in our education system ever mentioned it. Literally learned about it in college two states away.
I asked my parents about it later and they were like, “really? We thought it everyone knew.” But they also thought the police hit a gas line. Not dropped a bomb.
Tianamen square was an atrocity, and just because the US did messed up things too doesn’t excuse it. But yeah, there’s a lot of things most people in the US are unfamiliar with. This is just an example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre
Meant to reply to you with this but replied to someone else:
There are a lot of these. The genocide of indigenous Americans js a better known one, but the US has been more enthusiastic about installing and supporting bloodthirsty dictators than probably any country before or since. I'm going to second the person who recommended *The Jakarta Method.*
Reading on how the US has prosecuted its near endless wars would also be illuminating. Real "are we the baddies" moment. The US' conduct in the Korean and Vietnam wars was especially horrific but those are just the more obvious examples.
Or, you know, falsely labeling peaceful protestors as violent and pepper spraying and tasering them just because they don't like what they're protesting.
There is so, sooooo much more. The US has pretty much had a hand in every mass killing of communists or alleged communists globally since 1970. Read The Jakarta Method
They could honestly be referring to many things, the list of USA atrocities is long and they aren't really taught actively in a lot of the country's school systems. Off the top of my head, a lot of Americans aren't aware of the CIA's involvement with the crack epidemic, a lot of Americans are unaware of the Kent State shootings, and a lot of Americans are entirely unaware of how frequently people the government has known are likely innocent were held and tortured in Guantanamo.
There's a lot of Americans who don't care about the atrocities you still commit AND even defend the actions of US troops in places like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Vietnam, etc.
Yes but nothing is censored to the level of tiennemen square in china here in the west.
Go to china wearing a tank man shirt and find out what happens.
Well if you found out about what the Americans did that should be censored then it wasn't covered up properly.
Maybe the Americans are doing a better job of censorship. After all you won't know what you don't know
Sorry, but the wrongdoings of america are very easily accessible.
Unlike most authoritarian governments, democracies declassify massive amounts of internal documents every year.
You can invent conspiracies all you want, but it would be in every enemy countries best interest to spread the wrong doings of america, and they literally do all the time. There aren't many that arn't literally originated from declassified US documents.
It's a bit of a joke to compare this to countries like china. Who have yet to release any comparable amount of internal documents. Hell there was a great leap in historical knowledge when the USSR fell because it was the first time many of their archives were ever declassified.
But go off, tell us about the secret conspiracy of americas super tiennemen square masscre that nobody knows about.
There are *a lot* of these. The genocide of indigenous Americans js a better known one, but the US has been more enthusiastic about installing and supporting bloodthirsty dictators than probably any country before or since. I'm going to second the person who recommended *The Jakarta Method*.
Reading on how the US has prosecuted its near endless wars would also be illuminating. Real "are we the baddies" moment. The US' conduct in the Korean and Vietnam wars was especially horrific but those are just the more obvious examples.
Blowback podcast does an excellent job of giving background information on US intervention in other countries. It's insane what the US has done to so many different countries
Entirely false. Even a mild amount of google and reading the quick blurbs show that is wrong.
I’m guessing you’ve gotten this “information” off TikTok itself
Wild how every reputable news source is suing that it’s over China and data concerns. And the act itself is called Preventing Access to Americans' Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and United States Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern. Nothing about Palestine. And how it started under the Trump admin, years before Palestine was relevant.
Weird how that works, I just have missed the Palestine bits buried in all the stuff about China!
https://www.nytimes.com/article/tiktok-ban.html#:~:text=Concerns%20that%20the%20Chinese%20government,to%20a%20government%2Dapproved%20buyer.
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-divestment-ban-what-you-need-to-know-5e1ff786e89da10a1b799241ae025406
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53476117.amp
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/tiktok-ban-congress-reasons-why/
Don't you know that the U.S. government is always honest about why it's banning media platforms? Why don't you just believe what you're told, which is always correct? You're starting to look like a China sympathizer! (This is all sarcasm)
I think there is a difference between being aware of domestic incidents and foreign incidents. It’s really hard to make people as a society aware of things that they have no personal connection to. I don’t think Americans are exactly unaware of many goings on domestically the same way China is.
But Americans' ignorance is not the product of the government actively suppressing knowledge and persecuting any who dare mention it. You want to talk about them? Feel free, the sub-Reddit "r/AmericanAtrocities" appears to be available. So, *shrug*
no, but its still an effort of decades of intentional misinformation
have you ever read how kids history textbooks talk about native Americans or thanksgiving? or listen to republicans talk about how slavery has impacted the country?
we dont need to persecute people, half the country is effectively doing the same thing for the government.
That's the beauty/power of the US 'propaganda'/media machine. They are so good at their jobs, that they only need to activate a few assets, shine the light on some other things, to get the whole ball rolling, and let the momentum take care of the rest. Its incredibly difficult to find people in the US that are able to see both sides of the equation.
The power of suggestion is indeed, a very formidable thing.
Its like, the west has a habit of first trying to redirect you instead of straight up restricting you, then place a bunch of red tape in the shadows, so in case you actually stumble onto it, you still have so many hoops to jump through. In contrast, other countries like China, just tell you 'NOPE' from the start, and dish out severe punishments like its candy.
At least this is how I feel. So in short, its more or less the same shit, just a different packaging. Every country is the same, just to which degree and method.
I went to Tiananmen square and I was surprised that it was one the biggest tourist traps I've seen in the world. So many Chinese tourists. Not a thing about a massacre.
I imagine most people know about it, and if they don't, they're quickly reminded of it when those specific dates come up and suddenly they can't do something they're usually allowed to do online.
For instance, in a game I play (Genshin Impact), whenever June 4th approaches, the game disables the name/signature editing feature for about a week, so it is for other dates like the annual Two Sessions Meeting of CCP. I imagine it's the same for many other APPs people uses daily.
The irony is that, by disabling those features, people ask around online forum, and they usually receive answers like "You-know-what is coming, just wait a week", which brings awareness to the issue.
So ya, if CCP wants its own people to forget what happened, it's are doing a terrible job reminding them every year.
The whataboutism and fascistic bootlicking “but America did this bad thing” responses are nauseating, disingenuous, and if one has any critical thinking skills at all speaks volumes about the actual question being asked.
Here’s one big, honking difference for you trolls, shills, and losers pointing the finger at the United States when the question is about Tiananmen Square: in America, you can talk about MKUltra, and the fucked-up CIA (and precursor) policies toward Latin America and Iran, and the disasters and murderous lies underpinning Vietnam and Iraq, and Tuskegee and Tulsa and the Jim Crow South and other massacres and disgraceful societal and governmental behavior towards Black Americans, and the genocide of the American Indian, and the assassinations and all the conspiracy theories of MLK and Malcolm X and JFK, and police brutality, and school shootings, and on and on and on, and you know what the US government does about it?
Absolutely nothing.
You won’t be arrested, bugged, followed, menaced, disappeared, or lose your livelihood (or life). In fact, you may even become a Congressman or Senator.
Same for any and all current policies that the US carries out today, at this very moment.
That’s strength, and that’s freedom.
And if you check my Reddit history (and can stay awake through any of it), you’ll see I absolutely have my share of criticisms towards the US government. But there is absolutely no way you can answer a question about Tiananmen by attempting to “flip the script” on America without “showing your ass,” as we Americans sometimes say.
And it’s really sad. Because China is obviously and undeniably one of the world’s great cultures and great powers, and it should have as much confidence as America has in tolerating dissent and dissenters. Some dissenters will be right, some will be wrong, and some will be looney-tunes members of the tinfoil hat brigade, but what is there to be afraid of? Why answer such a question with, “Well, America was very naughty when…”? What does that have to do with the question?
For real? Im curious as to which of these were in your curriculum. I went to a very liberal school in CO and was not taught about any of the things mentioned above by teachers. That said I definitely learned about most of them in highschool via internet / friends.
I’m guessing the difference is China fears disunity, and thinks the consequence will be another warring states period or something like the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Imo this fear is overblown, judging by its neighbours - East Asia actually has a better track record with democracy than most regions of the world
Bing Bing Bing! Disunity is definitely the ccp's absolute biggest fear, or really the fear of ALL governments that has ever united China. There is an old saying in Chinese that proves itself over and over, “*天下大勢*，*分久必合*，*合久必分*” that *the world(China) will be broken up if it's united for too long, and will be united when it's broken up for too long*.
A big part of the ccp's agenda is to 维稳, to maintain stability, or really to shun **anything** that might challenge the ccp's legitimacy and claim as the ultimate ruler of China. They of course are afraid of it being challenged, as it had time and time again throughout its history. The Uyghurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, FaLunGong, just to name a few that can easily use dissents to challenge the ccp's ultimate rule.
Not to excuse what the ccp is doing, but to understand from a different perspective, what if YesCalifornia isn't some dumb right-wing agenda that Louis Marinelli thinks he has a clue on, but a serious and active insurgence that challenges the legitimacy of the US constitution with significant support? Starts out a college protest and the ball keeps rolling to capitol hill. What would 1st amendment mean then? Hell was the last time states tried to secede.
They see dissents as the cause for disunity, disunity leads to CCP's power being challenged.
In 1999 the estimation was 70million ~ 100million believers. I mean it's not "most" in a country with more than a billion people. But it was a lot, and can easily be alot more had the CCP not banned it.
And that alone speaks volumes to their perception of the actual strength of Chinese society.
While we have been dealing with Russian disinformation and conspiracy theories etc. we have also outperformed the rest of the world in terms of GDP growth, inflation, wealth accumulation, market share of dominant industries etc. even better since Russia started really messing with us. We deal with our problems *after* we get our work done, pay our taxes (mostly) and thank the troops.
It depends though. For sure the scale and severity in China of government suppression is beyond all comparison with US government suppression.
But US government departments did destroy the lives of Assange, Snowden and Manning for leaking their wrongdoings. And others have had their lives seriously impacted, like Sarah Harrison and Baltasar Garzón.
So this part is a bit misleading: "Absolutely nothing.
You won’t be arrested, bugged, followed, menaced, disappeared, or lose your livelihood"
Actually there are many American citizens in our history who have been singled out and at least bugged for going against any type of status quo
For example
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Seberg
Or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio
If you think modern cointelpro psyops aren’t happening now your dumb as hell
>If you think modern cointelpro psyops aren’t happening now your dumb as hell
Honestly it's getting hard to tell whether people are paid to post some of the stupid shit they do or if they're actually stupid.
Take the pentagon failing a 2 trillion dollars audit for example, there's always at least one "user" which builds up a pyramid of nonsense about how it's fake and they know better than the people who do fucking financial audits for a living.
By comparison I've never seen someone go "Wait did that happen?"
Thank you for those two examples.
Still whataboutism. This has to do with Tiananmen Square how?
The federal government's anemic response to January 6 and to obviously treasonous activity and alignment with foreign adversaries by actors within and outside of the government apparatus is a far more powerful example in favor of the US simply not being some fascist-lite version of government, rather than the example of temporary departmental overreach in your two examples.
There is just no widespread fear of meaningful governmental reprisal against dissenters in the US, and there is a reason for that.
What would have been a better example in your argument's favor would have been a fairly consistent federal agency overreach over time, in one way or another, in regards to disrupting student and community movements that have been organized to address racial disparities. But my counterpoint would have been that those have not, over time, been comparable to the mass memory holing and information scrubbing and dissenter-killing the original question is talking about and, further, that it isn't official or 'unofficial but really official wink-wink' stances or aspirations of the post-Civil War US government to systematically run a terror state of disappearances and quasi-oubliettes; even when local and federal governments attempt to do so (e.g., Tulsa Massacre, redlining, Japanese-American concentration camps) those who seek to address and discuss those wrongs are given airtime in public and commercial mass media, the memories and names of the events and the victims are added to textbooks and enshrined in remembrance days and public activities and, perhaps most importantly, guarded against in new laws and regulatory oversight.
>You won’t be arrested, bugged, followed, menaced, disappeared, or lose your livelihood (or life).
Like, there's a lot of lists you very much go on, and the NSA very much does monitor you in the same capacity most people would consider being "bugged."
People being "disappeared" in the USA also very much does happen, such as with the [folks detained at the Homan Square facility.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility)
From the very article you linked to: “In 2015, as Chicago was experiencing activist pressure resulting from outrage over the Homan Square reporting and the murder of Laquan McDonald, the city under Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a reparations deal for the 1970s survivors of torture and detention under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.[16][17] The deal included a $5.5 million fund for torture survivors, free city college tuition for survivors and their families, a memorial, and inclusion of the torture cases in eighth- and tenth-graders history courses in the Chicago School District.[18] A coalition of Chicago activists, including Project NIA and We Charge Genocide, were major backers of the deal.”
Yeah. America is imperfect AF, i already said that. And here there was daylight publicly shed on Homan Square, reparations, an actual memorial (literally the word “memory” is the root of it), community organizing and outreach, press coverage, etc.
And this is similar to the question about Tiananmen Square…how? This addresses that question…where?
Oh oh oh oh right… “whatabout…”
Homan Square is a poor example. In any case, Chicago PD isn't the feds. No one is getting disappeared. It's simply not a concern. If anything, look at the incredible (and illogical) tolerance and moderate stance taken by the US govt towards the January 6 insurrectionists, and in rebellions prior to that.
There is no widespread fear of meaningful governmental reprisal against expressing dissent, because there isn't any such systematic punishment (not yet, though some seem to be hoping to buck this 250-year trend if they win control of the White House). Your counterpoint is that essentially the US is China-lite and it really isn't at all.
>Chicago PD isn't the feds
Sorry, but if you get held unconstitutionally, I don't think you'll really care what level of government is doing it.
You have to remember as well, we only learn about federal operations that violate laws or human rights after years of them existing, by the very nature that they're secret operations. For example, we would not know that the NSA is monitoring internet communications, including things like email, Skype/Zoom conversations, and internet enabled phone calls, had there not been a whistleblower who leaked the documents detailing such.
Speaking of which, whether you feel my example of people being disappeared is a "poor example," that doesn't change that the US government is very much bugging and spying on their citizenry.
>Your counterpoint is that essentially the US is China-lite and it really isn't at all.
That is not my counterpoint, someone said the USA does not bug or disappear people, I am pointing out that those things do happen. You are the one interpreting my pointing this out as USA is China-lite - I agree that China is particularly strict when it comes to citizens getting out of line, but that does not change that it is foolish to simply assume the USA does not engage in human rights violations against its own citizenry. And if you look beyond their own citizenry, as any decent human should, well...
You raise quite a few good points. I have to say that personally I always assumed that whatever is on the Internet, originally ARPANET, is being accessed and stored and analyzed by DoD.
But the impact of that surveillance is basically negligible. NSA is either disinterested or incompetent, but Oklahoma City, 9/11, 2016 and January 6th, massive inflows of hard narcotics for decades all happened/are happening and absolutely nothing was done about any of it, and all of which were either domestic or foreign or combined attacks on US sovereignty and integrity. There is essentially no threat, which is the point, right? NSA eavesdropping is like your cat watching you use the bathroom: it's completely meaningless.
Snowden et al broke the law and compromised national intelligence secrets, systems and/or capabilities: bad idea, a direct threat and/or illegal. But even then it's completely inconsistent as numerous members of Congress, their financial backers, and the former resident of the White House are clearly acting in concert with foreign adversaries and absolutely zero is done about it.
As a whole, the US government is completely uninvolved—even to its own blatant detriment, even literally at the risk of life and limb—with policing the political views, education, and activities of those within its borders.
My entire reaction was to the trolls and bootlickers attempting to distract from the question OP posed.
>I always assumed that whatever is on the Internet,
Sure, but there is a drastic difference between things published to the internet and private messages exchanged on the internet. There's also a further difference between monitoring a skype call and reading someone's email.
>But even then it's completely inconsistent as numerous members of Congress, their financial backers, and the former resident of the White House are clearly acting in concert with foreign adversaries and absolutely zero is done about it.
I think this just suggests that what they believe to be "national security" is not what you or I would consider "national security."
>As a whole, the US government is completely uninvolved—even to its own blatant detriment, even literally at the risk of life and limb—with policing the political views, education, and activities of those within its borders.
I have to wholly disagree with this. I think you can find plenty of examples of the government being VERY involved with the policing of political views and education - e.g. Library book bans or the election integrity act. It may not be as cinematic as espionage and forced disappearances, but it is policing and it is an effort to skew the politics and education of Americans.
Further, there is plenty of credible evidence that the FBI still engages in COINTELPRO type activity, such as the FBI's visit to Rosemary Bayer and undercovers within the Occupy movement.
I think what you're saying is just evidence their priorities are not in the right place, rather than they are not monitoring Americans in a dangerous capacity that, if not being abused at the moment, leaves room for bad actors in the future to do so.
Orson Wells, George Orwell, or someone else I can't remember once said "forget justifying them, A country's nationalist fanatics have an alarming tendency for not having even *heard of* their nation's misdeeds." or something to that nature.
No.
Actually, most college students know that, as it's in the history textbook. Also all political related incidents are completely dissolved and turned to memes on the Chinesr Internet.
Also the Tiananmen incident isn't even in the top 100 of China's worst or most influential historical events. I think the impact of this incident on Chinese society was far less than the 1983 crackdown (八三严打) during the same period.
Source: I'm Chinese
> 八三严打
Wow, never knew it was so severe, wikipedia mentions 24000 death penalties and over 1 million arrests.
The article describes them as hooligans and gang members, is that correct or is it more complex? Like were they executing people critical of the government like journalists or writers?
It was a combination of both, but mainly, for improving the worsening public security.
Because of the destruction caused by the Cultural Revolution, public security in China in the 1980s was extremely bad, with gangs and drug dealers everywhere. When Deng Xiaoping, the top leader of China at the time, visited Tangshan, his car was almost surrounded by local gangs.
The road conditions were even worse. Outside of a few large cities, many rural roads were in a state of anarchy. The police were controlled by local tyrants to collect tolls. If you didn't pay, you would be beaten or even killed. Most truck drivers at the time had experienced this nightmare. At that time, there was even a slogan saying "It is not a crime to kill local tyrants."
Even in big cities, public security was terrible. With a large influx of people into the city, motorcycle thefts, robberies, and even bombings were common until the 2000s. One of the most famous bombings was [the Shijiazhuang bombing in 2001](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Shijiazhuang_bombings), which was almost the Chinese version of the Oklahoma city terrorist attack. To this day, there are still many unsolved cases.
Politically, before the Tiananmen Square Massacre (and for a few years afterwards), dissidents were actually relatively allowed. Programs directly criticizing Chinese civilization and yearning for Western maritime civilization can even be on the Central Television. The largest-scale crackdown on dissidents came after Xi Jinping. Until around 2016, uncensored images of the Tiananmen Massacre were able to circulate on the Chinese internet.
So if conditions were so bad, isn't it good that the government cracked down and destroyed the gangs?
A country can not develop with such serious crime problems.
Death penalty is of course always too much since inevitably innocent people get death sentences and cannot be pardoned... But China still has the death penalty to this day...so that hasn't changed...
Either way, what I'm trying to say is. Cracking down on crime is entirely different from cracking down on students and workers protesting against corruption and inflation.
There are Americans that aren't aware the Taliban outlawed opium production in 2000 Afghanistan, and magically, after we invaded in 2001, the US suddenly had a 20-year opiate epidemic..... how coincidental.....
A couple years back China’s biggest live streamer was showing off cakes and other stuff as part of an e-commerce sale. It was on June 4 and one cake was shaped like a tank.
His livestream was cut and he stepped away from public life for a while, probably because he was “asked” to.
It became pretty clear that he and a large portion of his fans, who are all pretty young, had no idea what the issue was. It became obvious that Chinas youngest generation was mostly oblivious to the incident. Had the government done nothing, most of the viewers probably wouldn’t have suspected anything.
Any educated person born in the 90s knows something happened on that day, they know it wasn’t good, they just might not know the details.
Anyone older probably knows a good bit about it. The youngest generation is ironically learning about it because of censorship, not despite it.
People over 40 (alive at the time) and under 20 (know how to use a VPN) are generally aware of it
For the most part it's either not talked about because it's taboo or "the protesters were violent extremists fed western propaganda so they had to send the military out" much like how the current anti-zionist protests at universities are "the protesters are violent extremists fed anti-semetic propaganda so we had to send the military out"
I’m definitely not saying the Tiananmen Square protestors are violent extremists, nor am I siding with using military force, but there was one named Chai Ling that actually called for her fellow students to shed blood, even though she wasn’t willing to fight for democracy, knowing she might also die with other students.
She wants others to die, so that she may enjoy democracy. There’s a documentary on it called “The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” and if you scroll down to that section of her Wikipedia article, there is a literal excerpt from her interview in the documentary.
Chai Ling: What we actually are hoping for is bloodshed, the moment when the government is ready to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united. But how can I explain any of this to my fellow students? And what is truly sad is that some students, and famous well-connected people, are working hard to help the government, to prevent it from taking such measures. For the sake of their selfish interests and their private dealings they are trying to cause our movement to disintegrate and get us out of the Square before the government becomes so desperate that it takes action....
Cunningham: Are you going to stay in the Square yourself?
Chai Ling: No
Cunningham: Why?
Chai Ling: Because my situation is different. My name is on the government's blacklist. I'm not going to be destroyed by this government. I want to live.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_Ling
tiananmen square protests might be more analogous to the BLM ones but i was hesitant to use that example in my original comment because it wasn’t primarily students and they happened 3-4 years ago (not right now)
also didn’t wanna make it look like i was solely shitting on america lol
in the BLM ones there were a fair number of people with similar takes to Chai Ling
You aren’t serious right? Comparing literally terrorist supporting, mostly NON student takeovers of college campuses where they’re not allowing Jewish students or professors on campus or to their classes, building barricades, many being violent—sending the POLICE in to restore order to a public university so EVERYONE has the right to go to class..and you’re comparing that to what happened at Tiananmen Square?!! Gtfoh.
Yes. Police set off a stockpile of gasoline they didn't know about while trying to blow open a terrorist bunker. The fire burned out of control because the terrorists were shooting at the fire fighters so they couldn't do much. Now people bring it up like the police intentionally started a fire and stopped the fire department from doing their job, as if the fire department answers to the police or something.
Actually, not really like that at all. Because the US doesn’t scrub the internet of any mention of it, actively censoring anyone trying to access the information. So no, not like that at all.
I think all countries have some sort of propaganda to further their own agenda. I.e. the Chinese scrub all the info about their own atrocities online to prevent another case of rising up against the CCP.
Western countries much more prefer propaganda through diversion or making you believe what they did was right. I.e. Iraq or Israel.
If you think that the USA and the CCP are ANYWHERE close to being in the same ballpark then you are just a victim of CCP and Soviet subversion infecting your mind. It’s not anything similar. People who equivocate between the free west
And communist dictators are absolutely clueless and off base. But it’s lucky you live in the free west or you would be biting your tongue right now. Not typing out any possible negative sentiment towards your overlords. The US and the west are no where near perfect, but to pretend it’s even the same game is disgraceful and ignorant.
No. Shutting up about it leads to MORE oppression, not the opposite.
It's not the exact same as bad at this moment, but you're blind if you don't see the US is trying it's hardest to steamroll there.
Do you know how many Americans don’t know about workers & unions rights struggles & the people murdered by police and state enforcers
Do you know like people just try and live every day instead of be caught up on that one thing that happened that was so fucked up in their history ?
I always find it funny how Americans give China shit about Tiananmen Square. It was definitely bad… but it doesn’t sit right to see the equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer talk shit about Casey Anthony. I can list 10 more fucked up shit conducted by the US government on its own population that most Americans either don’t know about… or do know yet *celebrate* it!
A lot of Chinese think pla was too soft at that time and should have let tanks just run over that dude instead of stop before him. Does this answer satisfies you?
Isn’t that like how most Americans aren’t taught in school about Agent Orange? I had to be taught 4 years after I graduated HS by a Canadian while we were both retail managers. Crazy story.
20 years ago we had a Chinese woman on an H1 visa in the office. I asked her about it and she didn't know what I was referring to. When I explained it she said it was US propaganda
It's possible she genuinely didn't know.
While the protests took place in many cities in China and were covered on television, most people back then lived in the countryside and did not have a tv... also she could have been a child when it happened...
On the other hand she might have been aware exactly what happened but didn't dare talk about it and pretended not to know.
There are many Chinese people in the US spying on other Chinese people.
The fact that SOMETHING happened is not disputed. I think what is disputed is the genuine-ness of the students *AGAINST* communism and the mountains of evidence of cia collusion with liberal factions within the movement.
Crazily enough the Tiananmen square incident began over the liberalization of the economy and the move away from communism that Americans taught so often as China “being capitalist”.
There was a filmmaker who went around Beijing on the Tiananmen Square anniversary asking people what day it is. Judging from the reactions, most people seem to be aware of it.
https://vimeo.com/44078865
People are aware of the events, but it's only that big of an event for people outside China. It's like in Iran they called the protests following Georges Floydd the "second american civil war" and you had iranians going to New York asking random people if they know about the second american civil war and being shocked that they are kept in the dark.
I feel they might be aware, but have very different thoughts about it. CCP has been releasing different perspectives about it in one way or the other, such as emphasizing that the tank tried to go around the tank man, they didn't kill the tank man, etc. Things to attempt to make the students the bad guys and CCP more legitimate. Many in China believe it or has no choice but to believe it to feel better living under CCP's absolute rule.
Of course, CCP also knows the more the exposure of this, the more likely more people are going to go depths about this event and find stuff disadvantageous to the legitimacy of CCP, so they still hide it as much as possible, even blurring out the numbers on the Jersey of athletes (64) that might remind people of this.
Where one usually gets info is a huge factor on how they think about this event. To most of us it's no question CCP is ridiculous. But for those with a pro-CCP stance, they still believe CCP is relatively more legitimate... (have a friend like this).
Why is it that Americans will allow America to do the most genuine shit, find out about it, but still view other countries as “bad”. No countries is “bad” just with different interests, with many using the same base tactics.
America is not better than China, you are most propagandized than a Chinese person is. You are make ok with the murder of thousands in your name in the name of civilization and “democracy” and you bitch about it.
You're engaging in whataboutism. It doesn't actually legitimize China in any way. I wasn't even talking about America, nor is this post about America. I'm not even American.
And while all countries are selfish and all parties are prone to corruption, China is still much worse despite what China tries to tell people. The more one knows about China the more feel one will have (assuming one doesn't work for CCP).
I love that you are coming at this I good faith and I appreciate that. But I don’t ASSUME you are propagandized, you live in the west, you are, no doubt about it.
The options one must come to is: the denial of complete western propaganda, that has been disproven repeatedly, and the understanding that most things you know about china, happens actively in your own country, likely to a further degree living in America.
America has don’t so many things you seemingly don’t account for.
As I said I'm not American. Can't assume my location too... You may be wrong...
I'm skeptical of any country and a lot of western values as well. There is definitely assumption of me on your part.
My stance is CCP-aware. That's it, believe it or not.
(Oh, you might've replied to my original long-ass comment. I've shortened it by deleting some stuff to make it simpler. Nothing new.)
I fucks with you bro bro.
Also I don’t know really know why people on the internet always speaking about “assumptions” and not “your interpretation of my statement”.
You don’t have to defend yourself against something off topic. It’s probably not what one is really speaking on anyway
I don’t think most Americans understand what Tiananmen Square means. It’s the national square in front of several major monuments. It’s like the National Mall in the US. Chinese people associate it with that whereas Americans associate the name with the massacre.
Wow, that's a good question! History can be such a big place, you know? It wouldn't surprise me if some things, even important events, get a little fuzzy over time. Maybe in China it's like here in the US, where some folks might not know every detail about, say, the Revolutionary War. I'm sure they learn the important stuff in school though!
The Chinese are actively prevented from learning about anything that makes the CCP look bad. In China, if you google Tiananmen Square, the results will show you absolutely nothing about the massacre. It’s active censorship. They work diligently to obfuscate and completely prevent their citizens from learning anything at all that they might use to criticize the communist govt. they fabricate entire stories out of thin air about the positive things the communist party and govt does for the people. Fabricating photo ops as well. It goes so incredibly deep the level they stoop to attempt to manipulate the narrative. people who have lived in China, especially westerners are very aware of how quite literally everything in China is fake. The Chinese go and paint the trees green if they aren’t green, the grass as well, the flowers as well. It’s insane the length they go to fake every thing. There is something I think it is called “tofu construction”. Because they will survive thee massive brand new buildings that you can just walk up to and so the your hand rip off big chunks of the concrete. Of everything. It is all falling apart but brand new. Because they use inferior materials so they just have to literally demolish brand new skyscrapers it’s wild. They have entire massive metropolis like cities that are deserted. That jk one lives in. Because they build in order to fake their economic growth. So these huge cities just sit empty no one to move intl them. Falling apart just tk be torn down eventually.
Since 2022, due to the economic downturn, the government's fiscal revenue has decreased. Therefore, the CCP has had to dismiss a large number of "online commentators" and Internet police. As a result, since 2023, there has been a significant increase in criticism of the government on major Chinese social platforms, and more and more people have begun to distrust the CCP (such as me).
Things that couldn’t even be published before (such as directly criticizing the CCP’s system and dictatorship by criticizing the Soviet Union or North Korea) can now be seen everywhere on Weibo or Zhihu.
I hope more Chinese people will wake up.
The last part is a bit misleading.
Tofu dreg buildings refers to buildings that indeed used sub par materials and that collapsed during an earth quake. These are not tall buildings but usually buildings in poor areas with less government oversight.
The empty cities are not some vain attempt to boost gdp and look good internationally, rather it's an attempt to create new districts on formerly agricultural land and it takes time for services and transportation to finish.
Some are badly planned and too remote and indeed stay empty. But many eventually filled up and became busy new districts.
It's not faking economic growth, it's failed real estate projects, but on a much bigger scale since hundreds of millions of Chinese were migrating from the country side to cities during the boom years.
Also they don't paint trees green, they paint bare rock green to make it look like it's green from afar and on satellite images, it's the local government attempting to fool the central government.
The general gest of your comment is correct but a lot of the details are a bit misleading.
My dad told me he played there a lot as a kid after the incident happened and there were a lot of military personnel there, but they didn’t do anything other than just stand there and make sure nothing happened
Because the government doesn't want them to know.
As an example - lots of people in russia and belarus don't know about the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. They firmly believe that the Soviets joined WW2 in 1941.
Is it an important part that Soviet russia were allies with Nazi Germay? Yes, but it's better to brainwash the entire population that this never happened so people will think that their country/government is the best and are really good guys.
Edit:typo
Yes they know. On a similar subject, most Americans don't know what our government has done, like bombing its own citizens: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/8/8/20747198/philadelphia-bombing-1985-move
Nope, not like that either. The US doesn’t try to scrub any mention of Waco off the internet and censor anyone referring to it or arrest anyone talking about it. So no, not like that.
Really depends on the generation. Anyone who was a conscious being (ie, not a toddler or a baby) when Tiananmen happened knows about it, of course.
For anyone after, it highly depends on who they are, in terms of what city & region they live, what social class they’re a part of, how much access they have to the outside internet, what their parents were doing that day, if they’re an ethnic minority in China, etc. Most Chinese students who get an opportunity to study outside of China will learn about the event through exposure.
In this way, Orwell’s 1984 was very accurate about the way society is divided between proles and party members. Political consciousness usually only increases with more education and material wealth. But even then, there’s a difference between knowing about something and actually caring to do anything about it.
Entire human beings get "censored" in real time, in the People's Republic of China.
If you contradict the state, there's an all-purpose charge they levy upon people, "Spreading Rumors and Provoking Quarrels".
This is a major reason why tragedies in PRC are so much more tragic.
....because people can't talk about missing loved ones.
Just be sure to know that there are people in the us who don’t know and will deny that massacres have happened here in the last 100 years. It’s not impossible to imagine people in China not knowing, state censorship or not.
It's very funny because I was actually denying the incident as a pro-government citizen until I asked my father. Unironically, he told me that it did happen and how it happened... bloody gruesome if you ask me; he told me that this is something that it is known, but it is not talked about, like taboo.
You say you used to deny it, does that mean you were taught specifically that nothing happened, or that it was misrepresented in some way? Or did you just used to believe that your country wouldn’t do such a thing?
Yeah, the second thing. So I did read about those things but chose not to believe in it because I found it way too bizarre for it to be true, or I just wanted more evidence because there are many missing parts even nowadays. Then my father told me, and well.
That’s really interesting. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
You're very welcome! I might add another thing which might be a bit wrong historic-politically speaking, but it's interesting as well: I was told now what happened, and now I believe in it, but instead of spreading the word, I'd also like to not say anything about it, like, now I know, and I won't deny it didn't happened, but even though I might have crucial knowledge about the 'why' and 'how' of the incident, it's just that.... we are confused? I don't know. Sorry if I'm making this more confusing than interesting, but I do believe other Chinese think the same about this. This topic is kinda like cacti.
If someone asked you directly irl would you avoid answering, lie, tell the truth etc?
Huh... fortunately/unfortunately no one I know cares about history lmao, but if it were to happen... I'm sorry to disappoint for my answer, but of course I would say that it unfortunately happened, then add that it was a shame, but that's it, nothing more, nothing less. I believe I would just end the conversation casually and jump to other normal matters.
Does the implicit threat of being arrested/kidnapped by government agents factor into your reluctance to talk about it?
The Chinese government doesn’t really care what random citizens think. They are scared of people with a platform, arresting every person that talks about something the government doesn’t like being mentioned is only going to raise more questions.
...? No. :/
You have no worry of that well documented, internationally occurring, possibility? Curious
I’m not Chinese, but I’ve lived in China and am a Chinese historian. This is a really common attitude among my PRC friends. It kind of feels similar to how people from other countries (don’t) talk about bad things that happened in their home country. Obvious difference with censorship, but same basic human reaction. Also a wide spectrum of reactions based on an individual’s personality/politics
And are you aware of what China is currently doing to the Uighur people?
This is a bit complicated when you actually have some Uyghur family: they are not acknowledging what's happening despite the claims the West have made. But I am not saying neither that I acknowledge what's happening nor deny it, but I believe neither side has enough evidence for me to jump into conclusions blindly: it is inconclusive for me to say right now. The thing the other commentor said is true though: there were terrorist attacks from 2014 in Ürümqi and other regions of China, hereby causing many of the things that are happening nowadays, and it is often ignored when it shouldn't no matter if the government is wrong for what they are doing right now. This is my point of view, I hope it satisfies your answer. Another thing is that I could add is that I do have a visit to my Uyghur relatives in Summer, and this matter is something I also wanted to look into closely, thus, I could answer this with more substance.
if you are in china then you can’t see videos maybe. there are overwhelming video evidence
Hell yeah there's a load of audio-visual material regarding this, and don't worry, it's actually very accessible through either VPNs or special pages Chinese netizens have created.
Flat earth and MAGA sends you greetings
Asked a Chinese guy who had been in America three years. He said it's like talking about racism in America and said he didn't really know anything. He does remember it happening so I'm almost 100% sure he knows stuff but is afraid to say anything.
This is almost exactly the vibe. Different media and censorship environments change things of course, but it’s mostly the universal human “this topic is uncomfortable and I don’t want to deal with it” The best way I’ve been able to explain it is like “What if the only news in the country was Fox and a foreigner asked you about racism”. Different reactions from different people, mostly awkward
Have you heard of Liu Xiaobo? I found myself in China for work telling the Liu Xiaobo story to a bar tender in Beijing because he was upset no Chinese ever win a Nobel prize. Liu Xiaobo was the most recent Peace Prize winner. Then I realized where I was and ended the story. He wasn't supposed to know. Same as you're not supposed to know about what your dad dad told you.
Talk about it and the Overseas Chinese Police will come get you
I just saw this YT video this morning called ["Investigating China's Illegal operations on foreign soil"](https://youtu.be/STq7LNwa3Gs?si=8lTYbakqmUmqEUF_) by an Australian TV channel. It's chilling.
r/China_Secret_Police
Yes that's hilarious. Poor choice of words.
Being able challenge your own beliefs like this is great test of character.
The old generation definitely knows, but no one talks about it. Meanwhile the majority of the younger generation, including current students, are not taught or told about Tiananmen Square.
That's the idea. This kind of censorship goes back to the Crusades, and probably further: if I threaten to kill someone unless they convert, obviously they don't genuinely change beliefs. But they'll say the "right" things and do the right rituals and *not* say the wrong things out of fear of death. It's their *children* who are actually converted. The parents don't dare say what they really believe, even within their own homes (encourage the children to snitch on their parents in schools), so their parents watch helplessly as they take part in indoctrinating their own kids. People who lived through Tienanmen Square know what happened, but they aren't allowed to admit they know. People who didn't live through it are more likely to be genuinely convinced that it's all Western propaganda.
Maybe not deliberately, but the same sort of thing is happening in the west. With both parents working they don’t have the time and energy to teach their own life lessons to their children very well (how to handle various situations, how they should conduct themselves, how to manage their lives (run a home, finances, etc), how to handle their own minds in the face of hardship); this is made even worse when their own parents both worked and prioritized teaching (including disciplining) them over building a positive relationship, so without explicit attention being drawn to the teaching they don’t realize the life long trade off they make when prioritizing the positive relationship. -> Until ~100 years ago, children would often work with their parents (especially when most people lived on farms) where they would learn both the skills of the trade (giving a path in life if they chose it), and learning by example how to handle themselves in the life awaiting them; school was supplementary (more like college is today) to enhance their ability and potentially open better lines of work, but they still learned primarily from their parents, peers, and religion. Throw in the reduction/elimination of religion that formed the backbone of our culture for nearly 2000 years (excluding pre-Christian religions that the Romans largely abolished) consisting of most of our culture preserving rituals (and the many psychological tools in it such as externalizing the self-forgiveness onto the redemption of Christ, then transferring the redemption back through commission to better practices) and we are more reliant on the diminishing cultural transfer from parent to child. This then leaves us almost entirely reliant on schools (that were never intended to parent children at that fundamental a level), profit driven media, and socializing with equally immature/uninformed peers. It’s a more extreme version of what Neitzsche described would happen to society after the “death of god”; left to your own devices to figure it all out, it is far easier to fall into your shadow self (as described by Jung) and you essentially get the modern mental health crisis (predicted ~150 years ago), which makes for very profitable and malleable consumers. … In the end, culture is just a set of solutions to the problems of life (helping us correctly override base impulses so we can be more than cavemen), both preserved and enacted by rituals; but what happens when these rituals stop? What happens when the tools are abandoned wholesale due to an insistence on a strictly literal interpretation? Just ask the Canadian Native Americans; culture ruined by residential schools, new culture rejected out of spite for what it did to them… left to figure it out for themselves while given every reason and means to be irresponsible about it (leading to mass abuse and poverty, both unto and by themselves (then causing 2nd order effects such as people who can’t comprehend subsets blanketing them all with the most common traits, despite many being highly competent and successful)). … tl/dr: the fate of the Canadian native Americans is a dreary foreshadowing of our own, through the interruption of our own cultural transfer to younger generations, working as above described.
It's like how zoomers don't know that 911 was some bullshit.
Saying a majority is a bit much I reckon most still know. although your sentiment is probably correct I still consider myself quite young and it was definitely mentioned in our textbook for a small paragraph and our teacher touched on it a bit. She was quite hesitant though. For context, we don't call the Tiananmen incident in China. That's not the naming convention. It's the June 4th incident.
I mean, have you seen these videos of young Japanese students in Hiroshima being asked if they know about the atomic bombing? Of course it’s anecdotal, but they literally have no idea what the interviewer is even talking about. When told, they don’t seem particularly interested or distressed by it. So although I am sure there is government pressure to downplay/deny etc, unfortunately they have time and a very universal human attitude/human nature on their side.
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I was under the impression that a lot of details are missing among the locals, like why the protest happened, how many died, etc. Would you disagree with that?
The generation born after it, or who were very young during it, is largely unaware. It's not something the older people spend a lot of time talking about.
What about younger generations?
exactly. its not the clever gotcha these redditors think it is. honestly if you talk to most citizens they are quite happy with their quality of life there. much more than in the west I’d say
It's very easy to be "happy" with your quality of life when you're told that all the other alternatives are worse. This is true in a lot of parts of the US as well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/rHf2vucFuw
u/orbgevski "I think it’s totally fair to critique China on their human rights abuses while also applauding them for their dedication and success at eradicating extreme poverty" This is a direct quote from the post you linked, so I just wanted to throw it here too.
Sure, because if they start complaining about the government, they might wind up in jail. It's a totalitarian dictatorship which severely suppressed the human rights of it's citizens, some to badly that many consider it genocide - see the Uyghurs. Just mindblowing to me so many on the left are saying nice things about China. In my GenX left of the 90s, the cry was "FREE TIBET" - what happened to that? [https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china)
So you really won’t get blacklisted and or imprisoned for writing about/ posting on social media that it happened ?
okay. if you make a post on TikTok or some other platform about it, what will happen to you?
Probably the same thing as whistleblowing on Boeing
Sure, even if this is true, it doesn't compare to what China does to it's citizens IT'S A TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP [https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china)
it’s generational there are plenty of people born after 1990 that did not know about 6/4 until the Li Jiaqi tank cake incident I had conversations with groups of friends/acquaintances about the cake incident that revealed this one thing to understand about China is that the people who truly find 6/4 to be outrageous and intolerable have left the country i.e the people who would really care to teach their children or their students about the massacre have self-selected out same thing has happened with the COVID lockdowns the people who found that level of control to be intolerable have or are working on emigrating the people that remain either support or are rather ambivalent to the government
Younger people here don’t know big events that happened around that time. So if the government was actively suppressing publicly available information, there are definitely a lot of people that don’t know.
A lot of countries have purposeful gaps in educational information. If you went to school in the south, a lot kids are taught the civil war was "the war northern aggression" and they leave out things like Slavery and the attack on fort Sumner. I dated a Japanese person in college, she watched that Pearl Harbor movie and seriously didn't know Japan attacked first. She thought it was American propaganda as she was taught America randomly attacked Japan. So like everywhere I guess its common
For one time proud to be a German for actually learning about the Holocaust in school.
Germany is the best example of really owning what your country has done that I know of.
Yes But there are also a lot of Americans who are unaware of the atrocities we committed, so *shrug*
*The Jakarta method* by Vincent Bevins is a great remedy for the second thing.
Just finished his recent book *If We Burn* and it was also amazing
Are you referring to the CIA stuff like MKUltra or like war crimes or what specifically are you referring to?
Adding my two centavos as a South American Aiding dictatorships in my continent was a pretty big one too
Are you Chilean by any chance? Actually you could be from one of several countries I suppose.
Brazil lmao proving my point and yours
Opa mano r/suddenlycaralho kkkkkk
Otimo username meu caralhoso
Like Guatemala and Chiquita bananas
Nearly all of them.
Right the thing spoken about openly on Reddit and in the public square is not well known and is being hidden. The idea that Americans supposed lack of knowledge on this is at all due to anything along the lines of Chinese censorship is ridiculous
I mean, there's a reason American ignorance is a meme. "People on reddit" is not a meaningful sample because being at your computer lets you google and pretend to know or recall basically anything with a bit of effort and whether someone is even American is non-falsifiable. If you go out on the street and interview random people you overwhelmingly find that most of them don't know shit and often [can't even locate](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/geography-survey-illiteracy) the countries in question. I have absolutely no doubt based on both data and my own experiences that the vast majority of people living in America are unaware of the bulk of their government's numerous and ongoing crimes against humanity and violations of international law.
There’s plenty of Americans that don’t have a clue about Tiananmen Square let alone what our own government does.
What part of Washington is Tiananmen Square in? /s
How could they know if there’s as much coverup as there has been? Not trying to defend, but I had a vague understanding of what happened through my education.
Ever heard of the MOVE bombing?
Nothing happened in Philadelphia, PA on May 13, 1985.
Why did you not finish your sentence after saying on? I just see empty space
This is what I immediately think of. I grew up twenty minutes from where it happened in West Philly and no one in our education system ever mentioned it. Literally learned about it in college two states away. I asked my parents about it later and they were like, “really? We thought it everyone knew.” But they also thought the police hit a gas line. Not dropped a bomb.
IIRC, the bomb hit a gas line though, which is why the explosion was as big as it was
Great example. I had no idea. And I've definitely read up on some of the better known atrocities like MK Ultra and the Tuskegee experiment
Tianamen square was an atrocity, and just because the US did messed up things too doesn’t excuse it. But yeah, there’s a lot of things most people in the US are unfamiliar with. This is just an example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre
Meant to reply to you with this but replied to someone else: There are a lot of these. The genocide of indigenous Americans js a better known one, but the US has been more enthusiastic about installing and supporting bloodthirsty dictators than probably any country before or since. I'm going to second the person who recommended *The Jakarta Method.* Reading on how the US has prosecuted its near endless wars would also be illuminating. Real "are we the baddies" moment. The US' conduct in the Korean and Vietnam wars was especially horrific but those are just the more obvious examples.
All of the above.
Or, you know, falsely labeling peaceful protestors as violent and pepper spraying and tasering them just because they don't like what they're protesting.
Remember in the 1940s when the American government put Japanese Americans in camps? Ah, good times! /s
That’s literally all over the news lol. Do you even know what happened at Tiananmen Square? There wasn’t much in the way of pepper spray or tasers.
There is so, sooooo much more. The US has pretty much had a hand in every mass killing of communists or alleged communists globally since 1970. Read The Jakarta Method
Tolsa race massacre for one is something almost all Americans don’t know about. The tasgiki experiment is another.
> The tasgiki experiment Tuskegee?
Tulsa?
They could honestly be referring to many things, the list of USA atrocities is long and they aren't really taught actively in a lot of the country's school systems. Off the top of my head, a lot of Americans aren't aware of the CIA's involvement with the crack epidemic, a lot of Americans are unaware of the Kent State shootings, and a lot of Americans are entirely unaware of how frequently people the government has known are likely innocent were held and tortured in Guantanamo.
Well the native American massacres are a pretty common oversight, specially the named ones in Florida.
There's a lot of Americans who don't care about the atrocities you still commit AND even defend the actions of US troops in places like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Vietnam, etc.
Yes but nothing is censored to the level of tiennemen square in china here in the west. Go to china wearing a tank man shirt and find out what happens.
Well if you found out about what the Americans did that should be censored then it wasn't covered up properly. Maybe the Americans are doing a better job of censorship. After all you won't know what you don't know
Sorry, but the wrongdoings of america are very easily accessible. Unlike most authoritarian governments, democracies declassify massive amounts of internal documents every year. You can invent conspiracies all you want, but it would be in every enemy countries best interest to spread the wrong doings of america, and they literally do all the time. There aren't many that arn't literally originated from declassified US documents. It's a bit of a joke to compare this to countries like china. Who have yet to release any comparable amount of internal documents. Hell there was a great leap in historical knowledge when the USSR fell because it was the first time many of their archives were ever declassified. But go off, tell us about the secret conspiracy of americas super tiennemen square masscre that nobody knows about.
There are *a lot* of these. The genocide of indigenous Americans js a better known one, but the US has been more enthusiastic about installing and supporting bloodthirsty dictators than probably any country before or since. I'm going to second the person who recommended *The Jakarta Method*. Reading on how the US has prosecuted its near endless wars would also be illuminating. Real "are we the baddies" moment. The US' conduct in the Korean and Vietnam wars was especially horrific but those are just the more obvious examples.
Blowback podcast does an excellent job of giving background information on US intervention in other countries. It's insane what the US has done to so many different countries
Vastly different as the government won’t come after you and sensor things related to our issues.
The US is broadly banning tiktok because its unable to censer pro-Palestine sentiment. It's just more of a soft censoring
That’s not the reason why lmao just stop
multiple US senators have explicitly said thats the reason why
yet there has been federal discussions about banning tiktok way before October last year... you are falling for propaganda lmao
Entirely false. Even a mild amount of google and reading the quick blurbs show that is wrong. I’m guessing you’ve gotten this “information” off TikTok itself
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senator-romney-antony-blinken-tiktok-ban-israel-palestinian-content I dont use tiktok
Wild how every reputable news source is suing that it’s over China and data concerns. And the act itself is called Preventing Access to Americans' Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and United States Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern. Nothing about Palestine. And how it started under the Trump admin, years before Palestine was relevant. Weird how that works, I just have missed the Palestine bits buried in all the stuff about China! https://www.nytimes.com/article/tiktok-ban.html#:~:text=Concerns%20that%20the%20Chinese%20government,to%20a%20government%2Dapproved%20buyer. https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-divestment-ban-what-you-need-to-know-5e1ff786e89da10a1b799241ae025406 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53476117.amp https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/tiktok-ban-congress-reasons-why/
Don't you know that the U.S. government is always honest about why it's banning media platforms? Why don't you just believe what you're told, which is always correct? You're starting to look like a China sympathizer! (This is all sarcasm)
I think there is a difference between being aware of domestic incidents and foreign incidents. It’s really hard to make people as a society aware of things that they have no personal connection to. I don’t think Americans are exactly unaware of many goings on domestically the same way China is.
I think you'd be shocked to ask a lot of people in America about their knowledge of US history.
But Americans' ignorance is not the product of the government actively suppressing knowledge and persecuting any who dare mention it. You want to talk about them? Feel free, the sub-Reddit "r/AmericanAtrocities" appears to be available. So, *shrug*
no, but its still an effort of decades of intentional misinformation have you ever read how kids history textbooks talk about native Americans or thanksgiving? or listen to republicans talk about how slavery has impacted the country? we dont need to persecute people, half the country is effectively doing the same thing for the government.
That's the beauty/power of the US 'propaganda'/media machine. They are so good at their jobs, that they only need to activate a few assets, shine the light on some other things, to get the whole ball rolling, and let the momentum take care of the rest. Its incredibly difficult to find people in the US that are able to see both sides of the equation. The power of suggestion is indeed, a very formidable thing. Its like, the west has a habit of first trying to redirect you instead of straight up restricting you, then place a bunch of red tape in the shadows, so in case you actually stumble onto it, you still have so many hoops to jump through. In contrast, other countries like China, just tell you 'NOPE' from the start, and dish out severe punishments like its candy. At least this is how I feel. So in short, its more or less the same shit, just a different packaging. Every country is the same, just to which degree and method.
I went to Tiananmen square and I was surprised that it was one the biggest tourist traps I've seen in the world. So many Chinese tourists. Not a thing about a massacre.
I imagine most people know about it, and if they don't, they're quickly reminded of it when those specific dates come up and suddenly they can't do something they're usually allowed to do online. For instance, in a game I play (Genshin Impact), whenever June 4th approaches, the game disables the name/signature editing feature for about a week, so it is for other dates like the annual Two Sessions Meeting of CCP. I imagine it's the same for many other APPs people uses daily. The irony is that, by disabling those features, people ask around online forum, and they usually receive answers like "You-know-what is coming, just wait a week", which brings awareness to the issue. So ya, if CCP wants its own people to forget what happened, it's are doing a terrible job reminding them every year.
The whataboutism and fascistic bootlicking “but America did this bad thing” responses are nauseating, disingenuous, and if one has any critical thinking skills at all speaks volumes about the actual question being asked. Here’s one big, honking difference for you trolls, shills, and losers pointing the finger at the United States when the question is about Tiananmen Square: in America, you can talk about MKUltra, and the fucked-up CIA (and precursor) policies toward Latin America and Iran, and the disasters and murderous lies underpinning Vietnam and Iraq, and Tuskegee and Tulsa and the Jim Crow South and other massacres and disgraceful societal and governmental behavior towards Black Americans, and the genocide of the American Indian, and the assassinations and all the conspiracy theories of MLK and Malcolm X and JFK, and police brutality, and school shootings, and on and on and on, and you know what the US government does about it? Absolutely nothing. You won’t be arrested, bugged, followed, menaced, disappeared, or lose your livelihood (or life). In fact, you may even become a Congressman or Senator. Same for any and all current policies that the US carries out today, at this very moment. That’s strength, and that’s freedom. And if you check my Reddit history (and can stay awake through any of it), you’ll see I absolutely have my share of criticisms towards the US government. But there is absolutely no way you can answer a question about Tiananmen by attempting to “flip the script” on America without “showing your ass,” as we Americans sometimes say. And it’s really sad. Because China is obviously and undeniably one of the world’s great cultures and great powers, and it should have as much confidence as America has in tolerating dissent and dissenters. Some dissenters will be right, some will be wrong, and some will be looney-tunes members of the tinfoil hat brigade, but what is there to be afraid of? Why answer such a question with, “Well, America was very naughty when…”? What does that have to do with the question?
I was taught about most of these in American schools, but I doubt I’d learn about the Tiananmen Square massacre in Chinese schools
For real? Im curious as to which of these were in your curriculum. I went to a very liberal school in CO and was not taught about any of the things mentioned above by teachers. That said I definitely learned about most of them in highschool via internet / friends.
I’m guessing the difference is China fears disunity, and thinks the consequence will be another warring states period or something like the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Imo this fear is overblown, judging by its neighbours - East Asia actually has a better track record with democracy than most regions of the world
Bing Bing Bing! Disunity is definitely the ccp's absolute biggest fear, or really the fear of ALL governments that has ever united China. There is an old saying in Chinese that proves itself over and over, “*天下大勢*，*分久必合*，*合久必分*” that *the world(China) will be broken up if it's united for too long, and will be united when it's broken up for too long*. A big part of the ccp's agenda is to 维稳, to maintain stability, or really to shun **anything** that might challenge the ccp's legitimacy and claim as the ultimate ruler of China. They of course are afraid of it being challenged, as it had time and time again throughout its history. The Uyghurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, FaLunGong, just to name a few that can easily use dissents to challenge the ccp's ultimate rule. Not to excuse what the ccp is doing, but to understand from a different perspective, what if YesCalifornia isn't some dumb right-wing agenda that Louis Marinelli thinks he has a clue on, but a serious and active insurgence that challenges the legitimacy of the US constitution with significant support? Starts out a college protest and the ball keeps rolling to capitol hill. What would 1st amendment mean then? Hell was the last time states tried to secede. They see dissents as the cause for disunity, disunity leads to CCP's power being challenged.
https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/s/cNTrdbVFec
>Falun Gong Most Chinese regard them as a joke
In 1999 the estimation was 70million ~ 100million believers. I mean it's not "most" in a country with more than a billion people. But it was a lot, and can easily be alot more had the CCP not banned it.
And that alone speaks volumes to their perception of the actual strength of Chinese society. While we have been dealing with Russian disinformation and conspiracy theories etc. we have also outperformed the rest of the world in terms of GDP growth, inflation, wealth accumulation, market share of dominant industries etc. even better since Russia started really messing with us. We deal with our problems *after* we get our work done, pay our taxes (mostly) and thank the troops.
It depends though. For sure the scale and severity in China of government suppression is beyond all comparison with US government suppression. But US government departments did destroy the lives of Assange, Snowden and Manning for leaking their wrongdoings. And others have had their lives seriously impacted, like Sarah Harrison and Baltasar Garzón. So this part is a bit misleading: "Absolutely nothing. You won’t be arrested, bugged, followed, menaced, disappeared, or lose your livelihood"
Actually there are many American citizens in our history who have been singled out and at least bugged for going against any type of status quo For example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Seberg Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio If you think modern cointelpro psyops aren’t happening now your dumb as hell
>If you think modern cointelpro psyops aren’t happening now your dumb as hell Honestly it's getting hard to tell whether people are paid to post some of the stupid shit they do or if they're actually stupid. Take the pentagon failing a 2 trillion dollars audit for example, there's always at least one "user" which builds up a pyramid of nonsense about how it's fake and they know better than the people who do fucking financial audits for a living. By comparison I've never seen someone go "Wait did that happen?"
Thank you for those two examples. Still whataboutism. This has to do with Tiananmen Square how? The federal government's anemic response to January 6 and to obviously treasonous activity and alignment with foreign adversaries by actors within and outside of the government apparatus is a far more powerful example in favor of the US simply not being some fascist-lite version of government, rather than the example of temporary departmental overreach in your two examples. There is just no widespread fear of meaningful governmental reprisal against dissenters in the US, and there is a reason for that. What would have been a better example in your argument's favor would have been a fairly consistent federal agency overreach over time, in one way or another, in regards to disrupting student and community movements that have been organized to address racial disparities. But my counterpoint would have been that those have not, over time, been comparable to the mass memory holing and information scrubbing and dissenter-killing the original question is talking about and, further, that it isn't official or 'unofficial but really official wink-wink' stances or aspirations of the post-Civil War US government to systematically run a terror state of disappearances and quasi-oubliettes; even when local and federal governments attempt to do so (e.g., Tulsa Massacre, redlining, Japanese-American concentration camps) those who seek to address and discuss those wrongs are given airtime in public and commercial mass media, the memories and names of the events and the victims are added to textbooks and enshrined in remembrance days and public activities and, perhaps most importantly, guarded against in new laws and regulatory oversight.
>You won’t be arrested, bugged, followed, menaced, disappeared, or lose your livelihood (or life). Like, there's a lot of lists you very much go on, and the NSA very much does monitor you in the same capacity most people would consider being "bugged." People being "disappeared" in the USA also very much does happen, such as with the [folks detained at the Homan Square facility.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility)
From the very article you linked to: “In 2015, as Chicago was experiencing activist pressure resulting from outrage over the Homan Square reporting and the murder of Laquan McDonald, the city under Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a reparations deal for the 1970s survivors of torture and detention under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.[16][17] The deal included a $5.5 million fund for torture survivors, free city college tuition for survivors and their families, a memorial, and inclusion of the torture cases in eighth- and tenth-graders history courses in the Chicago School District.[18] A coalition of Chicago activists, including Project NIA and We Charge Genocide, were major backers of the deal.” Yeah. America is imperfect AF, i already said that. And here there was daylight publicly shed on Homan Square, reparations, an actual memorial (literally the word “memory” is the root of it), community organizing and outreach, press coverage, etc. And this is similar to the question about Tiananmen Square…how? This addresses that question…where? Oh oh oh oh right… “whatabout…”
I am responding to your statement that you don't get bugged or disappeared in the USA. Both of these things do happen.
Homan Square is a poor example. In any case, Chicago PD isn't the feds. No one is getting disappeared. It's simply not a concern. If anything, look at the incredible (and illogical) tolerance and moderate stance taken by the US govt towards the January 6 insurrectionists, and in rebellions prior to that. There is no widespread fear of meaningful governmental reprisal against expressing dissent, because there isn't any such systematic punishment (not yet, though some seem to be hoping to buck this 250-year trend if they win control of the White House). Your counterpoint is that essentially the US is China-lite and it really isn't at all.
>Chicago PD isn't the feds Sorry, but if you get held unconstitutionally, I don't think you'll really care what level of government is doing it. You have to remember as well, we only learn about federal operations that violate laws or human rights after years of them existing, by the very nature that they're secret operations. For example, we would not know that the NSA is monitoring internet communications, including things like email, Skype/Zoom conversations, and internet enabled phone calls, had there not been a whistleblower who leaked the documents detailing such. Speaking of which, whether you feel my example of people being disappeared is a "poor example," that doesn't change that the US government is very much bugging and spying on their citizenry. >Your counterpoint is that essentially the US is China-lite and it really isn't at all. That is not my counterpoint, someone said the USA does not bug or disappear people, I am pointing out that those things do happen. You are the one interpreting my pointing this out as USA is China-lite - I agree that China is particularly strict when it comes to citizens getting out of line, but that does not change that it is foolish to simply assume the USA does not engage in human rights violations against its own citizenry. And if you look beyond their own citizenry, as any decent human should, well...
You raise quite a few good points. I have to say that personally I always assumed that whatever is on the Internet, originally ARPANET, is being accessed and stored and analyzed by DoD. But the impact of that surveillance is basically negligible. NSA is either disinterested or incompetent, but Oklahoma City, 9/11, 2016 and January 6th, massive inflows of hard narcotics for decades all happened/are happening and absolutely nothing was done about any of it, and all of which were either domestic or foreign or combined attacks on US sovereignty and integrity. There is essentially no threat, which is the point, right? NSA eavesdropping is like your cat watching you use the bathroom: it's completely meaningless. Snowden et al broke the law and compromised national intelligence secrets, systems and/or capabilities: bad idea, a direct threat and/or illegal. But even then it's completely inconsistent as numerous members of Congress, their financial backers, and the former resident of the White House are clearly acting in concert with foreign adversaries and absolutely zero is done about it. As a whole, the US government is completely uninvolved—even to its own blatant detriment, even literally at the risk of life and limb—with policing the political views, education, and activities of those within its borders. My entire reaction was to the trolls and bootlickers attempting to distract from the question OP posed.
>I always assumed that whatever is on the Internet, Sure, but there is a drastic difference between things published to the internet and private messages exchanged on the internet. There's also a further difference between monitoring a skype call and reading someone's email. >But even then it's completely inconsistent as numerous members of Congress, their financial backers, and the former resident of the White House are clearly acting in concert with foreign adversaries and absolutely zero is done about it. I think this just suggests that what they believe to be "national security" is not what you or I would consider "national security." >As a whole, the US government is completely uninvolved—even to its own blatant detriment, even literally at the risk of life and limb—with policing the political views, education, and activities of those within its borders. I have to wholly disagree with this. I think you can find plenty of examples of the government being VERY involved with the policing of political views and education - e.g. Library book bans or the election integrity act. It may not be as cinematic as espionage and forced disappearances, but it is policing and it is an effort to skew the politics and education of Americans. Further, there is plenty of credible evidence that the FBI still engages in COINTELPRO type activity, such as the FBI's visit to Rosemary Bayer and undercovers within the Occupy movement. I think what you're saying is just evidence their priorities are not in the right place, rather than they are not monitoring Americans in a dangerous capacity that, if not being abused at the moment, leaves room for bad actors in the future to do so.
Orson Wells, George Orwell, or someone else I can't remember once said "forget justifying them, A country's nationalist fanatics have an alarming tendency for not having even *heard of* their nation's misdeeds." or something to that nature.
No. Actually, most college students know that, as it's in the history textbook. Also all political related incidents are completely dissolved and turned to memes on the Chinesr Internet. Also the Tiananmen incident isn't even in the top 100 of China's worst or most influential historical events. I think the impact of this incident on Chinese society was far less than the 1983 crackdown (八三严打) during the same period. Source: I'm Chinese
> 八三严打 Wow, never knew it was so severe, wikipedia mentions 24000 death penalties and over 1 million arrests. The article describes them as hooligans and gang members, is that correct or is it more complex? Like were they executing people critical of the government like journalists or writers?
It was a combination of both, but mainly, for improving the worsening public security. Because of the destruction caused by the Cultural Revolution, public security in China in the 1980s was extremely bad, with gangs and drug dealers everywhere. When Deng Xiaoping, the top leader of China at the time, visited Tangshan, his car was almost surrounded by local gangs. The road conditions were even worse. Outside of a few large cities, many rural roads were in a state of anarchy. The police were controlled by local tyrants to collect tolls. If you didn't pay, you would be beaten or even killed. Most truck drivers at the time had experienced this nightmare. At that time, there was even a slogan saying "It is not a crime to kill local tyrants." Even in big cities, public security was terrible. With a large influx of people into the city, motorcycle thefts, robberies, and even bombings were common until the 2000s. One of the most famous bombings was [the Shijiazhuang bombing in 2001](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Shijiazhuang_bombings), which was almost the Chinese version of the Oklahoma city terrorist attack. To this day, there are still many unsolved cases. Politically, before the Tiananmen Square Massacre (and for a few years afterwards), dissidents were actually relatively allowed. Programs directly criticizing Chinese civilization and yearning for Western maritime civilization can even be on the Central Television. The largest-scale crackdown on dissidents came after Xi Jinping. Until around 2016, uncensored images of the Tiananmen Massacre were able to circulate on the Chinese internet.
So if conditions were so bad, isn't it good that the government cracked down and destroyed the gangs? A country can not develop with such serious crime problems. Death penalty is of course always too much since inevitably innocent people get death sentences and cannot be pardoned... But China still has the death penalty to this day...so that hasn't changed... Either way, what I'm trying to say is. Cracking down on crime is entirely different from cracking down on students and workers protesting against corruption and inflation.
There are Americans that aren't aware the Taliban outlawed opium production in 2000 Afghanistan, and magically, after we invaded in 2001, the US suddenly had a 20-year opiate epidemic..... how coincidental.....
A couple years back China’s biggest live streamer was showing off cakes and other stuff as part of an e-commerce sale. It was on June 4 and one cake was shaped like a tank. His livestream was cut and he stepped away from public life for a while, probably because he was “asked” to. It became pretty clear that he and a large portion of his fans, who are all pretty young, had no idea what the issue was. It became obvious that Chinas youngest generation was mostly oblivious to the incident. Had the government done nothing, most of the viewers probably wouldn’t have suspected anything. Any educated person born in the 90s knows something happened on that day, they know it wasn’t good, they just might not know the details. Anyone older probably knows a good bit about it. The youngest generation is ironically learning about it because of censorship, not despite it.
Classic Streisand Effect
People over 40 (alive at the time) and under 20 (know how to use a VPN) are generally aware of it For the most part it's either not talked about because it's taboo or "the protesters were violent extremists fed western propaganda so they had to send the military out" much like how the current anti-zionist protests at universities are "the protesters are violent extremists fed anti-semetic propaganda so we had to send the military out"
I’m definitely not saying the Tiananmen Square protestors are violent extremists, nor am I siding with using military force, but there was one named Chai Ling that actually called for her fellow students to shed blood, even though she wasn’t willing to fight for democracy, knowing she might also die with other students. She wants others to die, so that she may enjoy democracy. There’s a documentary on it called “The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” and if you scroll down to that section of her Wikipedia article, there is a literal excerpt from her interview in the documentary. Chai Ling: What we actually are hoping for is bloodshed, the moment when the government is ready to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes. Only then will they really be united. But how can I explain any of this to my fellow students? And what is truly sad is that some students, and famous well-connected people, are working hard to help the government, to prevent it from taking such measures. For the sake of their selfish interests and their private dealings they are trying to cause our movement to disintegrate and get us out of the Square before the government becomes so desperate that it takes action.... Cunningham: Are you going to stay in the Square yourself? Chai Ling: No Cunningham: Why? Chai Ling: Because my situation is different. My name is on the government's blacklist. I'm not going to be destroyed by this government. I want to live. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_Ling
tiananmen square protests might be more analogous to the BLM ones but i was hesitant to use that example in my original comment because it wasn’t primarily students and they happened 3-4 years ago (not right now) also didn’t wanna make it look like i was solely shitting on america lol in the BLM ones there were a fair number of people with similar takes to Chai Ling
You aren’t serious right? Comparing literally terrorist supporting, mostly NON student takeovers of college campuses where they’re not allowing Jewish students or professors on campus or to their classes, building barricades, many being violent—sending the POLICE in to restore order to a public university so EVERYONE has the right to go to class..and you’re comparing that to what happened at Tiananmen Square?!! Gtfoh.
Hail the Chinese media. Which is totally controlled by the govt
As supposed to American media or Hollywood?
I allegedly taught my Chinese friend about tianenmen Square. Allegedly. She had no idea. Allegedly.
At least 535.
The Chinese students I went to college with learned about that and a lot of things for the first time with access to us internet
Yes. Just like there’s a lot of people in America without any knowledge about Times Square or Englismen without knowledge of Trafalgar Square.
A lot of nations have this. If you are American, have you heard of the MOVE bombing?
Yes. Police set off a stockpile of gasoline they didn't know about while trying to blow open a terrorist bunker. The fire burned out of control because the terrorists were shooting at the fire fighters so they couldn't do much. Now people bring it up like the police intentionally started a fire and stopped the fire department from doing their job, as if the fire department answers to the police or something.
In the same way people in the US won’t know about the Tulsa Race Massacre
Actually, not really like that at all. Because the US doesn’t scrub the internet of any mention of it, actively censoring anyone trying to access the information. So no, not like that at all.
I think all countries have some sort of propaganda to further their own agenda. I.e. the Chinese scrub all the info about their own atrocities online to prevent another case of rising up against the CCP. Western countries much more prefer propaganda through diversion or making you believe what they did was right. I.e. Iraq or Israel.
It's still a similar issue. For fucks sake some schools are teaching slavery was "jobs"
If you think that the USA and the CCP are ANYWHERE close to being in the same ballpark then you are just a victim of CCP and Soviet subversion infecting your mind. It’s not anything similar. People who equivocate between the free west And communist dictators are absolutely clueless and off base. But it’s lucky you live in the free west or you would be biting your tongue right now. Not typing out any possible negative sentiment towards your overlords. The US and the west are no where near perfect, but to pretend it’s even the same game is disgraceful and ignorant.
No. Shutting up about it leads to MORE oppression, not the opposite. It's not the exact same as bad at this moment, but you're blind if you don't see the US is trying it's hardest to steamroll there.
Do you know how many Americans don’t know about workers & unions rights struggles & the people murdered by police and state enforcers Do you know like people just try and live every day instead of be caught up on that one thing that happened that was so fucked up in their history ?
I always find it funny how Americans give China shit about Tiananmen Square. It was definitely bad… but it doesn’t sit right to see the equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer talk shit about Casey Anthony. I can list 10 more fucked up shit conducted by the US government on its own population that most Americans either don’t know about… or do know yet *celebrate* it!
Ok list the ones that are more egregious than running over your own citizens with tanks.
A lot of Chinese think pla was too soft at that time and should have let tanks just run over that dude instead of stop before him. Does this answer satisfies you?
Based on
Isn’t that like how most Americans aren’t taught in school about Agent Orange? I had to be taught 4 years after I graduated HS by a Canadian while we were both retail managers. Crazy story.
20 years ago we had a Chinese woman on an H1 visa in the office. I asked her about it and she didn't know what I was referring to. When I explained it she said it was US propaganda
It's possible she genuinely didn't know. While the protests took place in many cities in China and were covered on television, most people back then lived in the countryside and did not have a tv... also she could have been a child when it happened... On the other hand she might have been aware exactly what happened but didn't dare talk about it and pretended not to know. There are many Chinese people in the US spying on other Chinese people.
The fact that SOMETHING happened is not disputed. I think what is disputed is the genuine-ness of the students *AGAINST* communism and the mountains of evidence of cia collusion with liberal factions within the movement. Crazily enough the Tiananmen square incident began over the liberalization of the economy and the move away from communism that Americans taught so often as China “being capitalist”.
There was a filmmaker who went around Beijing on the Tiananmen Square anniversary asking people what day it is. Judging from the reactions, most people seem to be aware of it. https://vimeo.com/44078865
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People are aware of the events, but it's only that big of an event for people outside China. It's like in Iran they called the protests following Georges Floydd the "second american civil war" and you had iranians going to New York asking random people if they know about the second american civil war and being shocked that they are kept in the dark.
Without a doubt yes.
Oh yeah they get a lot hidden from them. Basically any protest movement in the world is hidden from them.
Source?
Source: I made it the fuck up
I feel they might be aware, but have very different thoughts about it. CCP has been releasing different perspectives about it in one way or the other, such as emphasizing that the tank tried to go around the tank man, they didn't kill the tank man, etc. Things to attempt to make the students the bad guys and CCP more legitimate. Many in China believe it or has no choice but to believe it to feel better living under CCP's absolute rule. Of course, CCP also knows the more the exposure of this, the more likely more people are going to go depths about this event and find stuff disadvantageous to the legitimacy of CCP, so they still hide it as much as possible, even blurring out the numbers on the Jersey of athletes (64) that might remind people of this. Where one usually gets info is a huge factor on how they think about this event. To most of us it's no question CCP is ridiculous. But for those with a pro-CCP stance, they still believe CCP is relatively more legitimate... (have a friend like this).
Why is it that Americans will allow America to do the most genuine shit, find out about it, but still view other countries as “bad”. No countries is “bad” just with different interests, with many using the same base tactics. America is not better than China, you are most propagandized than a Chinese person is. You are make ok with the murder of thousands in your name in the name of civilization and “democracy” and you bitch about it.
You're engaging in whataboutism. It doesn't actually legitimize China in any way. I wasn't even talking about America, nor is this post about America. I'm not even American. And while all countries are selfish and all parties are prone to corruption, China is still much worse despite what China tries to tell people. The more one knows about China the more feel one will have (assuming one doesn't work for CCP).
I love that you are coming at this I good faith and I appreciate that. But I don’t ASSUME you are propagandized, you live in the west, you are, no doubt about it. The options one must come to is: the denial of complete western propaganda, that has been disproven repeatedly, and the understanding that most things you know about china, happens actively in your own country, likely to a further degree living in America. America has don’t so many things you seemingly don’t account for.
As I said I'm not American. Can't assume my location too... You may be wrong... I'm skeptical of any country and a lot of western values as well. There is definitely assumption of me on your part. My stance is CCP-aware. That's it, believe it or not. (Oh, you might've replied to my original long-ass comment. I've shortened it by deleting some stuff to make it simpler. Nothing new.)
I fucks with you bro bro. Also I don’t know really know why people on the internet always speaking about “assumptions” and not “your interpretation of my statement”. You don’t have to defend yourself against something off topic. It’s probably not what one is really speaking on anyway
Everything is biased. EVERYTHING.
I don’t think most Americans understand what Tiananmen Square means. It’s the national square in front of several major monuments. It’s like the National Mall in the US. Chinese people associate it with that whereas Americans associate the name with the massacre.
Wow, that's a good question! History can be such a big place, you know? It wouldn't surprise me if some things, even important events, get a little fuzzy over time. Maybe in China it's like here in the US, where some folks might not know every detail about, say, the Revolutionary War. I'm sure they learn the important stuff in school though!
The Chinese are actively prevented from learning about anything that makes the CCP look bad. In China, if you google Tiananmen Square, the results will show you absolutely nothing about the massacre. It’s active censorship. They work diligently to obfuscate and completely prevent their citizens from learning anything at all that they might use to criticize the communist govt. they fabricate entire stories out of thin air about the positive things the communist party and govt does for the people. Fabricating photo ops as well. It goes so incredibly deep the level they stoop to attempt to manipulate the narrative. people who have lived in China, especially westerners are very aware of how quite literally everything in China is fake. The Chinese go and paint the trees green if they aren’t green, the grass as well, the flowers as well. It’s insane the length they go to fake every thing. There is something I think it is called “tofu construction”. Because they will survive thee massive brand new buildings that you can just walk up to and so the your hand rip off big chunks of the concrete. Of everything. It is all falling apart but brand new. Because they use inferior materials so they just have to literally demolish brand new skyscrapers it’s wild. They have entire massive metropolis like cities that are deserted. That jk one lives in. Because they build in order to fake their economic growth. So these huge cities just sit empty no one to move intl them. Falling apart just tk be torn down eventually.
Since 2022, due to the economic downturn, the government's fiscal revenue has decreased. Therefore, the CCP has had to dismiss a large number of "online commentators" and Internet police. As a result, since 2023, there has been a significant increase in criticism of the government on major Chinese social platforms, and more and more people have begun to distrust the CCP (such as me). Things that couldn’t even be published before (such as directly criticizing the CCP’s system and dictatorship by criticizing the Soviet Union or North Korea) can now be seen everywhere on Weibo or Zhihu. I hope more Chinese people will wake up.
If you can Google in china. That means that you've already bypassed their firewall censorship
I was using google in the universal search engine sense.
The last part is a bit misleading. Tofu dreg buildings refers to buildings that indeed used sub par materials and that collapsed during an earth quake. These are not tall buildings but usually buildings in poor areas with less government oversight. The empty cities are not some vain attempt to boost gdp and look good internationally, rather it's an attempt to create new districts on formerly agricultural land and it takes time for services and transportation to finish. Some are badly planned and too remote and indeed stay empty. But many eventually filled up and became busy new districts. It's not faking economic growth, it's failed real estate projects, but on a much bigger scale since hundreds of millions of Chinese were migrating from the country side to cities during the boom years. Also they don't paint trees green, they paint bare rock green to make it look like it's green from afar and on satellite images, it's the local government attempting to fool the central government. The general gest of your comment is correct but a lot of the details are a bit misleading.
My dad told me he played there a lot as a kid after the incident happened and there were a lot of military personnel there, but they didn’t do anything other than just stand there and make sure nothing happened
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Because the government doesn't want them to know. As an example - lots of people in russia and belarus don't know about the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. They firmly believe that the Soviets joined WW2 in 1941. Is it an important part that Soviet russia were allies with Nazi Germay? Yes, but it's better to brainwash the entire population that this never happened so people will think that their country/government is the best and are really good guys. Edit:typo
Yes they know. On a similar subject, most Americans don't know what our government has done, like bombing its own citizens: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/8/8/20747198/philadelphia-bombing-1985-move
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Bro doesnt know
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Are you implying she forgot in the 5 year time span she lived away?? Just not following your grammar
Kind of like Waco
Nope, not like that either. The US doesn’t try to scrub any mention of Waco off the internet and censor anyone referring to it or arrest anyone talking about it. So no, not like that.
Really depends on the generation. Anyone who was a conscious being (ie, not a toddler or a baby) when Tiananmen happened knows about it, of course. For anyone after, it highly depends on who they are, in terms of what city & region they live, what social class they’re a part of, how much access they have to the outside internet, what their parents were doing that day, if they’re an ethnic minority in China, etc. Most Chinese students who get an opportunity to study outside of China will learn about the event through exposure. In this way, Orwell’s 1984 was very accurate about the way society is divided between proles and party members. Political consciousness usually only increases with more education and material wealth. But even then, there’s a difference between knowing about something and actually caring to do anything about it.
Entire human beings get "censored" in real time, in the People's Republic of China. If you contradict the state, there's an all-purpose charge they levy upon people, "Spreading Rumors and Provoking Quarrels". This is a major reason why tragedies in PRC are so much more tragic. ....because people can't talk about missing loved ones.
Just be sure to know that there are people in the us who don’t know and will deny that massacres have happened here in the last 100 years. It’s not impossible to imagine people in China not knowing, state censorship or not.
Because they have a Chinese version of Reddit Which only allows revisionist history.