I was teaching at BYU at the time and we were regularly speaking with our students in various parts of China. Ms. Jiang is spot on.
4
Considering that the United States are killing Huawei for 5G competition, the concern of the US media for China's democratic is very hypocritical and even ulterior motives.
1
We all need to be protesting here (US) -- many just don't realize it, or things haven't yet affected them personally. We need to be protesting the abuse of our constitutional rights -- including First Amendment threats such as retaliatory whistleblower charges and jailing; an outdated and overly broad Espionage Act, used to deter, charge, and/or punish those who would report or have reported unethical and/or illegal acts within government; and an acknowledged document over-classification system skewed towards secrecy. The latter can be used to entrap people under the Espionage Act, and otherwise for purposes of power, and/or covering up mistakes, unethical, and/or illegal acts. We have an Intel Apparatus that has been used against other Americans, as well as brutally elsewhere. We have never heeded Eisenhower's and Truman's warnings, and these agencies have continued to morph insidiously since. See ourconstitution.info for concerns, as a fired whistleblower at a university/medical institution/long-time CIA hub, regarding horrid impunity with which these organizations appear to operate. Demand review/reform, and should they continue, valid, reliable, and verifiable oversight. The CIA must be OUT of our schools. A separate entity, solely for monitoring foreign agents, should be in place. These agencies must be monitored at all levels for partisanship, and other wrongs. Protest with me in Miami, or wherever you are ... send your protest pics, and I'll post.
1
Once communists/socialists gain a foothold on power there is no way out. 100 million people worldwide died resisting it and failed. For contemporary budding socialist in the West this is fake history too. The loss of freedom of conscience and thought begins with political correctness. Banning speakers at universities with opposing ideas is fruit from the same vine.
4
Socialism and Communism are not the same things. The Scandinavian countries are Socialist, are you equating them with Russia and China?
16
This was a tragic day for China and for the United States (HW Bush administration) that agreed to allow this coverup. My good friend just managed to escape and return to the United States. She never saw her husband again or learned what happened to him. This tragedy needs to be told until the whole world knows.
15
Republicans and any press still willing to tolerate Trump’s lies, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the assault on our constitutional democracy can take credit for ushering our country toward China’s model of censorship and autocracy of the party officials.
Imagine our country if the British successfully suppressed news of the Boston massacre, Nixon covered up the four dead at Kent State, and the NRA successfully covered up Sandy Hook and other incidents (oh, wait).
Republican tolerance of Trump’s duplicity and unconstitutional subversion is rapidly moving the US toward a politicized military and more future organized assaults on democratic demonstrations against government corruption, an American Tianammen.
9
I recall in Western reporting, there was certain conjecture surrounding the scale of casualties. It seemed there was a real grip on such information. But there was little doubt it looked bad. If some of this is now coming to light, it would be useful to have some figures.
5
Like some other commenters, I was in Tiananmen Square. In the ‘never forget’ spirit, here is my story.
I was with my sister and a friend who was teaching English in Beijing. We had spent a month traveling through China and seeing how the student protests had grown in different cities. But the energy in Tiananmen Square was truly amazing. We went down to the square every night of our week in Beijing.
Our last night in the city was the night of the massacre. We were in the square when the lights turned off and a few uniformed soldiers came in. They were outnumbered and unarmed. The crowd quickly began to beat them and then discovered some had civilian clothes under their uniforms. They stripped off the uniforms and joined the crowd. Reading the author, I now understand these soldiers were ashamed to be in the PLA.
The thousands of people in the square began to rush towards the Forbidden City. We ran too. We had to jump the bushes along the giant wall not far from the famous Mao portrait.
We left the square to the East. We missed the violence on the western roads into Tiananmen. On our long walk to the suburbs (roads were now blocked) we witnessed a caravan of hundreds of military trucks carrying armed soldiers and towing supply trailers (this was an invasion force, not crowd control!).
I have been back to China many times. I have seen that the Chinese public has near zero awareness of Tiananmen. Totally suppressed. Not so in Hong Kong.
Never Forget
19
The would-be Great Leader For Life of the USA adores tyrants. The upcoming anniversary of these many deaths has a different meaning for the GOP president than it has for most.
I hope our military stands up to his self-serving tantrums. For that matter, so must we.
9
Perhaps the victims of the American government's violent nation wide attack that destroyed the peaceful, democratic Occupy Wall Street movement will now come forward and share their stories?
3
It’s interesting how Nixon went to China and now we have this, a tariff war, the made in China and road initiatives.
We are currently witnessing the decline and fall of a great world power, us. Although history shows that all great "empires" ultimately fail, our decline is being hastened by the current occupant in the White House and his administration. This wouldn't be so troubling if the vacuum we were creating was being filled by almost any country other than China.
8
In a small pottery village outside of Yixing in Jiangsu Province, the hotel TV froze for hours with a photo of a young man riding his bike in Tiananmen. My brother and I packed up and took a bus to Nanjing. The next 24 hours were some of the most remarkable of my budding China Hand life. As we approached Nanjing University seeking a cheap room, the entrance was packed with Chinese listening silently to a BBC broadcast in Mandarin over the loudspeaker detailing what had happened at Tiananmen. The next day (June 6) the streets were full of people talking, talking, talking to each other about the what had happened, the government, the future of China. Professors talking to cart peddlers! Everyone absolutely fearless and respectful of each other’s opinions and utterly class unconscious. Exhilarating for me. I knew how remarkable it was, although I was scared that they’d pay for their frankness later. June 7 the streets went back to normal. We hung out for a few days, watching. More and more police each day, but they were cool. We were back on a bus for Hangzhou on the 10th.
10
She's a brave woman. Thank you for speaking out when I'm afraid to because I visit China regularly.
16
Wherever Ms. Jiang is now, I hope she is safe and under some form of ongoing protection.
I wouldn’t bet against Chinese leadership trying to silence her one way or another, or maybe contracting the job out to the North Koreans or Saudi Arabia.
11
Prosperity or Freedom? Prosperity at what cost?
Gold or Air? For most humans, the answer is a no brainer!
I guess the Chinese and the Tibetans are no different.
Irrespective of what they call the current model of governance in China, it looks like ordinary people pay a heavy price for the nation's prosperity.
Will the world follow China or China follow the world?
Tiananmen protest and its aftermath did happen. Premier Li Peng won the argument, helmsman, Deng gave the order.
That there were military commanders who refused to turn their troops under their command onto the people, says a lot. Would China have become what it is today, had opposing military commanders turned against each other? I fear to postulate an outcome. Are we seeing potential instability in China now? US-Western Democratic reforms cannot be the answer nor model.
4
It may be good to take one step back and look at Tiananmen from the point of view of Deng. This was a revolution. It was out of control. Giving the protesters what they wanted might seem a nice way out - but there was a considerable risk that the radicals would take over and just demand more.
Canalizing public opinion in such a way that it doesn't harm public order is a challenge all countries face - but specially poor dictatorships facing the transition towards a more demanding public in a more open society.
Xi's authoritarianism is an effort to keep control where it is no longer possible.
4
Any political system that would countenance the death of +30 Million of its citizens in the 1950's through starvation due to inept governing policies (read Yang Jisheng's Tombstone) made Tiananmen Square an inevitability. China's political system is a flawed, autocratic, dictatorship ostensibly lead by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), but which in reality is ruled by a person who is essentially its new, and latest, Emperor.
Average China is strong; and remarkably tolerant. But even they have their limits. I expect the likes of Xi and his minions fear what may eventually happen next. If they had any sense they should bow, apologize and make just compensation for all that their party has done during the era of the Square; but of course they will not.
Which, of course, sets up the next stage and course of action history will take.
So it goes....
John~
American Net'Zen
6
Fourth of four parts:
Kent State, regular recurring mass gun violence and school shootings, police killings of Blacks, Grant's razing of Atlanta, weekends in Chicago, Black lynchings, the epidemic of imprisoned while Black, the systematic slaughter of American Indians.
As one of them put it, before Tienanmen China had two choices: political freedom or prosperity. After Tienanmen, there was just prosperity.
7
@Yuri Asian Please, no one is saying the US is a paragon of virtue, but to compare our shortcomings to the party of Mao is beyond offensive. There is no moral equivalency between what Mao and his party has done and the historic failings of the US.
First: we are free to criticize.
Second: We have admitted our failures and acknowledge our continued shortcomings.
Third: We actively work to be better and have become better.
Fourth: Tens of MILLIONS died because of Mao and the decisions of his party.
It is offensive to the dead to make comparisons.
12
@Andrew:
Yuri was not making such a comparison. Perhaps take a look at the rest of his comment first.
And “There is no moral equivalency between what Mao and his party has done and the historic failings of the US”...? Really? Wow! You’d say the massacre of Native Americans and the centuries of chattel slavery pale in comparison to Mao’s choices? I’m not sure how you’re reckoning the death counts here, but I think your math might be off.
4
The Chinese Communist Party has many crimes to answer for. Tiananmen Square wasn't the first, nor the last, nor the most brutal.
8
Why do people never consider the counterfactual? What would China become if the instability was allowed to spread? A powerful, healthy democracy like - er, Germany perhaps - or a degenerate country stuck in its transformation into a functioning democracy and instead turns to corruption and oligarchy like, say, Ukraine? I would attach a greater probability to the latter given China's extremely sophisticated domestic politics. And, as an average citizen of the world, a stable China is more in my interest than a degenerate China exporting poverty and refugees.
4
@Hugh Keynes.
What’s the counterfactual about a massacre? That it was somehow justified and a good idea?
8
The second of four parts:
Li Peng was sent to meet with student leaders, who were belligerent, abusive and insulting. TV footage shows Li Peng with face flushed red being harangued by students. Li Peng was enraged and demanded Tienanmen be cleared. Top leaders were sensitive to being seen as soft so they agreed.
Unfortunately the crack soldiers charged with the task were in Hunan Province harvesting the cabbage crop and unavailable. The nearest garrison was an inexperienced unit of young soldiers led by low grade officers. They were rushed to Tienanmen and ordered to clear the square. Prior to the arrival of troops the original protestors -- the scions of top leaders -- were quietly spirited away. The troops amassed on two sides of Tienanmen as a v shaped line and advanced pushing the protestors out of the square on the opposite side.
The crowd was caught in a pincer and panicked as protestors were pushed in on two sides as they tried to leave through the side that were open. A late arriving military unit was streaming in on the side the protestors were being pushed out. The crowd now was a crush with only one way out. Scuffles ensued on three sides as the crowd was now bottled up and unable to retreat.
A young soldier fired in panic. A single shot followed by a larger volley fired into the crowd on one side. Then sporadic fire as people ran from the gunshots.
Continued...
6
First of four parts:
The tragedy of Tienanmen is partly ironic: the original protest began as a stunt by the sons and daughters of senior party leadership angry about cutbacks in state tuition subsidies for elite Western schools like Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge.
There were initially a 100 or so "protestors" who were essentially throwing a hissy-fit aimed at embarrassing their parents. One student was a CBS News intern and he called his contacts in NY, which led to Dan Rather showing up in Beijing with camera and crew to cover the "Democracy movement" replete with a paper-mache Statue of Liberty. At this point news of the student protest spread and ordinary students who believed it was a protest against government tuition subsidies for the scions of party leaders. They were soon joined by others who believed it was for reform and against corruption.
My cousin, a successful publisher at a state-owned textbook company, left his position and joined the protest thinking it was a tolerated event because it was led by the "princelings" of the senior leaders. Officials allowed the protest to continue as the top leaders debated.
Under Deng Xiaopeng China had waded "into the ocean" (of capitalism) and reactionaries led by Premier Li Peng were against it. Li Peng saw Tienanmen as a chance to pressure leaders who supported opening China's economy to the outside. After all it was their Harvard-educated children who were making trouble.
Continued...
6
The troops who massacred the civilians were brought in from the countryside and lied to about the protesters. But they no doubt realized their mistake and the stain on their souls. Some likely refused and were shot themselves. Others live today with horror or disgust or an overwhelming need to deny it all.
There are many of them and they could all speak up. That they don’t is likely the prototype case for the techniques thr Chinese Communist Party evolved to control what people do and think. From this the technology of the socialist state has arisen and is being propagated world-wide: the technology for some to manage what society thinks and does.
We need to hear more from them: not only about that dark night, but also about their enduring silence.
3
Will AOC mobilize her Twitter followers to condemn this massacre or will she use her 5th Amendment rights to remain silent?
1
Chinese living in China lives in a bottle. They voluntarily gave away their freedom of thought and accepted propaganda from the Communist government. As long as their standard of living continues to improve, they are willing to sacrifice their personal freedom, the foundation of democracy. I visited China at the beginning of its opening. We were surrounded by people eager to learn about the outside world. They wanted a chance to be free. Their yearnings lead to the massacre in Tiananmen Sq. Those citizens who lost their loved ones were monitored closely, but in exchange the Chinese government provided them a chance to improve their lives like so many other citizens. This is a very effective way to control the population, a stick vs. carrot approach. A PhD student studying in Boston with whom I have brfriended showed no interest nor emotion when I told her about the massacre. As I am Chinese, I was shocked and disappointed.
4
In the book Factfullness by the late Hans Rosling he tells about a Vietnamese showing him monuments in his country dedicated to the countries Vietnam had fought. A very small three foot monument regarding the French. A monument dedicated to their war with the Americans I believe was twice as high. The monument remembering the fight with the Chinese before any of the others was 300 feet high.
2
The Communist Party is above no act in defense of their Party and it’s suffocating power. THis is a clear fact that will hold forth until there is a universal eruption of popular distaste and revolt against the Communist Party in China. Currently, the odds seem long for that occurrence.
Third of four parts:
No one knows for certain how many casualties there were. Thousands of people who were there left Beijing and many went
into hiding for years, including my cousin who lost his job and hid in Anhui province with an aunt.
Tienanmen had at least three consequences: Li Peng and other reactionary leaders were discredited and put out to pasture, which cleared the way for China's "going into the ocean"; Top leaders were jolted by the mass protest and doubled down on the security state and political repression; popular faith in the Party and the People's Liberation Army was broken. The impossible became possible: the People's army shot and killed their own people.
This is Tienanmen as described by my aunt, a retired professor at Beijing Normal College, who was there along with hundreds of other academics who formed a line between the soldiers and protesters. I remember her voice trembling as she described how she and other teachers approached the young soldiers and told them they must never fire on their own people. When they were told to leave, my aunt feared the worst.
When I mention Tienanmen to colleagues in China, there's a reflexive defensiveness that usually includes an enumeration of American tragedies -- four shot dead by the National Guard at
Continued...
6
It is horrible to see that all the voices here are one-sided. I was born and raised in China and am now accepting the Juris Doctor education of American Law. The thing is that if we were changed into a democracy in 1989 like India, is that really the best thing to the greatest portion of Chinese people? I seriously doubt it since the per capita GDP of Chinese ppl in 1989 is about 1/100 of that of American ppl while it is close to 1/5 today. The majority of the Chinese ppl are living a much better life in all different fields, including freedom of speech. Even today, we still cannot ignore there are still tons of Chinese whose most desired thing is an economically rich life and the development is still unbalanced in different parts of China. China is just too complexed. One question, could the Chinese students, who were biased to believe that democracy is the most important thing, represent the greatest majority of the Chinese ppl who are still suffering to have enough food in 1989? China may will turn into a democracy, but the best time is definitely not in 1989, prob not today as well. Go to India and come to China, ask how ppl feel about their life today and 30 years ago and you will have an answer.
5
This commentary does sort of underscore one point of the news story: many Chinese will take economic prosperity over freedom from tyranny any day, and feel no remorse about any of this.
5
Thank you for writing this.
This past weekend I returned from my first trip to Beijing, and first to China, and this article hits home in a way it would not have 2 weeks ago. As an 11 year old in 1989, I can remember my parents watching ABC Nightly News and seeing the dark, grainy images of fire, tear gas, tanks, and destruction, but only understanding that it wasn't happening at home. Since then, I admittedly hadn't thought much about Tian'anmen until my visit there this past week when I explored this large square, filled with monuments, gov't buildings, the well known portrait of Chairman Mao, and museums but no sign of the massacre that occurred nearly 30 years ago and was the only thing that I knew about. For the first time in my life I felt a sense of loss and bewilderment, like history had been erased before my eyes. Our tour guide had no knowledge of the incident to share (although coyly said not to talk about it) and the fact that I couldn't get to Google or YouTube to research it at the time (Great Firewall) only added to these senses.
What a shameful act by the government that ultimately severely tempered what otherwise was an interesting visit to China. If China really wants to grow into modernity how about starting with your history.
4
I am sort of for welcoming Chinese hegemony restored in the Far East. (Remember China had not militarily invaded Okinawa nor Korea, which Japan did. The US presence here has too many connotations to peacefully live with.) But as long as China remembers the Tiananmen as a success story, it is yet too early. I hope many would follow Ms. Jian soon.
4
The horrors of the CCP regime continue with live organ harvesting still continuing today and the world largely ignores it because of economic political prostitution. Australia is at the top of the list even though it has a self-declared Christian Prime Minister.
Amazon published CHINA 'Final Solutions' details some of the macabre, despotic solutions that Chinese leaders past and present utilize to try and eliminate those dissidents who voice any thoughts or take actions against the '1984- style' Communist Party of China and offers alternatives.
2
I spent much of May 1989 in Beijing and I read and speak Chinese fluently. What much of the world doesn’t know is that supporters of the hunger strikers marched by the thousands not just in Tiananmen Square but throughout much of Beijing. The accounts of this article ring true. I saw signs by marchers from the People’s Daily newspaper’s editorial departments proclaiming support for the protesters. When my wife and I made our way out of the country in late May, even members of the Beijing police force urged us to “tell the world the truth” about how countless people supported the protesters.
10
The hard liners of China massacred thousands. Since then they have showed no remorse nor any contrition for what they did. It is a real shame. The event was a great opportunity for opening up in China. The opportunity was squandered. Now this terrible event has been erased from time like it never occurred. Now China has disappeared almost 1 million people over the past ten years. Where did they all go? No one knows. Such brutality! A new social contract is needed in China that guarantees freedom of thought for all the people of China.
6
I am grateful to her for her courage then, her willingness to carry this burden, and her strength in sharing this with the world, now. The article states she lives in Beijing. I fear for her safety.
10
@mary This essay mentioned "Ms. Jiang left China this week" so I think this article awaits Jiang's leaving to be published. I'm so thankful to Ms. Jiang's courage to tell what she had experienced.
9
One day we’ll see how freedom of assembly has held up here.
3
Trump associates so freely with despotic individuals around the world. I wonder if the day will come when our own military will have to make the moral decision to beat or shoot their own fellow citizens. That would be the end of America.
7
I taught in China. On June 5 2009 showed my students the front page of three papers - the South China Morning Post, The Standard and the International Herald Tribune. Each front page showed the photo of thousands in Victoria Park in Hong Kong, I also showed a video of PLA soldiers firing on unarmed students. I was hauled into a meeting of officials to explain myself and I told them the students had a right to know the truth. They couldn't even make eye contact with me.
20
The Communist Party of China is no doubt one of the most repressive and stultifying forces keeping the world from advancing. They are as ruthless and brutal as an ancient monarchy, having murdered millions through famine and class warfare.
Why they get away with all of this is absolutely beyond me. But I suspect it has something to do with money...
13
Extraordinarily frightening what is happening in China. North Korea is nothing but a sandbox in Disneyland.
7
I often cross paths with a young lawyer who is originally from China. She once asked about a (beautiful) novel I was reading by Madeleine Thien, "Do Not Say We Have Nothing" that shows the lives of an extended family over two generations in China, those who lived during Mao's Cultural Revolution and their children. I mentioned that Tiananmen Square figured in the book. "Oh yes," she said, "that was so terrible. Many soldiers were injured." "Well, yes," I said, "and students were killed too."
I can only say she looked completely baffled by my comment.
25
I’m beyond horrified to learn that she only knew of the STATE version of the tragedy
8
I remember the government stance after the massacre was that the students were disillusioned but not the real problem.
It was outside agitators who riled them up to attack the troops, who then had to fight back. (so said the government)
I have some pamphlets and a book that detail how the soldiers were the victims, with the most graphic images of only the lynched and charred bodies of young men in PLA uniforms.
(You have to remember that the soldiers were generally as young as the students, many teenagers.)
If you only heard the government sanctioned history, you might believe it.
We're very fortunate to have access to a free press, even though the so-called president is doing his worst to clamp down on it while promoting his own propaganda sources and lying constantly.
At this moment in world history, the US is really no better than China -- it's not you or me, just like it's not the regular Beijingren biking by. It's the representative governments filled with corrupt officials. And the Brexiteers seem determined to join that club.
7
I would like to understand where she intends to seek political refuge/asylum. I am sure Captain Marvel will approve, but how much wealth has the military journalist accumulated over these years of silence?
There is no comparison between freedom of information in China and the United States, so apologists for the Chinese government stop trying to make an equivalent. In the 1950s as a kid I knew about both the horrors of slavery and the near-genocide of Native Americans. The Chinese population has no access to any information that their government finds inconvenient. We criticize ourselves in great depth in this country, because that's what happens with you have a First amendment. In China, the Chinese Communist Party "is always correct!" I don't know how many of you have spent any time in China--apparently very few, but a lot of armchair apologists.
22
@globalnomad Well said. Thank you.
Most Chinese do know about it. The Premier at the time, Li Peng, still has a terrible reputation in China. However most Chinese also see it as a means to an end. They now see what happened to Russia in the post-Soviet world and how China has been able to avoid the problems of becoming a democracy overnight.
You need to put this in the perspective of the Chinese. China has been a turbulent society for nearly a hundred years. Many more people died due to Mao's policies and huge numbers died in WW2, WW1 as well as the Taiping rebellion. Comparatively, they see it as a cost they had to pay to get to the current peace and prosperity.
6
I say this without taking any sides, would having the right to bear arms have helped that day in 1989, however small it would be have been for a gun against a tank?
3
The idea that the right to bear arms would have made any difference in 1989 China is truly laughable. A free press is a thousand times more important than the right to bear arms in modern states where governments monopolize deadly force.
2
Americans should take this as a cautionary tale. Think of all the things that have happened in the last two years that we were so sure could ‘never happen here’.
13
The criminals who committed this murder of their own, unarmed citizens in a peaceful protest will someday face justice.
Nothing lasts forever, especially authoritarian police states like China and North Korea.
China will eventually be free.
10
I assume this was a NYTimes exclusive, though it is implied that she gave other interviews. Is her testimony also getting out in the Chinese language somewhere? Is she safe? As many have discovered through friendships with millenial Chinese in America, there is a frightening number of Chinese completely ignorant of their own recent history. If we are once again going to "normalize" our relationship with China, doesn't it matter how transparent and honest the government is with its own people? Has Trumps trade war inadvertently presented an opportunity to reset American ethical standards, presumably under the next Democratic presidency?
5
And one could now see the possibility of the same thing happening in America.
1
@Dan
Dear Dan, By your remarks you're probably too young to remember the marches throughout Mississippi and Alabama in the 60's, the demonstration in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention and the kids killed at Kent State University.
Al countries which try to go against their citizenry push back when challenged. It happens in Latin America, Europe , Asia and Africa. Not so much in Antarctica or the North Pole.
As we watch the push back when young black males get shot ten or twenty times here the police seem to have been doing what the military ie. the National Guard used to do.
But at least we have Freedom of the Press which is still able to give accounts as to what happens. Sometimes giving entirely different accounts of what takes place.
Therefore it's important to look at some reporting whether it be print, tv or electronic news and be wise enough to discern the facts.
8
@Benito
Yes I am old enough to remember the marches, the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, (not riots) and I agree with you totally. My main point was one could now see the current administration committing atrocities similar to what happened in China. Its seems like they could rationalize such acts.
1
We are learning well in our country - that any lie is possible. Sickening.
11
People forget just how close China came to democracy.
Months of rumblings, massive long term protests with the whole world watching.
As for the CCP - You don't bring out the tanks and start shooting at people because you feel on solid footing.
The people of China have great heart.
16
Everyone was on a set wage structure. People got fed up and protested for better wages and a better life style. Students, workers, and residents came together in cities all over the country. Currently the hope of reform in China resides with the rights lawyers in their efforts to represent the people who have suffered from injustice. Unfortunately, the lawyers have been jailed or placed under surveillance. Most people are aware of their economic and political rights, but they are silent because they have nationalistic feelings. The Chinese are content to watch a parade of officials go to jail for corruption. China and Russia are facing down turns in their economies due to sanctions placed on their deceitful behavior. Russian interference in the Ukraine and Syria, and a Chinese trade war due to the confiscations of western ideas and technology. If it were not for one man/one party rule, China would be the most democratic county on the planet.
1
There is Tomb Sweeping Day in April in China and Taiwan; there is Memorial Day at the end of May here; there is nothing for June 4th, nor any names upon a stone. 30 years.
12
Ms Jiangxi is a hero. This article made me cry with heartache and genuine admiration for this brave woman who speaks out now. I sometimes forget history is made up of witnesses and real events and often sounds alarm that we, living in the present, don’t hear...but need to. Thank you nytimes for documenting this important primary resource for us and future generations.
31
I remember when Tiananmen Square was on the news. I also remember purchasing a T-shirt at the Ohio State fair to support them. I admire those who stood up for democracy. I don't know that democracy is right for China. What I am sure of is current governments in general do not work for the benefit of the citizens. That include my own country , The United States of America, Regardless I stand by democracy as the best form of government.
China is a a major power. I do not fear that. They have long history and deserve a place in world decisions.
The problem is not necessarily governments, but the money and power distributions across the world. Things need to change everywhere. China is no exception. How and to what the world social and political order should be I have no answer. But the status quo cannot stand or all humanity will perish.
If you ask a person to give up power they generally won't. It is an eternal conflict of those who rule and those who are ruled. Those with money are at a power war with workers, regardless if they admit it or not. China is no exception. The planet would be better served by less people in power and more people with a equal voice.
What path China will take is not known. What is known is people will continue to seek fair and just government.
4
Mrs, Jiangxi bravery and courage under fire is astonishing and must be of the kind exhibited by our ancestors in 1776. She is right too that modern China and its institutions are built on sand as long as the cowards in office refuse to face the facts , and hold public hearings on those Herculaneum days of freedom 30 years ago!
9
I want to see Jiang Lin be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year. To have a Chinese journalist awarded the prize for this work would be globally significant.
26
@Alice Dreger
I agree. It would send a profound message to Xi who, through instituting defiance of WTO and humanitarian norms, is turning the clock backward for the honest and hard working Chinese. A Nobel Peace Prize to this brave woman journalist is not only warranted but needed; in the name of journalism, in the name of humanism, and in the name of all citizens who struggle under authoritarian rule.
13
@Alice Dreger I'd love to hear her explanation during her Nobel acceptance speech for doing nothing when it may have done some good 30 years ago.
2
The article leaves out some salient facts.
The central leadership brought in troops from outside Beijing and these troops were told that there was a counter-revolution going on.
It is highly doubtful that the Beijing detachments would have advanced and fired against the students and others. In fact relations were mainly peaceful with the Beijing garrisons surrounding and mingling with the students and there exist multiple sources documenting army troops passing out food and providing health care to the students prior to the non-Beijing detachments firing on citizens.
Also left out is that the protesters were not homogenous in their beliefs. There are multiple sources of photos showing sabotage of military equipment of the Beijing garrison by some students.
Jiang Lin's account as reported here gives an important side to the event, but when I read this I am reminded of national Guard troops firing on peaceful students at Jackson and Kent State Universities. There are perversities on both side of the Pacific Ocean.
8
The Chinese people deserve freedom & must demand freedom from their corrupt communist Government where they keep CHINESE wages And BENEFITS down ADDITIONALLY the
Corruption in china is the worst in the world. Specifically Beijing.
4
Before 1989 it was quite rare to find anything imported from mainland China beyond fireworks and cheap Christmas decorations.
It should be recalled that the great wave of U.S. companies outsourcing and relocating their production facilities to China - at the cost of millions of American jobs - began after Tiananmen, not before. Unlike in an earlier era, when American companies built plants abroad to serve local markets, this was a deliberate decamping of production to China in order to export back to the U.S. at a greater margin.
In reality, this proved to be a kind of ponzi scheme, because the earlier you get your production running in China, the easier to sell your products to those American consumers still on U.S. wage levels and not yet themselves displaced in their other capacity as the moderately well off employed.
It should also be remembered that the rush to China was not, for the most part, throughly analysed, as I witnessed first hand in a large corporation. There were no McKinsey type studies - only the wage cost per hour was cited; and since that gap was huge, it was felt that no further analysis was necessary. Only now are companies stating publically, when deciding to bring production back to the U.S., that the total cost difference is not that great.
America and its companies should have understood the true nature of the communist regime as early as 1989. We are only now coming to understand what kind of state China is - I hope its not too late.
14
Completely agree. Plus there was no moral abhorrence to what had happened in Tienanman by US businesses, as might have been expected in generations past.
Frankly, the US has some soul searching to do as well as to how quickly we forgot the lost lives there, after years of fighting for human rights in China, and threw those young Freedom fighters under the bus, or in this case, the tank treads.
8
This is the best summary of how the US fat cat businessmen sold out their fellow countrymen with the greatest transfer of wealth in history. I remember Wal-Mart proudly displayed the Made in USA label in the 1980s. As soon as Sam Walton died, his greedy children outsourced everything to China leading to losses of jobs by the millions spurring the despair of the opioid crisis and the destruction of the middle class.
10
For the commenters who read this and weren’t able to suppress the instinct to shout abruptly “We’re no better!”: Go read Washington’s farewell address or Lincoln’s second inaugural, then come back and explain why you think China and the US supposedly sit on the same rotten moral foundation. Or, more importantly, why your first reaction to this was self-loathing.
15
@Robt Little probably because the computer they are using says "Made in China"
6
It’s not “self-loathing”. It is demanding more of our leaders both in politics and in business.
Watch “Charlie Wilson’sWar” and you’ll get the idea. We have a historically short attention span. We should be known as the USADHD.
3
Trump and his nationalists will do this to Americans if they have their way. Fight now or fight later--or just give up and die now.
7
@Daniel
Completely absurd.
Just stop.
5
Call me cynical, but is there any chance this breaking of Jiang’s silence is a ploy by the government? And she still very much is on its side?
Consider for a moment: who benefits from this revelation?
In addition to Jiang, the idea that military superiors struggled with the order to open fire from their dictator-in-chief is a very romantic and appealing story. One that actually softens and humanizes China - “certainly Jiang is not alone; there must be others like her”.
The entire world - save for younger Chinese citizens and dictator supporters - knows the massacre occurred. All this story does is make us feel good.
With Trump in the White House and China’s place in the world as a military and economic and manufacturing power, I believe this isn’t far-fetched.
5
@SM
Perhaps she is a spokesperson for a group within the leading communist party. One that is not happy with the current top leadership. I can imagine that.
3
Ms. Jiang is courageous today much as she was thirty years ago when government troops fired on innocent civilians in Tiananmen Square. Authoritarian regimes consistently suppress freedom and eradicate dissent using history’s etch-a-sketch to erase and rewrite. However, the truth merely lies in wait contained within survivors ready to reveal a less annotated version.
5
We keep uttering “how brave, how brave” because we all know how awful her country’s leadership is. No we are nothing alike. Imagine during those Occupy Wall St sit ins if those protesters were simply brutally slaughtered.
5
This an amazing article and brave.
What I want to know more about is how the Western world basically shrugged off the murder of all those student protestors and bystanders. Instead of turning away from China in the 90s, business simply off-shored all their manufacturing there helping China become the economic powerhouse it is now.
Seems those business leaders played right into Diang’s hand and reinforced that murderous behavior has no consequences.
17
@J.Q.P. and I suppose the computer you are using to express this has no Chinese components, if it wasn't entirely made in China?
1
@Jim
Thanks Jim. But you misunderstood my point.
In the early 90s all the factory production hadn’t been moved over to China yet. Things were still made in the US as well
as other countries, like Japan, etc. Apple computers were mostly made in the US late 80s, early 90s.
See WSJ article here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/BL-DGB-25630%3fresponsive=y
My point has nothing to do with whether my computer was made in China ...now.
In the early 90s I was a teen and didn’t even own one. However, after the Tienanman Square massacres, there were no real economic consequences to China because the west and the USA basically gave up on fighting for human rights in China.
Evidence twenty years plus of factory production moved to China regardless of their murderous regime.
11
Wasn't the idea at the time that by opening up China to US corporate influence, it would be a boon to basic freedoms in China? It was wrong but I believe that was the intent / justification (along with profits of course).
3
Thanks for speaking up Jiang Lin. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
7
“All this is built on sand. There’s no solid foundation,” she said.
Her eyewitness account of the events are not without importance, but for me it is the above sentence that is the most significant.
The impression of an insider born into the elite running the country, who is telling us that all of this is fragile and could disappear overnight, just like the SSSR, the DDR, the Warsaw Pact did.
And this is what the communists in China know too, how fragile their grip on power really is. And they knew it in 1989, when they used the last line of defense, the military, to remain in power.
And they would do it again. They have no choice. If they do not use violence, currently only in form of a low-grade intensity, their power will slip and disappear.
This is the nature of a communist regime. The dictatorship of the proletariat is exactly that, a dictatorship, running counter to human nature. As is any other dictatorship, the one of the military, of the church, of a single family. The all need violence to preserve themselves in power. Without violence they do not exist.
Their power is of a fragile nature, like a sand castle on the beach. One wave, one stronger gust of wind is all that is needed, it can all come crumbling down.
That is what this insider is telling us.
13
China is a vast police state. The future looks very dark.
15
@Newfie
I would not be this pessimistic. It is deeply imbedded into human nature to have a desire to be free of oppression.
Until genetic engineering or some similar approach has removed that from human nature, dictatorships, police states and similar regimes will not be certain and secure to last forever.
All such regimes end sooner or later...
4
The courageous Jiang Lin and Tiananmen Sq in 1989 reminds me that the Berlin Wall was successfully dismantled that same year. Horrific post WWII East Germany ruled by Stasi and Russian KGB inspired Orwell’s 1984. Ms Jiang reminds me of a character in The Three-Body Problem. Did the English version delve into Tiananmen Sq? I believe it did along with the Cultural Revolution. Did the Chinese version do it in the same way?
Orwell’s endtimes (1930?), when automatic internalized lying or doublethink takes hold and even ideas of cognitive dissonance or self contradiction are filtered out. When future Chinese citizens automatically agree with Chinese Communist Party decrees. When genetic engineering creates new generations of US proles automatically thinking like T-Party Trump talks now. Highly improbable. IMO, the Chinese AI Social Credit and internet control will self sabotage. Against all odds hopefully Trump will do the same.
1
The whole of China's history and success were defined by the courageous decision by its leaders in 1989. The choice was really between becoming a preeminent world economic power and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty, which is what China did, and turning the country into a disintegrating failed state with ethnic strife, increased misery and millions of victims, which is what would have happened is China followed USSR along the West-inspired abyss of "democratisation". Chinese leaders chose wisely and Chinese people will be forever grateful to them for that.
6
@David
Thank you, Comrade, for your truthiness.
12
@S. B.
I’m always impressed by those who live free lives in places like Brisbane but offer support to the most noxious regimes on the planet.
Of course, those fellow travelers would never, ever have the strength of conviction and courage vote with their feet and decide to live under those regimes.
So much easier to wear a faded Che shirt and bang keys from afar...
5
@David
What you have stated so coldly and frankly is borderline madness.
Murdering one’s own youthful populace is a DESPICABLE act.
It is not inspired by bravery but rather by COWARDICE to squelch dissenting citizens.
The rest of the world remembers well and will continue to view China with suspicion and apprehension until its leaders cease their cruel, brutal and inhumane treatment towards its people.
12
Arab Spring. Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen.
Rwandan genocide. Tienanmen. Iranian Revolution.
Cultural revolution. American Civil War.
Do the body counts. And the aftermath too.
Study history.
3
Good for her . . I hope we hear from her again . . .
4
Brave, brave woman.
7
“The People’s Liberation Army is the people’s military and it should not enter the city or fire on civilians.”
Too many times it is power-thirsty leaders and not the troops who literally call the shots. Military rule is about regulations, while “Politics is the art of the possible” versus moral
3
Why should they ? They are buying condominiums for their children on 57th street through Limited Liability Corporations which can show their identity with investigation.They are greedy and do not care about human rights . 95% of the Chinese want to be free of their government. Everyone knows it. If it was up to me I would make all owners of Llc’s to show their real identity.
8
Governments and businesses can be their own worst enemies. The Chinese authorities could have simply ignored the protesters, or stationed enough military to keep them in one place. The protests may have just petered out and no one would have remembered them. Instead, the government shone a great big spotlight on themselves and legitimised the protests. They also guaranteed that their actions would be seared into Chinese history forever, despite their best efforts.
But what a courageous woman. She has placed herself in danger by going public. Let's see if the government responds as stupidly to this as they did 30 years ago. (As much as I would like to think I wouldn't, I probably would have shown my military ID had I been in her place. I guess I'm not the stuff of heroes.)
"Any lie is possible." And so it goes.
9
@Stevenz
Waiting for everyone to get too cold or too hot, or for a norovirus to spread, would have been a more sensible strategy. Instead of allowing the protesters to become yesterday's news, the government made them martyrs; now Big Brother is stuck with having to erase history for as long as they can hold on to power.
2
In the US the media volunteers to spread misinformation with no need for the government to order it.
Is that progress or what?
1
Not even close to a fair comparison
8
I was a student 30 years ago in Shanghai. It was my last year in school, I remember we literally have only one class for the whole semester since we were on the street day after day. We usually sleep in until noon in the dorm then walked with other demonstrators to bund (6 or 7 miles away from school), along the way gave out some speeches, sang the internationale. We are naive and idealistic, for the most part of the time, we thought we would won at the end because the people are behind us. That was a few months in my life which I felt total surreal freedom. Then June 4th came and crashed everything to the end. (At least in Shanghai, I am not seeing any student dead due to the demonstrations)
I left China many years ago and still kept contact with friends from the university. I thought that experience would forever changed us. That dream of freedom and democracy might be dimmed but it will never die. But sadly, I have to said I was wrong. The miracle of economic growth and accumulation of personal wealth have changed many of them. On the extreme side, some of them are totally agreed with government’s notion that American style freedoms and democracy will never work for China, China’s new arising are the proof, most of them probably don’t like government’s control, but they are content what they have got. So that leave to me to wonder how many more years we have to wait ...
21
History is full of unimaginable cruelty. We should not feel we are above that type of cruelty. Let us remember the cruelty of slavery, murder/torture of African American citizens in the South and police brutality in Northern cities even today.
The Rule of Law is our only chance to maintain a civil society.
Let's hope we can maintain those vital connections to sanity in the face of an irresponsible intolerant Executive Branch and a Senatorial Leadership that curtails access to open dialogue.
We can criticize China but we have significant problems in our own government that limit our own attempt at democracy.
5
Love the self loathing reflex. False equivalency
3
@Robt Little - So, the genocide of North American native peoples and slavery of African peoples have no significance?
1
Here, the military did the same to massed, unarmed student protesters weeks before the 1968 Summer Olympics. It’s safe to say hundreds were killed, although to this day there has not been a full public accounting of the dead. The history of our species is written in blood. Sadly, so, too, will be our future.
3
Please point me to where I can learn about this equivalent massacre that evidently has been hidden from all of us
4
@Robt Little. Mexico City. Tlatelolco massacre. It is hard to call two massacres "equivalent," as each is very different, but it was still a terrible massacre. It is estimated that hundreds were killed.
Everyone my age remembers this event. The whole world watched, holding their breath, would the Chinese government tolerate the protesters? Would they agree to some democratic reforms? We were hopeful. Of course, that is not what happened. For decades, the West has been patient with China's restrictions on trade and its theft of foreign technology, because the West believed eventually China would gradually become more democratic. That hasn't happened. Hong Kong has been losing its freedom of speech and its right to self- govern. Ji's crackdown on corruption initially appeared to be what it claimed but now looks more like efforts to consolidate power. I applaud the author's bravery and hope she and her family remain safe.
19
This is real news. It is a first-person account corroborated by another witness. It has much detail. This is why we have the New York Times.
31
Never forget. Never. Apologies and explanations remain due and payable to the Chinese people and to the people of the world who watched in horror.
11
In 1949 the Chinese State was hijacked by terrorists. Under the ideology of “Communism” this group and its proxies inflicted the most appalling violence on the Chinese, Tibetan, Cambodian and North Korean peoples - systematically destroying a rich history of thought, debate and literature that stretches back many centuries.
The descendants (“princelings”) of this clique, the CCP, continue to stifle these nations while enriching themselves.
Most recently the CCP has “turned off” Wikipedia - doubtless because it documents accurate accounts of 20th century Chinese history.
20
Do the thousands of students from China who study here every year not feel the same burden to speak out when they return home having had access to uncensored content about their government and the history of its murdering its own people?
15
If we Americans think our military, unlike the Chinese, won't follow orders and murder civilians, there's ample evidence from history that we're wrong. It's simply a matter of separating the pliable commanders from those with backbone who would refuse an unlawful order.
6
@Kelly R. I very much doubt you have been in the US military. We have military personnel in jail for committing murder -- and the testimony of their peers put them there. Does murder happen? Yes, as it does in the "civil" population. But it is generally prosecuted. Circumstances have to be extraordinarily deranged before the system breaks down, as it did in Vietnam, and even then there were trials and serious attempts at accountability. If you have read some of the posts here, you will see that the history of Tiananmen has been totally erased in China -- completely and totally. I spent a decade in our own military, and six years in China. Trust me -- these are very different systems. With that in mind, we should all be lobbying our Congressmen and newspapers to ensure that Trump does not pardon convicted military murderers and criminals.
8
The Tiananmen event will probably forever remain somewhat enshrouded in mystery. But events aside - no one seems to question why she is coming out THIRTY YEARS after the event? What would be the rationale? What - she has stage 4 cancer and is going to die and so she is trying to pave her way into heaven? Perhaps she is guilty of corruption (as those in power and in the military in China often are) and she knows the axe is about to fall on her and so she is clawing for Western favors (and perhaps a visa - one that perhaps Trump's new immigration policies will deny, lol)? Call me a cynic, but I'm not buying her story.
2
I’d call you several things, cynic among them. “Lol” indeed.
6
Thank you Chris and to the brilliant NYT for bringing us this heartbreaking piece. It is so very compelling and moving. It is very courageous of Jiang Lin to be telling her story so beautifully and accurately. It is so important the job that journalists and the truth tellers do. It brought tears to my eyes to imagine the holocaust that this woman witnessed and the intelligent minds and humanity that this mistake cost the people of China. So very sad.
11
The US government also lies to its citizens about even much bigger carnage than what happened at Tian'anmen Square. Take the Iraq war for a recent example. The motives were outright lies. How many died for these lies? How many patriotic young Americans dead or wounded? Wasn't that lying to your own citizens? Of course it was. And dhe magnitude of the carnage in Iraq completely belittles what happened at Tian'anmen. Will the US government atone the lies of the Iraq war motives? Of course not. That will never happen. And as time goes on, everything about Iraq is white washed in jingoism. As has happened for Vietnam. Sure, Tian'anmen was a disaster. Why should the Chinese government of today seek atonement to the West when the West is nothing but similar convenient lies? Believe me, that's the way educated Chinese see it. Sure, it's not right to keep the Tian'anmen events from the ordinary citizen of China, it is in their history. But, on the other hand, the notion that nothing good for China would come out of creating a national debate about a disaster that happened many decades ago by people that are now long gone is a strategy that has effectively worked very well for China, whether you agree with it or not. And you cannot blame the educated Chinese youth to be very skeptical about what they hear about Tian'anmen, especially when they hear it in the background of our own multiple taboo sins. China is no more built on sand than America. Just convenient lies and more lies.
5
@Blue Zone
As bad as things may be, the US government will not throw you and/or your family in prison for speaking up about Iraq. You are, in fact, totally free to do so. In China, you can be thrown in prison for far, far less.
23
@S. B. - You may be "free to do so", but, dollars to doughnuts, someone somewhere will start a file on you, in the great Hoover tradition.
If we in the U.S. were beyond reproach we could find fault with China, but since we’re not angels we really shouldn’t judge them, right? I mean, we should judge ourselves, sure - and harshly. But until we’re flawless we mustn’t dare aim our opprobrium any further than our borders.
Meanwhile, if propaganda and oppression have been very effective strategies for China, you can’t argue with success, right? Gotta tip tip your cap to them.
Did I mention how the US is awful?
1
A year after this intolerable crime, I was amazed that clandestine guerilla assassination squads, composed of the family members of those killed and injured, never appeared to take revenge.
2
@Mark
Really, 'Mark' from 'New Hampshire'? That's what you really think?
2
The motto of the Chinese Communist Party can be summed up as: "Go to the shopping malls, buy car and condos, and never meddle in politics." Ever wonder why in a country of 1.3 billions people, the Communist has a membership of only 80 millions? And by the way, now that pretty much everyone knows what the Chinese regime can do to their own people, try to picture Chinese motives and actions on the international scene.
7
@Dauphin
They are buying up the world and it's resources and nobody cares. I'm shocked but not surprised.
12
I was born a day before the massacre. My mom used it as a joke why I was rebellious all my childhood, but when I asked for more details, it was all change of topics, sudden look-around, panic, and silence that awaited me. My middle school history teacher hushed me, "who told you about that?" As if he thought my question was a trap. He still didn't answer me, although I explained.
Therefore it didn't surprise me one bit to read that younger generation Chinese didn't know a thing about it. They've done a good job of erasing its existence.
Luckily there was the Internet and its early days in China when the government hadn't figured out what and how to sensor. I know the tactics of the "great firewall", which had transformed from a passive filter to an active weapon beyond censorship. But the average Chinese netizens don't feel much of a difference. "Just don't search for nasty things. Google is evil," they said. Living in an alternative reality constructed by the government, they don't know what they have lost.
11
@Janet
I agree but I also think we in North America aren't that much different. Our kids know no history. Their ignorance astounds me and our governments, Canadian as well as American are happy to have it that way. Our kids can look things up, unlike the Chinese but if they don't know what to look up how is that o.k.?
1
@lh - Really? We in North America? I live in the US and have friends in several Canadian provinces. I don’t know anyone as poorly educated or informed as you suggest.
2
@Col Flagg
You're lucky then because even the young people I know with a "good education" think history began when they were born. Oh, they know there were wars but they don't know much about them. And if you think any government today wants history taught and taught well I disagree. Math and science, that's what they want. History, not so much. But, I'm glad for you if you have a different experience.
1
The Chinese Communist Party is an illiberal institution, it does not value the life of individual people nor has it any tolerance for liberal democratic governance. It is the dictatorship of he proletariat and it considers individualism and democratic governance serious obstacles to the achievement of a worker's paradise, the stateless end of history of Communism. The leadership of the Party considered the students' mass protests and coverage by the media as undermining the authority of the Party. It had to be put down and the people taught to never act in this manner.
But more than idealism motivated the purge/massacre. The Chinese Communist Party is an oligarchy in China. It rules and the members are more equal that all others. They are continually reporting and punishing corrupt officials. If the people were to openly denounce all the corruption to be found in the system, the Communist Party would wither away.
4
@Casual Observer
The Maoists' position during the Cultural Revolution that was begun in 1966 was that there was a two-line struggle in the Party between those who were following the "socialist road" and those who wanted to go down the "capitalist road."
We don't need to waste time speculating on what might have happened had the "socialist roaders" prevailed: the Great Leap Forward, The Hundred Flowers Campaign, The and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were bad enough indeed with millions dead from famine and internecine warfare during the first twenty-seven years of the PRC.
What happened in 1976 was that ten years of the most recent turmoil were brought to an end with the victory of the Party's surviving "capitalist" roaders. Deng was sent down at the beginning of the GPCR for "re-education." He survived being purged, was brought back, and led the capitalist faction to victory once Mao had died and his followers were eliminated.
Give me a break: dictatorship of the proletariate, workers paradise, stateless end of history of Communism. Why even refer to that language now? You are correct: the Party is an oligarchy: the Chinese Communist/Capitalist Party: a new form of political and economic governance in the world, a world that indeed seems to be nearing the end of history and the end of a habitable environment under the "leadership" of the Xis and Trumps of the world supported by their oligarchic, plutocratic, capitalist enablers and followers.
2
I was in Kathmandu, not too far away on May 30th, having come in from Thailand. Students at the Univ. of Kathmandu also rioted, but this was hardly noticed compared to China's story. The argument was revolt over fuel shortages and the monarchy in general. The US state department did not issue a warning to US travelers, so I walked into a curfew-laden town, that had many stopped unknowingly when one came back from a walk after dinner. Later, on a trek I met students who were in hiding from all over Asia. I heard what happened in Beijing, and warned such may come hunting as my friends were wanted said they. Yes—never forget.
3
God bless Jiang Lin and long may her name be known. I know it is difficult for her leaving her homeland. She should be praised in China for her courage.
8
Everything has a beginning. Let this be the beginning of remembering the victims in 64. Stop erasing memories. Learn from them.
3
Ms. Jiang is indeed brave---and the world yearns for truth-tellers in this age of lies from the top levels of government. I recall hearing and seeing photos, etc. of the protests and then hearing the horrifying news of the crackdown. One sobering point in this tragic narrative: some of the generals protested and resisted, but in the end there were army units that did the dirty work. Think about that.
7
Over the past eleven years I have taught a music appreciation class that in part focuses on how music can play a role in forging sociopolitical change. Each year my high school has a number of international students from China. I have observed that when talk of the student protests at Tiananmen comes up that the Chinese students know, or admit to knowing, little or nothing regarding the events of Spring, 1989.
Out of curiosity I read a book by one of the student leaders, A Heart for Freedom by Chai Ling.
This past year I showed the 2013 documentary film, Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven. Tiananmen is a significant part of the film.
Mistakes are made. Some are quite tragic. All can be learned from. I appreciate the courage of Ms.Jiang as portrayed in this article.
9
The Chinese seems quit satisfied to accept this current version of the events as expounded by the government and I doubt there will be any true account of it in China for some time to come.
Just look at our history, how easily and with great gusto have we accepted and lived quite comfortably with the many myths told to us about slavery, treatment of native Americans, Jim Crow era, etc. it’s a long list of denials.
2
Great courage even now, thirty years after the tragic events of June 4th. And we can see, too, the idealism that led many people to embrace the principles that they thought the revolution represented. If only it had.
5
I taught English at a university in Shanghai from 1990-1991. The freshmen were not permitted to attend classes, rather they were in the countryside for a year of military training. I visited Beijing in December 1990 and the center monument in Tiananmen Square was covered with badly patched bullet holes. There were cameras on top all the light poles (before CCTV cameras were widespread).
My phone was tapped. Any Chinese students who came to visit me had to sign in and out. Overall I’m glad I went but I always had a sense of being watched.
10
And that is the last that will ever be heard from her or any member of her family.
Perhaps some time in the future when her will has been broken, she will be shown tearfully apologizing for her crime of telling the truth. More likely, they will just crush her and try to erase her from history.
Before long, the Chinese government will probably have someone working on hacking the NYTimes website to erase this and other similar articles at will.
12
And yes, I know that she is no longer in China. That merely adds a level of complexity for those tasked with bringing her to heel.
4
@S. B.
The story says she was interviewed in Beijing
@fme - "Now, in the run-up to the 30th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown, Ms. Jiang, 66, has decided for the first time to tell her story. She said she felt compelled to call for a public reckoning because generations of Chinese Communist Party leaders, including President Xi Jinping, have expressed no remorse for the violence. Ms. Jiang left China this week."
Dictatorship is always the same, the dictator and his/her cabal do unconscionable things to suppress criticism, and then try to hide it. And when the populace finally acknowledges and decides to redress the crimes of the dictators and their supporting cabal, the legitimacy of the dictators' power goes out the window. America is strong because these fundamental and fatal mistakes have been avoided.
4
"The troops and tanks begin closing in from all directions"
Read Jan Wong's account of the Tiananmen Massacre in Red China Blues, chaps. 14, 15. As a reporter for the Globe, she had a vantage point from across the square for the entire event, staying up for 72 hrs and being in the line of fire. Extraordinarily brave.
"...At 2:10 (a.m.) several thousand troops marched across the north side of the square. At 2:15 they fired into the dense crowd. I timed the murderous volley on my watch. It lasted more than a minute. ...At 2:23 tanks from the east fired their mounted machine guns at the crowds. ..As the soldiers massacred people, the loudspeakers broadcast the earlier government message warning people to stay home. I leaned over the balcony to watch some people cowering in the parking lot. The crowd ran away after each heavy volley, then to my amazement crept back slowly, screaming curses and weeping with rage. Perhaps like me they couldn't believe the People's Liberation Army was shooting them. Or perhaps the decades of propaganda had warped their minds. Perhaps they were insane with anger. Or maybe after stopping an army in its tracks for days, armed only with moral certitude, they believed they were invincible. By now, I was recording heavy gunfire every six or seven minutes. It occurred to me that was about as much time as it took for people to run two blocks, calm down, regroup, and creep back. At 3:12 ..a tremendous round of gunfire lasting several minutes.."
49
@loveman0 Thanks for the recommendation. It's on my list now.
4
A horrible event, and not the first from one of the oldest civilizations on the planet with the largest population. So many occurrences of cruelty across the world and through all times to control others. No country or civilization immune to state supported murders.
3
"Empire is what empire does"
All empire expand, exploit, and expropriate wealth from their territories --- which generally means killing abroad and oppressing within the metropole of the empire.
The late great Jewish intellectual, Hannah Arendt, tried to warn her own German people:
"Empire abroad entails tyranny at home"
As Bertrand Russell's famous quote joked about what was under the world (or underworld) was not "Turtles all the way down" --- but throughout history, "Empires all the way down".
The American people through a continuation and completion of our first American 1776 "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin du Rivage] could save democracy 'in our time' with a people's peaceful "Political/economic & social Revolution Against Empire" now in 2020 --- or not.
2
My husband and I were teaching at a small university in Shanghai during this time. Soon our own students joined the students from other universities and made the seven-mile walk into the Bund area of downtown Shanghai every morning. We went in ourselves and were overcome with emotion at the thousands of students peacefully gathered. Oh, there was such hope in the air.
We followed reports everyday from the BBC and VOA on our shortwave radio. We were filled with hope too. Then one morning we woke to an eerie quiet. The BBC reporter said there'd been a crackdown, that's the word I remember, a crackdown. But we didn't know what that meant and were desperate for news. So we went out into the streets. Buses were overturned, tanks were rumored to be on the outskirts of Shanghai. The streets were empty save for the buses.
I had a student who'd broken his leg so he wasn't able to go with the other students. We were reading "A Tale of Two Cities." When I saw him next, he kept saying to me he couldn't believe this had happened. "The People's Army, they're the People's Army," he said.
We fled China on a ship several days later when the VOA told Americans to leave. I often think of my students and wonder what happened to them. We never said goodbye.
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In closed China and Russia the general welfare is more important than any individual or group of individuals. The harvesting of body organs from prisoners on a massive scale to make Chinese generals and bureaucrats rich is very much part of general CCP corruption not in the distant past but right now. What’s next? Clone and prisoner farms to keep Chinese rich alive? Totally “far out” science fiction...
I was at the largest demonstration in the US, the March 2018 March For Our Lives in DC. I remember catching the sight of a cop when I reached into my backpack for something. He never touched his gun. It never occurred to me that he would. Some of the comments try real hard to draw false equivalence. As bad as things are at the Mexican border under Trump.
8
@Jerry H
Let's hope it isn't just a matter of time!
@Beth Hutmacher. Judging from the multitude of people in front of Tienaman Square(and all the foreign agents trying hard to influence the politically innocent students to overthrow their government), it was a judgment call for the Chinese government! From the articles I read, they implicated that it was a factions’ struggle within their party. Who knows? It is not for anyone of us to even judge! Every country has its own rules and regulations and it is not for us outsiders to ponder, let alone criticise. We had Kent State scenario too(students’ demonstration against Vietnam War)but the size of multitude is incomparable to Tienamen Square.
4
I spent a good part of a day and evening on Tiananmen about 10 days before the massacre. I took part in several ad hoc discussion groups with the student protesters. I saw the armed authorities positioned on the edge of the square, which unnerved me a bit. I had studied Chinese politics and knew about how brutal the regime had been, and I had some sense of how historic that moment was. But the students exuded confidence and told me that it was safe. I still have some dramatic pictures from that night, as ambulances took away ill students who were engaged in a hunger strike. The atmosphere was electric, and banners were everywhere as groups of workers marched in from all over the country in support of....well, it wasn't clear that everyone was clear or agreed on what the goals were, but they all wanted serious reforms of one type or another. I can't say for sure, but I imagine that at least some of those students I sat and spoke with, and who have their fists raised in protest in my night snapshots, fell victim to the brutality of the regime's troops. No one should ever forget how utterly nasty, brutal, violent, and controlling the Chinese one-party state can be.
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@Buck Thorn -- Right. It's what used to be called Red China. It's the same place only with money.
19
@Stevenz SOME people have money.
2
@Buck ThornThey're all safe and sound. Nobody died in Tiananmen Square. See above
1
I saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 with my own eyes, always afraid that East German party leader would give orders to shoot, the pictures from China still fresh in my memory. They didn't, and, with all their flaws and crimes committed, finally showed moral integrity. Chinese students lost many classmates. The shooting, person hunts and violence was much more widespread in Beijing as reported.
The callousness, lack of remorse and brutality of the Chinese party regime is already extending to our country where Chinese student groups are monitoring their classmates, many university faculty are secret Communist party members, and communication is monitored by Chinese censors listening in to WeChat, TikTok and other services. Meanwhile the mothers and families have to mourn their children in silence, with their existence denied.
288
"many university faculty are secret Communist party members", that is so wrong! No such thing as a secret member now, on the contrary, it is quiete open. It is not a sin to be a member, not a honor any more either.
13
@Eric Sorkin
I believe you have a very valid point about East German officials showing moral integrity (courage?) when deciding not to fire upon their own citizens. Unfortunately, history is always the history of the victor, and so this fact has never received much credit. Not everyone who is "on the other side" is evil, not everyone on "our side" is an angel.
12
@Eric Sorkin
"many university faculty are secretly Communist Party members". Where is your evidence of this?
TikTok is a choice. A lot of people dislike its content and turn if off.
3
A few years ago, my family hosted a brilliant young Chinese doctor who was attending UCLA for specialized training.
I was shocked to learn this brilliant and highly educated woman had never heard of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
I showed her the icon photo of the lone protester confronting a military tank, and she had never seen it before.
I should not have been surprised, of course. In our own country, we have had generations of citizens who grew up completely oblivious to the centuries of genocide and chattel slavery that we perpetrated. And this ignorance was nurtured by our own educational system.
498
@Jeffrey
"centuries of genocide and chattel slavery that we perpetrated"
Slavery existed less than 90 years in the USA. There was never genocide.
16
@Jeffrey Well stated! Children in the US are not taught of the genocide and trickery used against Native Americans. And, the lynchings of Blacks are rarely to be found in our history texts.
31
@Ami
What to you call the killing of millions of indigenous people in North and South America from 1492 on?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples
Slavery began in the Americas in 1501.
79
Despite this China's rise toward a form of democracy continues. The US descent toward totalitism continues. It appears these paths will cross.
2
Student protests in Tiananmen Square didn't begin in 1989 but were part of a long tradition of young intellectuals protesting against power. Indeed, young intellectual revolutionaries helped usher in the Communist Party in 1949, the same party that crushed them 40 years later. In 1989 they weren't looking for a revolution but simply for reform. To recall the atrocity (or for those too young to have witnessed it) there's a great documentary on it, "The Gate of Heavenly Peace". https://youtu.be/1Gtt2JxmQtg
1
A courageous account. But her expectations of atonement seem extremely naive. Disinformation is the every-day machinery of a dictatorship (as well as aspiring dictators, as we all know too well). Lying to serve the "greater good" is Chinese government policy and as horrible as it was, Tiananmen is probably the tip of the Chinese disinformation iceberg. Chinese government reform is never going to happen on its own. And as the Tiananmen massacre illustrates, it may never come from outside either.
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@Number23
Well, her story basically is that she did not see anything herself. She tried to go there, was denied entry and beaten by police, spent the rest of the night at the hospital, saw some injured people brought there. The decision by Chinese leaders to break up the protest and not subject their country to trials of "democratisation" was fully vindicated by history. It is hard to imagine how China could have done any better in improving lives of its people, and very easy to imagine how it would have done much worse - just by looking at results in the Soviet Union which did take the "democratisation" path.
1
@David
what about the path East Germany took only a few months later? In Leipzig on October 9th, 70,000 citizens peacefully carried candles and engaged the soldiers who lined the streets in peaceful conversation. For some reason Honecker did not give orders to fire, or if he did, they were ignored at the local level. Nor in the coming days of growing demonstrations throughout the country, did Gorbachev send in Russian tanks. No violence was a far better choice. The mutual decision to refrain from violence, on the part of the military and the protesters, opened a fresh and hopeful chapter in German history.
11
@David. You forgot the World Bank ‘s report that the Chinese government brought two thirds of its people out of poverty in only thirty years’ time!! Now, that is quite an accomplishment on its own. No wonder Chinese people seldom complain about their government.
Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 is not the first time, and won't be the last time, in Chinese history, when Chinese rulers directed the military to kill its citizens in order to maintain their rules. However, once the government has done that, it lost it's "mandate from heaven" to rule, and it's legitimacy is gone.
It will be just a matter of time before people rise up to overthrow the rulers, and it will come as it has come many times in China's long history.
3
I admire her courage, but the article ends with a falsehood about this world, whatever atonement it might require in the next. "All this is built on sand," but the sand has expanded into an empire that no one can question for fear of vengeance.
Meanwhile, the so called beacon of freedom has since become an illiberal empire of its own and before it became so, the axis of freedom invaded several countries, killed millions of people and didn't even free the oil that it was sent to liberate.
The lesson seems to be: it's only power that matters.
3
Thank you to Ms. Jiang for sharing her experience. It is terribly moving and her pain and empathy for the student protestors radiates from these words. She is right to share the truth as she saw it; there is no justice in this world without the truth about abuse and atrocity coming out into the open daylight first, as a precondition for reconciliation. May her brave telling of her story bring her some peace of mind for having played a positive role in breaking the silence on this terrible event.
3
It was the advent of the video recorder that brought those images to the rest of the world. Small wonder that the elite has always tried to stem the flow of information since guttenbergs printing press
1
What a brave woman Ms. Jiang is! What an extraordinary interview to give!
I had no idea there was so much internal dissent within the military concerning the eventual slaughter. On the one hand this makes me hopeful, on the other, the fact that it took 30 years for this to come out, and only from a single individual, is deeply demoralizing.
I do not know if "...China's stability and prosperity would be fragile as long as the party did not atone for the bloodshed." But I do know that Ms. Jiang is a true patriot loyal to China and to the Chinese people.
I fear for Jiang Lin's safety, and wish her well.
4
Ironically, the Tiananmen Square massacre helped prevent wholesale slaughter in the dying Soviet Union. When the Baltic republics rose up against the central government, the army began to repress them violently, but Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stopped it. He was horrified by the recent events in China and had no wish to go down in history as a butcher. Much as he loved his country, he preferred to let it come apart rather than kill thousands or tens of thousands in an attempt to save it. The USSR quickly began to unravel after that.
7
I was a teacher at University in China during this time. I was in Tiananmen Square the morning on June 4, riding my bike and trying not to get shot.
It was horrible and the days that followed, hiding out at the Friendship Hotel, listening to competing armies fire tank rounds at each other was terrifying.
Until now very few Chinese have dared to speak what they saw, what I saw. It is about time.
170
@Mark L There were no competing armies firing tank rounds at each other during or after June 4th.
13
It has been 30 years! time flies! Yes. I still vividly remember holding hands facing the soldiers in green uniform.
8
I was there in Beijing at the Friendship Hotel as a "foreign expert." I was paralyzed with fear but could hear the horrible sounds of tanks and gunfire. For months I had nightmares. A French had gone down to the Xidan district off of Changan Boulevard, he came back sobbing after seeing some of what had taken place. I have nothing but admiration for Ms. Jiang and all the military commanders who tried to resist orders to crush the movement by all and any means.
510
@DCThere was a riot in Changan Avenue that night. On July 19, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing delivered the results of the enquiry, “More than 7,000 were wounded or injured and two hundred forty-one killed, including thirty-six students, ten soldiers and thirteen People's Armed Police during a riot in Chang’An Road.”
(Beijing turmoil - More than meets the eye. Che Muqi. Foreign language press, Beijing 1990, ISBN 0-8351-2459-2; 7-119-01305-X).
Student Vice-President and leader of the Chang’An riot, Wang Yam, was exfiltrated and given British citizenship. In 2006, for the first time in modern British history he was tried in camera and found guilty of bludgeoning an elderly man to death in order to rob him. The Crown Prosecutor banned all media coverage and even speculation about the case but MI6, Britain’s intelligence agency, later admitted he was their agent.
As the NYT reported, President Bill Clinton subsequently addressed the Chinese nation on CCTV for an hour and condemned the incident. It has never been a secret, just a non-event.
3
@Godfree Roberts, whatever the deal was with Wang Yam, it doesn't erase what really happened at Tiananmen. Believe what you want to believe, but when this many people tell the same story, you can't dismiss it as some sort of conspiracy. I don't know what your deal is, but Clinton wasn't even president in 1989. Tiananmen was not a "non-event", or even a "riot", and you're full of it.
17
We hosted a pair of high school students from Shanghai earlier this year. My teenage son asked what they thought of Tiananmen Square. They looked at him incredulously and replied, "It never happened. It is a story your American government made up to make China look bad."
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@Petrean
I hope you set them straight. China doesn't need any help to look bad and these days neither does your government. What would Trump do if confronted with such scenes? He's a coward personally but would he order murder? It's easy for people with no conscience to do such things, it's harder to pull the trigger yourself.
19
@Petrean The control of the Chinese police state is nothing like anything ever seen before. People cannot even walk out of their door without a high possibility of being under surveillance. That, along with brain-washing and propaganda, is a formula for a dystopian futture where people are like programmed robots, happy with the material things they have and totally unaware of how things could be different.
30
@Dan. I bet that we are a lot closer to control than some people think. What else can explain the uniformity of opinion in the Republican Senate?
34
I wonder how close the Chinese government came to disaster that June. It sounds like there was a significant portion of the military that may have considered outright disobedience. If a few of them had considered a coupe rather than hesitated, the world might be a very different place.
15
“All this is built on sand. There’s no solid foundation; If you can deny that people were killed, any lie is possible.”
The GOP would do well to think of this the next time they are about to spout their “talking points” otherwise known as propaganda; The most evil thing a person can do with or to a human mind.
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@magicisnotreal
Don't worry, I'm sure the GOP has carefully considered this factor in their planning.
3
@magicisnotreal Are you suggesting that lying is the exclusive domain of the GOP? Benghazi anyone?
@Greg Beckstrom
good grief.
3
Henry Kissinger was an apologist for the Chinese regime.
''No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators who blocked the authorities from approaching the area in front of the main Government building.''
"The Kissinger Syndrome"
By Anthony Lewis
NYT, December 17, 1989
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@alyosha Thanks for keeping the memory alive. Of course, Kissinger Associates did business with China, so it was imperative that he not say anything to impair his financial status. Our Nobel laureate!
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@alyosha
Kissinger has no compassion for people's suffering. In his whole life, he only cares about playing politics, fixing the deals, promoting himself, and making money.
What has he done for humanity? Nada...
12
@alyosha I guess the real question to Kissinger, or maybe from him, is how many will give up the money, the prestige, of being an expert on Country X that will always welcome him or her with money and glory to defend "tens of thousands of demonstrators", especially those who are now dead or been written off from history books?
1
I have just been to China and it’s a tremendous shame how the government white washes its past regarding this horrible carnage
Trump knows nothing of carnage
Young people MUST say what happened that day or weeks was a cultural revolution and the communists won. Real Americans know better!
12
Why is this article not translated to Mandarin? So many other articles often are available in both languages. The primary target audience for this should not be English speakers, but Mandarin speakers.
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@Jim This is a great question. Times editors?
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@Jim
All of the Times' computer systems would be wiped clean by some mysterious virus within a day if this article was published in Mandarin, that's why. They've taken quite a risk by publishing it at all.
30
@S. B. That's their job.
22
I fear for Ms. Jiang's well-being and wonder if she put herself at risk by living in Beijing and speaking out in this way.
10
@Maureen - end of the third paragraph of the article has this line - "Ms. Jiang left China this week." But - like the Russians, who Trump and the GOP are so fond of, are wont to do with their dissidents, the Chinese government can ruthlessly eliminate her wherever she is outside of China.
2
@Maureen But she has already left China this week.
People like Ms. Jiang and the generals who put themselves and their families at risk by resisting orders to march on their own people, are the type of community oriented people who have enabled China and Chinese, wherever they may be, to thrive for millennia.
9
I imagine that the memory of the Chinese army turning their guns on their own people will not be lost in historical memory. As Luisa Lim in her book the "People's Republic of Amnesia" writes, after an instance of government-backed killing of students in 1922, Lu Xun, China's greatest modern author, wrote "This is not the conclusion of an incident, but a new beginning. Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood. All blood debts must be repaid in kind: the longer the delay, the greater the interest."
44
It’s wishful to claim they will be repaid with interest, as if by some magic force of history of human ethical growth.
There is no way to know or register, let alone repay, the atrocity-tragedies against the peasants of Stalin or Mao or the indigenous people of the Americas or the enslaved people of Africa or everyone in the Middle East today caught up in the never-ending great-power games.
We, not history, need to remember as best we can, and to stop injustice today
And this is the same country that has been trusted to trade fairly with America for the past 30 years.....right?
How did that work out?
Or am I missing something here?
20
@Kenneth Johnson
To be fair, you might have mentioned the multitudes of US businesses who have been only too happy to deal with this same country when it meant dirt cheap labor and enhanced profit margins.
5
@Kenneth Johnson
You're missing the fact that just ONE month after the massacre, the Bush administration sent National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft to China to meet with Chinese officials, offering them a toast "as friends to resume our important dialogue."
We apparently didn't care about defenseless students getting mowed down back then.
8
Since Trump came to power, the media have reinforced his cold war with China with articles such as this one. Where are the articles about what’s good in China?
3
@Kevin Cahill
Point us all at some ‘good articles about China’, Mr. Cahill? I’m curious to read them. I’ve read ‘The Silk Roads’, so I’m aware of some of their deeper history, etc., but these past decades all I see are the ones about massive, officially-sanctioned and -supported trade theft, Xi’s ever-expanding autocratic cult, their brutal suppression of internal minority groups, their universal internet censorship, their hostile aggression with their neighbors, their relentless military expansion, and the way that lately, they’re torturing and ‘disappearing’ their own Marxist-oriented students (!) for daring to protest at Peking University.
3
@Kevin Cahill well that's an step forward, at least, implicitly you admit it happened.
1
@Jim Spencer
Very objective, good answer!
I have the utmost respect for Ms. Lin's courage. What she has done takes a lot of it; certainly more than most people have, including myself. It is quite a telling story. We (Americans) are much more fortunate; however, I saw a terrific 10 part documentary series on Netflix named "Oliver Stone's Untold History of The United States". In the beginning, Stone quotes something Napoleon said: "History is a pack of lies agreed upon". On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered, and the War in Europe was over. Also, there were firebombings of 67 cities in Japan, devastating all of them. These were primarily civilian casualties. Harry Truman, one of the worst presidents in US history, called for the "Unconditional Surrender" of the Japanese. They refused. Virtually all of his military advisors said we did not need "The Bomb" to finish them off. Truman didn't listen, and ordered this anyway. As we know, on August 6th "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima. 3 days later, "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki. In Hiroshima 20,000 soldiers and 70,000-126,000 civilians were killed. In Nagasaki, 150 soldiers and 39,000- 80,000 civilians were killed. 1 half died the 1st day; the rest died during 2 to 4 months later. Who knows the number of casualties from years afterward. I am 65. In school, we were taught the " Atomic Bombs" were dropped to "save lives". That is inherently false; I never knew this.
11
@Easy Goer
The bombs were dropped to save American lives as the Japanese Army always fought to the last man, and a normal invasion of Japan was thought be a very costly operation. Consider the casualty count at Iwo Jima and Okinawa where every Japanese solider had to be dug out.
There were those-a very small minority-that thought it might be possible to arrange a surrender but after some three years of heavy fighting island to island there wasn't much patience left.
1
@Easy Goer
Might want to do a little research beyond Oliver Stone.
2
@Easy Goer
For your ignorance of basic facts that many of us have known for years, you might thank the educational system of your state. Elsewhere many of us have long been aware of the problematic decisions that were made and the horrible deaths that ensued. Local government in the US usually controls local education. Look homeward.
3
Back in the 90's, it was thought the capitalism and democracy went hand in hand. As China adopted free market capitalism, it was thought the power of the Chinese Communist Party would crumble and give way to democracy.
But it turns out, capitalism and totalitarianism are totally compatible. Not only has China failed to change to be more like the democratic West, the democratic West is changing to be like more like the new China - authoritarian, nationalistic, and crass.
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@citybumpkin
They technically are not capitalists since they still control the economy from on high, not in a regulatory sense like a good capitalist society would, but like the communists they are, they dictate and the "economy" does regardless of what it costs or makes on the market. They are basically the Soviet Union if the leadership weren't so narcissistic, fear based and greedy for power.
What is lacking in that idea is the knowledge of why they are communists and why they still want to hold onto unchecked power even though there is enough for all now. IDK the first one but the second one is intrinsic personal insecurity, which come to think of it might also be behind the first one.
2
I had some relatives who were on a cruise around the world, who had stopped in Beijing for a couple of days. Their tour guide awakened them in the middle of night and told them to pack up since they had to leave immediately. The next day on the ship they heard and saw reports of the violence. Years later, they were still shaken by this experience, and traveled less.
9
No doubt this article will be censored in China. This is very against the closed climate that has been steadily climbing for years in China.
12
NYT Online and in print has been fire walled for many years in China.
2
What is missing from this article and virtually all articles I read about China and its lack of "democracy" and "crack downs" on pro-democracy and other political protestors is any historical context or analysis at all. Its like showing photos of burned babies to manipulate public opinion about a conflict - use appeals to ideology and human empathy and get support for your position - e.g., the repeated reporting on brutality by the Syrian government, to stave off civil war and a fate like Iraq or Libya, but no corresponding reporting of atrocities by the "rebels" (often Jihadists) or the US and its allies as they go after rebels in Iraq, Syria or Yemen. And of course, zero balanced historical context - only US propaganda. Here, the NYT needs to constantly belittle China by focusing in a one sided manner its issues that have taken a violent or otherwise undesirable turn. In the US we can totally destroy another country (Iraq and Libya for current examples) with ZERO accountability, but every nation that is not subservient is subject to disproportionate vilification and of course economic warfare (sanctions). The Times would do better to focus on the incredible challenges faced by China as a context for its many missteps. With five times the population of the US and a unified government only since 1949, the country has faced historic challenges and -- OMG - has chosen its own path to development, not the one chosen by the West or the US, with its genocide and slavery.
5
@Daniel Yakoubian
On "its own path to development", Mao killed 40 million people.
When that didn't work, Mao sold out to the US, and it was many decades of US sponsorship that made for the dramatic growth since Mao's death.
25
@Daniel Yakoubian it appears you have missed the whole point of this article
21
@Daniel Yakoubian you are right of course and the recent veto of IMO de carbonisation by USA and Saudi Arabia is part of that "Axis of Evil" that has for 30 years fought the decarbonisation agenda re climate change
2
Orwell's 1984 immediately came to mind as I read this.
12
An incredible opportunity to join the free world was missed.
12
Could this happen in the USA? It'll get there faster than you think and want to believe.
24
@sf I believe it.
5
@sf Why does EVERYTHING have to ultimately be about the US to mean anything for some people. Sigh.
3
The massacre at Tiananmen Square was never forgotten! Hearing, reading and seeing what ocurred there left an indelible mark in my memory as the most cowardly and despicable act by any government.
20
I was supposed to go to China when June 4 happened. I gave up a prestigious position and to this day will not visit the mainland or Tibet. Soon after the Chinese government started executing people for “Counter revolutionary activities.” (For an event that officially never happened) Within a year the propaganda was all over Asia that foreign elements has caused the problems. Our government, Republicans and Democrats rushed in to give Most Favored Nation status to those butchers. And we were surprised when the cheated at the rules of free trade.
Ugh. What an ugly world.
100
@Ray Zinbran Indeed, the world can be ugly. However, your comment seems to suggest that this ugliness is restricted the Chinese government and other such administrations. Not so. One need not look beyond our own borders to find acts of butchery and violence perpetrated by the government against its own citizens, even to this present day. Not one government in the world can be excluded. Why would you let the evil that people do restrict your movements? By that logic, you should be living as a hermit on a mountaintop somewhere.
2
@Ray Zinbran
What a waste of so many beautiful and brilliant minds who were just asking for freedom and democracy. It's happening in China, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia all because of evil greedy dictators who seek personal power and personal enrichment over the good of their people and their country.
4
Yes. Thank you for remembering this. Most favored Nation status for trade. I was in college and it seemed so wrong. Indeed, it was.
3
When you're an expat in China, within the first couple weeks, you have at least a few other westerners pull you aside and ask, "You know about the Three Ts, right?" As you stare at them blankly, they respond with "Tibet, Taiwan, Tienanmen. Unless you're looking to get deported or end up in jail, NEVER mention those three things to the locals. Ever."
The first time it happened to me was the day after my wife and I arrived in the country on a one year contract (we ended up living there a little over two years). Initially, we laughed it off. But then another person did the same thing...and another, and another. At that point, we knew it was serious.
There will be silence from the Chinese populace on this message. Not because they don't care, but because they don't know.
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@Robert - I was travelling in another country with one Chinese woman and three US expats who all live in China, all educated people. When CNN announced that Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo had died, I told them about it, but only one had heard of him, but she had only the vaguest idea of who he was. That says a lot.
18
First time seeing this picture. Can someone explain how the military vehicles, some obviously tanks, in the picture got burned in the street? Did the soldiers resist before their vehicles were burnt?
@Raymond
They probably used motov cocktails. They’re easy to make and the weapon of choice for unarmed citizens. They were used against tanks in some of Russian uprisings as well.
5
@Morgan
Thanks for your reply. You assumed that students were armed with Molotov cocktails when they joined the protest?
@Raymond
I’m assuming they made them. If memory serves me, I believe Molotov cocktails can be made pretty quickly.
I am a professional journalist. As an accredited foreign correspondent for a major news agency I was in Tiananmen square that night. I would like to make a few points:
- Kudos to the Times for this story that keeps casting some light on that terrible night of bloody repression.
- The Chinese Communist Party has succeded in effacing those events from the collective memory of the Chinese people. But the more China becomes a major player in the social and political events of the world the more is important that someone continues to hold the Chinese leaders responsible for that bloodbath.
- According to Chinese medical sources in Beijing, that night from two to three thousand people -- mostly students -- were killed by the People's Liberation Army.
- The repression continued for severl months all over the country, especially in the universities.
147
Our freedom is under siege here in the US, make not mistake about it. But will we have the courage to stand up and try to stop it, like the Chinese students did 40 years ago?
I don't think so, we are all drinking the Cool Aid, and busy fighting each other.
11
I will fight all Republicans until my last breath!
10
I remember watching this unfold. Started out positively. Went out to eat, came back, turned the TV back on and was so saddened and appalled. So horrific.
7
My closest friends in graduate school in the US were Chinese and I remember their excitement about the protests and then horror about the massacre. Hundreds of Chinese students gathered at my university at large meetings to discuss what happened. They will never forget and someday, like other atrocities, Tienanmen will be acknowledged due to brave people like Ms. Jiang.
43
As long as any government and its leaders suppress information this will be the result. Those in power write the history they want the rest of the world to know. The public today only cares about the latest twitter feed and how many followers they have. Common knowledge is not more. All that matters is what happened in the last 20 minutes. A very sad state of affairs.
7
This, unfortunately, barely amounts to a bad traffic accident in recent Chinese history. China has slaughtered millions of their own in the last 70 years - living memory. Hat's off to all the never Trumpers who have been rooting for China in the current trade war.
11
Straight out of Orwell's book - 1984.
3
Someday the Chinese leaders will be confident enough and brave enough to allow the truth to emerge.
1
@sonnel
That made me laugh so hard I had to put down my iPad!
Made me think of our current crop of pseudo-leader bigmouthed liars in the US!
(You really want to avoid any/all books, libraries, non-state-controlled media, etc., and you can, maybe, ‘stay in that world’, at least for a while..)
1
An Apple a day can keep freedom away.
2
Truth is always the first casualty, especially when someone or someones look bad.
The Chinese (and by extension anyone in power) need to understand the tighter your grip, the easier it is for things to slip between your fingers.
The people of this world need to wake up and demand an end to serfdom.
3
The short sentence "Ms. Jiang left China this week" says it all. China has had a lot of great achievements, but as long as it remains an authoritarian, undemocratic police state, rather than a country administered by the rule of law, it will forever be a place many of its citizens want to or have to leave, and a pariah nation to many on the outside. If China truly wants to be a global leader, it needs a reckoning with its past, an acknowledgement of its current state of affairs (including the virtual imprisonment of Uighers), and a new plan for the future that respects the universal rights of people to express themselves freely.
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@Dan
Thanks for mentioning the plight of Uyghur people under Chinese State Sponsored Terrorism.
Bless her good and courageous heart.
12
@Jennifer Justice I agree with you totally Jennifer.
2
! ! ! The generals opposed. The politicians slaughtered.
Sound familiar? Rarely do soldiers want war. They know the terrors and slaughters. War is declared by men who dodged the draft by every means possible.
My grandfather feared that we might be attacked. He let Roosevelt know that he would only vote for war in ‘tribal Europe, always choosing wars’ if we were attacked here. But as the only congressman with military experience and logistics, Roosevelt chose him as the architect of mobilization. (Granddad was two months in a hospital after a Pancho Villa mortar landed in his Jeep, lost his best friend to a Mexican sniper 1200m away, captained an infantry company in combat in WWI.)
The first 30 days after Pearl Harbor his hair went from all dark to all white! He always felt that the president knew the Japanese fleet was enroute but felt such a shock was the only way to get us involved in Europe.
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A brave woman, soon to be joining the Muslem's in "reeducation" camp.
10
How do i find out more?
I google searched
“Jiang Lin” “ Tiananmen Square”
And only got this article
Please do not post full name
Asking for more information can be a capital offense in some places and times
2
@R. Ahlquist
Try Foreign Affairs magazine. They published several articles.
I worked at Sun Microsystems while this was happening. It was our network, an early version of the internet, that was used to inform the rest of the world what was happening.
The Chinese government learned an important lesson from that event; I'm willing to bet that their suppression of online communication was informed by that experience.
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Not long after Tiananmen square, journalist Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao put in Chinese prisons for close to 10 years of their lives.
They were put in prison with the help of yahoo, an American corporation, that used the lame excuse of merely following orders.
Now Verizon owns yahoo...that entity is lurking in your smartphone. No doubt doing the same thing to hide profits behind the Tiananmen curtain.
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@Bill The events in Tiananmen Square happened in May 1989 but Yahoo did not exist as a company until after it was founded in January 1994 so????
7
@FloridaNative....
"Not long after...."
Less than 5 years
Roughly half the length of the prison terms handed down.
1
Thank you for sharing this.
https://youtu.be/7tBCCWG19L4
Above is a YouTube link to a video slideshow with photos of the Tiananmen Square MASSACRE accompanied by a song I wrote in 1989 called "GODDESS OF DEMOCRACY." The photos from that tragic day tell the real story, so great thanks to the brave photographers who risked their lives to share these powerful images with the rest of the world. It is my hope that these photos, combined with the words and music from "Goddess of Democracy" remind the world of what happened on that horrific day. Students and workers were peacefully protesting in the streets because they yearned for freedom and democracy, and yet they were brutally murdered by their own government. We must never forget what happened to them 30 years ago on June 4, 1989! Nor should we forget the murdering of innocent civilians by brutally repressive regimes that take place every day around the world. Maybe it's time for the citizens of the free world to petition their own governments to stop doing business with countries who repress and kill innocent civilians simply because they yearn to be free. Thank you Ms. Jiang for your bravery in sharing your memories of that brutal day in Chinese history. We must never forget!
12
Brava to this woman!
But her surprise at the repression of the event is somewhat surprising to me.
Given her age, and her lineage, she must know her father and his cohorts were part of the Cultural Revolution, years of oppression and wanton killing by Communist cadres against their own, and everybody else.
Millions, yes, millions died.
But real punishment for it perpetrators? No.
And she's shocked, shocked, that Tiananmen hasn't been dealt with honestly.
Yes, the Cultural Revolution's mistakes have been acknowledged, but Tiananmen strikes too close to home -- the contemporaries of Ms Jiang who ordered the massacre are not about to admit their mistakes.
What this incident and countless others, up to and including Chernobyl prove, is that the communism lives by the big lie. Lying, cover ups and refusal to acknowledge and apologize are endemic to that political system.
But such official behavior can infect other societies as well...
14
@DD the big lie that USDA has to face is its denial of the climate science this past 30 years and pure obstructionism in league with one of the world's great tyrannies Saudi Arabia...."an axis of evil"...Guns for Oil
3
@DD I would say "Politicians live by the big lie."
The Chinese government is truly evil. America has made mistakes, and they haven’t always atoned for them, but tens of thousands of students, supporters of democracy, and Chinese citizens were slaughtered at the hands of an evil regime that continues to this day.
Make no mistake, the Chinese government will never be friends to democracy, and should always be viewed with suspicion. They don’t care about the lives of their citizens, they’re willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to make their sick reality come true.
This is a brave brave woman for coming forward, I hope she can find a way to stay safe.
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@Seán there are plenty of things that the american government has done that are beyond evil, that they haven't atoned for, and that they are still doing. look at the native american population, look how they treat women, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
6
@Seán Tens of thousands? Not to take away from the tragedy, but where are you coming up with that number?
1
@Seán, You are not helping her stay safe. The government was divided in how to respond to the protestors and several military leaders refused to fire. You may not mean to but your words paint China as a monolith and fan the flames of anti-China sentiment.
1
She must be protected by all truth and freedom loving people!
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There will be no remorse for Tiananmen massacre. It will happen again. Don't be fooled by the benign smiles coming from the present Communist Party leaders. They will not let displeasure interfere with their inhumane treatment of their citizens. Tiananmen was just the tip of an iceberg of brutality in China. Don't forget about the Uigers and the Tibetans.
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@RLW
China and Taiwan split during their revolution. Which offers the better governence? Economy? Environment? Liberty? Self government?
How about Hong Kong vs PRC?
5
We hosted a high school student from Dalian about 10 years ago. We were eager to learn what it was like being a teen in such a dynamic country. I asked her about Tiananmen and she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. This was before the proliferation of social media and Dalian is far from Beijing. I have often wondered when the state-controlled silence would break. I wonder if the middle class is talking about the Uighur concentration camps in Xinjiang.
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@Jeannie Park No. They are not.
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@Jeannie Park
Chinese Communist Government has effectively brainwashed its citizens and made Uyghurs as State Enemy. Thus they don't care about the sufferings of Uyghurs at best, and applaud their government's criminal actions with hand claps at worst.
Thank you for this reporting. But I hope there will be followup over the next week, as we approach the anniversary? A "private memoir" written by Miss Jiang was mentioned, perhaps that could be the basis, with her permission?
7
It’s about time for the truth to come out. Unfortunately this gets at the founding myth of “modern China” which is the ccp is the people’s party/ army. Not sure any one in leadership has the courage to risk that even today. Regime changes in China isn’t like regime changes in the west. These guys might lose their heads, or worse. Also, the country with the actual statute of liberty is dealing with a fake news president... not sure how inspiring that is for the masses on the fence of speaking up.
Whatever your take, this is the most courageous thing I’ve heard today.
22
The current Chinese president maneuvered himself as president for life. During the time of his predecessors it used to for two terms, that for ten years. Thank God, here we have 22nd Amendment. So nobody can run more than two terms, eight years, even is economy is very good and unemployment is non-existent.
8
The mere fact she has told her story here places her in danger for the remainder of her days.
I often ask, how is it possible that in a so-called "communist" country, you could have billionaires and millionaires?
The answer is simple - the corruption of those in control.
When the "people" tried to rise against the obvious corruption they were seeing, the corrupt turned the war machine loose on the protestors.
In so doing, they instantly delegitimized the entire Chinese communist revolution and it gets worse with each passing day.
It must infuriate them to see this woman have a voice and speak truth. Their millions and billions can't wash away this crime.
Protect her, somebody protect her.
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@John Harrington
How? Simple: war is peace, capitalism is communism, inequality is opportunity, etc.
1
China, Saudia Arabia, Pakistan: How do we have friends like this?
Little in common, yet, somehow we are too tightly tied with them.
ABC: Anywhere but China should be the framework for a new global economic order.
Painful, but let's disentangle.
16
Thank you Ms. Jiang for a true accounting of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Throughout history governments have tried to tamp down democracy with violence. The Boston Massacre by the British, the Hungarian Revolution by the Soviet Union, or Apartheid by South Africa. They all met the same outcome.
Democracy will always win over goverments that suppress the people. It's in our genes to be free. It may take decades, but it will happen. Thank you again for your courage to speak out Ms. Jiang.
11
@cherrylog754
Various massacres of strikers in the U.S. The Mexican Tlatelolco massacre of student protestors in 1968.
I'm glad she's out, but her long silence is a testament to her knowledge that saying this in China would land her in the gulag.
It's easier to see and deplore despotism when it's not right in front of you.
7
Why don’t we make the watching of a documentary on the massacre, Chinese censorship, its treatment of Muslim minorities a compulsory requirement for every Chinese citizen wanting to enter the country for vacation or business?
21
Time to revoke China's membership to the UN Security Council...
9
When the government controls the press, the truth disappears. It is why dictators and communists hate a free press, and when the truth comes out they call it "fake news."
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@John
You left out capitalists like Trump, Murdoch, et al.
3
There is a theorem: when a government finds it necessary to attack and kill its own citizens when they protest their plight, that government is weak and fearful.
True for the USA, too.
18
I’m sure our President will offer asylum to Ms. Jiang and he will mark June 4th with a ringing condemnation and clarion call for a full accounting and apology from Xi and the CCP.
Not!
7
Trump is the only world leader pushing back against China. These pages and comments have been attacking him for doing it.
7
@mkm
The Trump administration has been pushing back against human rights abuses? From an administration that pardons war criminals this sounds very unlikely.
7
@mkm
Biden's recent comments about China:
"I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not, they’re not competition for us.”
2
I would really love to see how President Trump responds to a direct question about the Tiananmen square massacre.
7
@Dave - Trump's reply ?
"I don't know anything about what happened. I was playing Golf that day".
7
@Dave
He’s sure there were good people on both sides.
8
@Bucketomeat
Very fine people
1
Paid Chinese trolls will point out other countries’ atrocities and suggest that the rest of the world not concern itself with how China deals with terrorists.
China’s shame is plain for all to see. The Chinese people need to rise up and break free of the oppression of the Chinese Communist Party and its enforcement goons, the People’s Liberation Army.
By the way, Jack Ma is a proud member of the party that kills unarmed civilians.
10
Like Dorian Grey, China lives on borrowed time, and the truth hidden in the closet isn't going away.
2
Unfortunately the reason the Communists are still in power today is probably because they killed all those kids. In one swoop they murdered a large group of democratic activists and showed what would happen to future activists. Why on earth would the party own up to that? They owe quite a bit of their current to that student slaughter. Good to keep in mind when the west deals with the Huawei and state controlled companies.
38
@Greg yes, it was and continues to be unrecognized genocide resulting in a population of survive no matter what type people that are easier to control
3
Xie xie nin, Jiang Lin. Your voice is a bridge to the past that helps others to understand what the future must be, and what the present is not.
9
When it comes to it, will our military behave the same way? I don’t doubt for a second that trump will try to use force to stay in power, and I don’t doubt that his base will back him in doing so. I was present at Kent State, and will attest that it can happen here.
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@Rodger Rohrs
I've wondered the same thing. Will the officer corps have the courage to stand down to an unlawful order? Or will it be the NCOs or the rank and file that lay down their arms and refuse to kill their fellow citizens and the constitution that they have sworn to protect and serve? Drop the punctuation from U.S. and what remains is US. "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." (Benjamin Franklin)
Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here" should be required reading.
7
Having been in and around the military for the last 30 years, I agree that it is a distinct possibility.
@Rodger Rohrs There are signs, possibilities of things going sideways, protests squashed -- sales of excess military equipment to local police forces, water cannon vehicles at Standing Rock. I saw videos from Standing Rock of water cannon vehicles with the municipalities' names written on the side. I called those sheriffs' offices to inquire/protest. No one would talk to me. No one would answer my questions. Both shameful and dangerous to democracy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/opinion/power-imbalance-at-the-pipeline-protest.html?searchResultPosition=4
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-police-military-surplus-equipment.html
1
The tighter the grip, the more the pressure. Some day, there will be a reckoning.
Thank you, Ms. Jiang.
A friend that I met in graduate school had been a junior photographer with Reuters news bureau in Beijing and he described with a certain cold clarity the events in Tiananmen Square.
Because the protests had continued for weeks, the "A" level photographers were often taking shifts, working mostly in the day. My friend was a junior photographer, a rookie assigned to the overnight shift that few wanted and thus, inadvertently, he witnessed most of the carnage when the Army stormed in late at night.
Simply put, it was bloodbath. Military guns, tanks and troops against unarmed civilians -- it's not like the US where many people own weapons. People who had fallen injured in the dark were often run over by military vehicles or shot in the back. Many of the troops were lied to and told that "foreign elements" were causing unrest.
My photographer friend felt lucky (and changed) by having survived. Several rolls of his film were confiscated by the military but he smuggled some out in his underwear. The pictures he showed me were horrific, some too gruesome to publish. It made Kent State seem like a traffic ticket. This was a government sanctioned massacre, not a few panicked troops shooting.
This is another reason why Americans should not take lightly the influence of China and the attempts by many in Taiwan to remain independent of Beijing's callous government.
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[email protected]
A man I knew who had been a Chinese journalist in 1989 watched from the shadows that night in Tiananmen Square after hearing government radio warn people to stay away from the square. His colleagues counted the dead afterwards by visiting Beijing hospitals. The number killed, he said, was about two thousand.
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@Conrad Smith a great under estimate as many corpses were crushed into a paste for disposal into the sewers
11
@Name Unknown
Does he still have those pictures? Will be worth publishing them.
9
A few blocks from the US Capitol, on Massachusetts Avenue, is a small memorial to the Victims of Communism featuring a bronze version of the Goddess of Democracy statue hastily erected by the student protestors in Tiananmen square. The memorial was dedicated by President George W. Bush on the 20th anniversary of President Regan's "tear down the wall" speech. Beyond its original purpose, it is becoming a poignant reminder of what has happened to the Republican Party in recent years. How long until President Trump suggests gracing Washington DC with a statue of our new found friends, presidents for life Kim Jong-Un and Xi Jinping, rather than their multitudes of political victims.
13
Dismayed Taxpayer — wait! You can't find enough things *he has already done* to wring your hands about, so you have to speculate and then wring your hands about your speculation?
1
@Dismayed Taxpayer
Give me a break. Trump is trying to tear down the bamboo curtain. It was Biden who said:
"I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not, they’re not competition for us.”
Such an incredibly brave woman.
Thank you Ms. Jiang, we stand with you, and truth.
51
A few years ago my wife and I visited Tiananmen Square -- which is just across the road from the Forbidden City (and appears on one of the photographs in this article). The square is huge and empty, but it seemed to buzz with voices of the dead. We noticed that even then police watched our reactions -- and we were simple tourists.
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@Heathrock
That’s the essence of fake news isn’t it. You can deny tiananmen, nanjing, the holocaust... Any lie is possible.
5
I hope that Ms. Jiang will be safe.
287
Bravo.
34
Wow.
Any lie is possible....
Can anybody else hear Frank Zappa singing off key "It can't happen here..." ??
46
no, no i can’t. frank’s dead. you may be hearing things....
1
In 1989, my daughter Miriam and I were teaching at Hebei University in Baoding, China. People in Baoding held a demonstration downtown expressing their support for the protesters in Tiananmen Square.
During our spring break, which took place during the first week in May, Miriam and I visited Hohhot, in Inner Mongolia. Students at Inner Mongolia University had posted slogans on the buildings expressing their support for Beijing Spring.
Miriam and I left Baoding the day after the massacre:
http://jochnowitz.net/Essays/WeFleeChina.html
20
I remember how worried we all were for you and Miriam.
Also I think if people want to get a sense of what it was like for the two of you trying to escape from real danger in the midst of a major historic uprising and brutal crack down your essay is one I hope many people will look at.
2
Give her political asylum.
And abandon any fantasies that the Chinese government is anything other than a bunch of bloodthirsty tyrants planning to impose its rule far beyond its borders.
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@Jonathan Katz
Hmm...that description sounds a bit too familiar.
3
yeah, right. NEVER forget meddling attempt of foreign countries.
3
@Doug
Yeah. Right.
Say what you say every time without regard to facts or lives. Noble.
3
Did China kill 10,000 of it's citizens that day?
Being a populous nation, and looking at the picture, was it closer to 20,000+? How many arrested and tortured?
But the Chinese people today, brainwashed with nationalistic jingoism, bribed to stay apolitical with economic security, will stay silent.
Bravo Jiang Lin for speaking up!
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@MS
Your third paragraph hits chillingly close to home .
18
@MS - "But the Chinese people today, brainwashed with nationalistic jingoism, bribed to stay apolitical with economic security, will stay silent. "
If you hope to someday overcome bad and corrupt governing; you need to realize that this statement is the result of - your being brainwashed with US nationalistic jingoism.
I was in China 3 months after Tiananmen. The talk and conversation everywhere was about "the turmoil." As an American, most people expected me to be- a rabid, brainwashed American, and to be sneering at their political horrors. I made friends quickly, however, by pointing out that the US and China are very much alike- mostly a lot of very good people- and some very bad people in government from time to time. It's not hard to come up with examples of corruption from the US, you know.
Jiang Lin is not exceptional in her views. She is exceptional in her courage- and will be greatly admired; in China.
But; remember. China - has been China for around 4,000 years, and more. In all that time- it has been death to oppose or even insult the Emperor.
China is still China, and it is still deadly perilous to bluntly oppose the powers that be - people with survivor genes (everyone in China) recognize that.
11
@Greenpa
I don't understand. You said that it is wrong to say that the Chinese people are brain-washed and "bribed" with economic benefits. But you do admit that the retired military official is brave to speak of what she saw. What are you trying to say? Have you forgotten how deeply the shootings at Kent State University were felt in the US? As small an event as that was - compared to Tienamen Square, we have never tried to blot out it's occurrence, to argue that it was a bit of fiction contrived by China.
None of us is arguing that the US is perfect - far from it. But we are still horrified by what happened that day in Beijing.
12
Now that she has embarrassed the regime, Jiang Lin will never be allowed to return to China.
32
@Michael - . . . even in a wooden box.
@LouAZI I think she is still in China...which makes her act even more dangerous and brave.
1
She seems like an incredibly brave woman - to speak against it then, to attend in civilian clothing, and to speak against it now.
I hope her words have a powerful effect, and I hope she is able to find peace.
208
@B Fuller And I hope she doesn’t disappear.
Heartbreaking and terrifying recollection of the things a government will do to its people in the name of 'protection.' Very thankful Ms. Jiang was willing to share her memories of that horrible night. I'm hopeful for the positive impact this could have.
85
Why would the Party apologize for what they thought was a threat to their existence. Even we have killed folks who seemed to want to go against us in this country. I am not an admirer of communism but there it is and probably for a long time to come. No dissent is allowed.
3
In terms of superiority in liberty and democracy, there is no comparison between the U. S. with our elections and Constitution and PRC.
An enormous difference is that our government is elected and thus satisfies "the right to govern comes from the conscent of the governed." principle. We did have Kent State and that was widely reported on which was another huge difference.
How many were jailed in China? How many were found guilty ba a jury of peers?
John
27
@WSF Please remember us history, before criticising others.
@WSF
Admirer? Nah just an apologist with a useless dishonest irrelevant cliche.
Taiwan shows what the Han can do.
2
When their hold on power is threatened by people who want to be free, an authoritarian regime will use every device available to insure its hold on the government.
Others use distraction and manufactured crises.
A war is a powerful distraction for a tyrant to use. Folks dying? being maimed and suffering? torn limb from limb, having arms and legs ripped out of their sockets?
No matter ! The tyrant must remain in power.
Is that the sound of war drums I hear in the distance? They are getting closer.
61
@Getreal
China, Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, these are the types of things that happen when one man rules as a dictator over all the hard working people that make money for them. And the dictators keep the spoils for themselves and their enablers and billionaire oligarch friends. And we as Americans have to be concerned when our president and his administration and enablers seem drawn to these type of dictators while at the same time alienating democratic leaders around the world.
3
With much accomplished thus far, the central government should be confident and mature enough to acknowlege and own up to the Tinanman event and start behaving differently. Hope this not wishful thinking.
20
I'm quite certain that the streets will again run red with blood before the CCP gives up power. One can only wish that it will be less bloody than the last time, but of that, I hold little hope.
26