China Digital Times

Stories tagged with: June 4th (59)

• Beijing Street Locations & Hospitals Where Some Victims of the Tiananmen Massacre Died on June 4, 1989

  

  From massacremap.com:

  Visitors to the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing will be in a city that fewer than twenty years ago was the site of a massacre of innocent civilians by their government. As you enjoy the athletic events and the sights of the city, you may find yourself at street corners, subway stops, in parks or near hospitals where ordinary Chinese men and women were murdered.

  On the night of June 3-4, 1989, troops of China’s People’s Liberation Army moved into Beijing to crush the pro-democracy demonstrations that began in April of that year. The number killed remains unknown although estimates range from several hundred to several thousand. The government of the People’s Republic of China insists that the demonstrators were counter-revolutionary criminals. Tens of thousands were imprisoned in the political crackdown that followed.

  A few years afterward, Ding Zilin, the mother of a murdered student, began to investigate the massacre. Eventually, she and other victims’ relatives formed the Tiananmen Mothers. They have gathered information about 188 victims of China’s Communist regime. This map, which is based on their work, shows the places where 176 victims were killed or the hospitals to which their bodies were taken. Thirteen known victims remain unaccounted for.

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  • July 20, 2008 9:21 PM

• Tiananmen’s Wake

  

  In the New Yorker, Pankaj Mishra reviews Ma Jian’s new novel, Beijing Coma:

  Ma Jian writes about China with the obsessiveness of a writer in exile who cares about only one society. There is no doubting his passion and sense of urgency. “We’ve been crushed and silenced,” says a colleague of Dai Wei’s whose legs are trampled under a P.L.A. tank. “If we don’t take a stand now, we will be erased from the history books.” Dai Wei, whose inner life is periodically stimulated by visitors to his sickbed, notes each new diversion—cell phones, e-mail, video disks, anti-Western nationalism, New Age religion, the Olympics—that beguiles his countrymen away from the idealism of 1989. “As society changes, new words and terms keep popping up, such as: sauna, private car ownership, property developer, mortgage and personal instalment loan,” he notes. He watches helplessly as his own decaying body is commodified, his urine used in quack therapy, and his still responsive penis employed by seekers of kinky sex. His hapless mother resorts to selling one of his kidneys to pay for his treatment. Finally, a real-estate developer from Hong Kong demolishes his cramped home during Beijing’s pre-Olympic prettification. In the novel’s Wagnerian finale, the bulldozers of the hustling new China and the tanks of the P.L.A. combine in a frenzy of violence and destruction.

  Read more about the book, via CDT. Read recent opinion pieces by Ma Jian here.

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  • June 25, 2008 11:35 AM

• Chinese Students Rally, but Often in Support of Government

  

  Jason Leow reports in the Wall Street Journal:

  Nineteen years after Beijing’s bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square democracy movement, China’s college students today are more likely to favor nationalistic causes and work within the one-party system.

  The patriotism that drove young people to criticize authorities in the 1980s is now seen by many students as best expressed by supporting China’s leadership for the progress it has achieved in expanding China’s economy and raising its international profile.

  That sentiment has been strengthened in recent months by the political crisis in Tibet, the Sichuan earthquake and the approach of the Beijing Olympics.

  Students rallied against foreign criticism of Beijing’s policies in Tibet, where violent antigovernment riots in March were met with a harsh crackdown, and they have often lauded the state’s response to the devastating quake. Thousands of Beijing students have volunteered to help with logistics of the Summer Games, which they see as a national triumph.

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  • June 4, 2008 6:40 PM

• Remembering Tiananmen

  

  Jonathan Fenby, a former editor of the Observer and South China Morning Post, writes in the Guardian:

  That reaction from the top and the regime’s inability to handle protest peacefully made June 4 1989, a crucial moment in China’s modern history. Deng could have taken a different decision, to seek a reasonable way forward, admitting criticism and debate to try to solidify a regime which needed to grapple with the wider issues raised by the economic reform he had unleashed. It would have been difficult and messy, but it was not out of the question, and would have given him a unique place in history.

  By putting the primacy of monopoly power first, the aged patriarch closed off a key avenue of potential progress for China and, once he had re-launched his drive for the market in 1992, gambled all on material progress being sufficient to give the Communist party popular legitimacy. That has made the people of China far better off, if in a highly unequal manner, and transformed the isolated Maoist state into a global player. A “China model” has emerged. People are, individually, far freer than they were under Mao, so long as they are not seen to represent any political threat to the regime. There is much lively debate in thinktanks and among intellectuals about whether to head right or left economically.

  But it all remains cast in the one-party mode. The “Beijing Coma” cocoon imposed in 1989 remains in place. That provides the essential context for the burgeoning superpower, and has set China on a path by which it thinks it can defy western nostrums and pursue its own path. That is why June 4 1989 has to be remembered, not only to honour the dead, but also to understand the rising global power.

  Another op-ed piece in the Asian Wall Street Journal, The Beginning of the End by Bruce Gilley, also discusses the post-June 4 political climate in China:

  The Chinese regime still uses force selectively to lock up dissidents and ethnic minority leaders agitating for faster change. But, for better or worse, its relationship to most of the Chinese people is a legitimate one. When I measured legitimacy for 72 states in 2002, I found that China ranked 13th overall, ahead of a few Western democracies like France and New Zealand. Nothing has changed to alter that conclusion since.

  What does this mean for China’s future? In recent years there has emerged a consensus that the CCP is here to stay. Talk of democratization in China is dismissed as a “fantasy” by journalist James Mann in his book “The China Fantasy.” Fellow writer Ian Buruma speaks of China’s “black triumph” and says the Chinese model represents “the most serious challenge that liberal democracy has faced since fascism in the 1930s.” Author Robert Kagan writes recently of “the end of the end of history” (the notion that all countries were heading toward democracy) taking place in China. Many pro-regime scholars in China and outside of China share this view, writing of the exotic new forms of political organization in China that are going to make democracy unnecessary.

  These writers have espied a central truth about contemporary China. It is a relatively legitimate state that is not under immediate pressure to introduce democratic reforms. But does this imply democracy is not in the offing? Absolutely not, and for two related reasons.

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  • June 4, 2008 2:40 PM

• Ma Jian: China’s Grief, Unearthed

  

  Author Ma Jian writes in the New York Times about the need to grieve, not only for the victims of the recent earthquake, but for those killed on June 4:

  Watched on television screens around the world, the Tiananmen massacre was a defining moment in 20th-century history. Like Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968, it has become a global symbol of totalitarian repression. But in China the subject is taboo. Even in the privacy of their homes, parents dare not discuss it with their children. Blinded by fear and bloated by prosperity, they have succumbed to a collective amnesia.

  Some might object to recalling calamities of the past while China is struggling to cope with a present disaster. Already the Western news media has turned its attention away from political repression in China and Tibet, out of respect for the dead. When invited to speak at a London human rights event recently as a banned Chinese novelist, I was asked not to say anything negative about my country.

  But grief refuses to be channeled. It spills over. In Sichuan, it turns to anger as parents demand to know why 6,898 schools collapsed during the quake while government buildings remained standing. As the nation mourns, it will begin to remember the deaths it has been forbidden to recall: not only the thousands who were slaughtered in 1989, but the tens of millions who died under Mao’s rule during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

  Read also another recent op-ed by Ma Jian in which he speaks out about the current silence of Chinese writers, who were at the forefront of the 1989 demonstrations. Rebecca MacKinnon’s post “China’s grieving parents” also includes several useful links.

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  • June 4, 2008 9:32 AM

• Music Video: “BLOOD IS ON THE SQUARE”

  

  “BLOOD IS ON THE SQUARE” （words and music by Philip Morgan）

  A song was heard in China
  in the city of Beijing.
  In the spring of 1989
  you could hear the people sing.
  And it was the song of freedom
  that was ringing in the square,
  the world could feel the passion of
  the people gathered there.

  Oh children, blood is on the square.

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  • June 4, 2008 8:56 AM

• Year After Year* － Xu Xing (徐星) and He Jiawei (何家炜)

  

  While the resigned law professor Xiao Han just broke the Tiananmen Massacre taboo in a university classroom early this year, it is not the first time such words have been written and published in the Chinese blogosphere. Here is a blog post written by the Beijing-based author Xu Xing on June 4th, 2006, translated by M.J.:

  I always write something this time every year, there’s not much meaning to it. Every year I write a little less, as if I have less and less to say. But then if I don’t write, I feel as if I didn’t do something important, and I am ill at ease.

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  • June 4, 2008 8:56 AM

• Rights Group To China: Release Tiananmen Prisoners

  

  From AP:

  Dozens of people remain imprisoned for taking part in the 1989 pro-democracy protests centered in Tiananmen Square, though releasing them would improve China’s image ahead of the Beijing Olympics this summer, a human rights group said.

  New York-based Human Rights Watch said about 130 prisoners are still being held for their role in the demonstrations that were crushed in a brutal military crackdown. The square in the heart of the Chinese capital is expected to feature prominently in media coverage of the Olympics, although authorities worry about the possibility of fresh protests marring the event.

  “The Chinese government should show the global Olympic audience it’s serious about human rights by releasing the Tiananmen detainees,” Sophie Richardson, the group’s Asia advocacy director, said in a statement released Monday in New York.

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  • June 3, 2008 1:57 PM

• Mourning Banned For Tiananmen Dead

  

  From Radio Free Asia:

  A prominent Chinese lawyer, known for his defense of political prisoners and those seeking to defend their rights against the state, says police grabbed him as he left his office and hustled him home to prevent him from marking the June 4, 1989 crackdown with a visit to Tiananmen Square.

  Meanwhile, dissidents and relatives of those killed called for public events to remember the dead, amid a background of national mourning for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake on May 12.

  “Late on June 2,” Beijing lawyer Pu Zhiqiang said, “a policeman by the name of Zhang Yang telephoned me and said he’d like to talk to me. I told him that there was nothing for us to talk about because we are not exactly friends

  

  AFP PHOTO/Mark RALSTON

  BEIJING: Chinese security forces check tourists’ bags as they enter Tiananmen Square, June 3, 2008. Just 66 days ahead of the Beijing Olympics, security is tight ahead of the 19th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.

  .”

  On the morning of June 3, a police officer with whom Pu said he was on good terms accompanied him to his office.

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  • June 3, 2008 1:05 PM

• Tiananmen Security Tight For China Massacre Anniversary

  

  From AFP:

  Security was tight in Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square on Tuesday ahead of the 19th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.

  Police vans were circling on and around the square, the focus of major bloodshed nearly a generation ago, as tourists were arriving in numbers on a grey, rainy day.

  The Tiananmen Massacre is a taboo subject in China and the country’s state-controlled media was silent on the sensitive anniversary taking place just 66 days ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

  Read also China: Free Tiananmen Prisoners Before Olympics from Human Rights Watch.

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  • June 3, 2008 12:13 AM

• Silent Respect Marks Tiananmen Protest

  

  From The Standard:

  Fewer than 1,000 people took part in yesterday’s annual march to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in which hundreds if not thousands died.

  Unlike previous years, there was no chanting of slogans, the organizers agreeing to a silent march out of respect for those who died in the May 12 Sichuan earthquake.

  Instead, marchers carried banners mourning those who died on both occasions.

  Organizer, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, claimed 990 people took part in the march from Victoria Park to Central but police put the figure at 600.

  Read also Remembering Tiananmen Square by John Kusumi, Hundreds March On Anniversary Of Tiananmen by AP.

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  • June 2, 2008 3:56 AM

• Activist: Dozens Are Still Jailed In China Over 1989 Protests

  

  From The Canadian Press:

  A human rights activist says at least 60 people remain jailed in China over the 1989 protests by pro-democracy demonstrators centred at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

  Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong on Saturday, John Kamm urged China to release the 60 to 100 Tiananmen protesters before the Beijing Summer Olympics in August.

  Kamm is executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, an advocacy group for political prisoners that conducts research on Chinese prisons.

  Read also China’s June Fourth Prisoners: The Long Road to Justice by John Kamm.

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  • March 29, 2008 10:33 PM

• Chinese Mothers Remember Crackdown

  

  From Reuters, via Yahoo News:

  Mothers of those killed in China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests have joined the list of groups invoking this summer’s Beijing Olympics to draw attention to their causes.

  In an open letter released Thursday, the Tiananmen Mothers warned the Games would be dogged by lingering guilt and mistrust unless China confronts the truth about the crackdown.

  “Is it really possible that, as the host of the 2008 Olympic Games, the government can be at ease allowing athletes from all over the world to tread on this piece of bloodstained soil and participate in the Olympics?” the letter said.

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  • February 28, 2008 10:25 AM

• The Last Class: How Do We Live Our Lives? - Xiao Han (萧瀚)

  

  China University of Politics and Law Professor Xiao Han （萧瀚）resigned his teaching post after lecturing his students on the “truth” of the military crackdown on democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Professor Xiao gave this lecture on Jan. 4, 2008 in classroom 307 of China University of Politics and Law. The title of the lecture–which he also published on his blog and referred to as “My Last Lesson”–is: “How Should We Lead Our Lives?” (While the essay is no longer on his Sina blog, it is already all over the Chinese blogosphere.)

  Xiao Han (a.k.a. Ye, Jing) is from Tiantai, east Zhejiang province. He was Associate Professor at the Administrative Law Research Institute, School of Law, China University of Politics and Law in Beijing (until his recent resignation). His main teaching areas include the history of constitutional law and social theory. He is 38 years old; graduated from Peking University, where he earned his masters degree in 1998.

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  • January 19, 2008 10:11 AM

• So Long, Lu Xun - Arthur Waldron

  

  Arthur Waldron wrote the following on the blog of Commentary Magazine:

  From China comes news, reported in the Chinese-language newspaper World Journal, that the works of Lu Xun“the country’s greatest modern author, a founder of the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers, and a longtime favorite of the Communists”are being removed from high school curricula. These classics will be replaced by contemporary fantasies about ancient knights and swordplay by the popular Hong Kong author Jin Yong. The reason for this censorship? The Tiananmen Massacre, of which Lu Xun’s works uncomfortably remind the Chinese government. [Full text]

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  • August 28, 2007 2:57 PM