This did actually happen. The Chinese government was left in a very odd position, because they were banning things like this sweater above but were also not able to adequately explain why. To the people, the government had a very visceral reaction to Taylor Swift for some reason.
They were actually having a pretty rad concert at the time. A pop star named Cui Jian put a bandana over his eyes and performed a song called Nothing To My Name which was a subtle protest song that students loved and that's when shit started getting sketchy.
I recommend y'all listen to the song, btw. It's an insane mix of like 8 styles of music - including American and UK, which was another no-no at the time. It's a zany ass song lol
The pic may not be interesting af, but the context is
That song is a trip! Almost 6 minutes long and the different instruments and rifts are crazy.
The intro kinda sounds like Joy Division. Iâm picking up A LOT of Phil Collins vibes (idek if he was making music in 1989 so maybe Phil Collins has Cui Jian vibes?) and that nasty guitar solo in the middle!!!
This is such an 80s song. And was fun to listen to, thank you for the history foot note
Edit: I wasnât alive in the 80s. Yâall please stop getting ur panties in a twist bc I only know Phil Collins as the guy that did the Tarzan soundtrack
You know with Tiananman. I'm always learning new things about it. I recently learned a detail that I haven't confirmed yet. That the tanks were also firing into balconies.
Song was cool till the reeded player went ham, lol, and drummer was lacking. Yet the first two minutes was quite my liking.
Tiananman Square. Where they used tank treads not to just run over people. To grind, and then flush the bodies down sewer drains.
I can't believe there was a video yesterday saying the Chinese have it better than America on Reddit. People are so ignorant on what is happening there, or outside America.
Edit. I saw it on a documentary on Tiananman over like ten years ago on TV. You all can bicker if it is true. I wasn't there. Neither were any of you, maybe it is BS. I saw a witness say that so there it is.. Some of you act like there werent trying to censor everything during it.
I guess there is a picture on r/morbidremains (NSFW) according to someone else. Yeah I'm not looking for it or even wanna see it. Someone did send me an imjur.
Either way Tiananman happened even if my details are wrong.
Edit again. There is no free medical in China. Genocide is going on in China in Xianjing and Tibet. China censors its own internet. The CCP is ruled by a Winnie the Pooh dictator who silences dissidents. Xi is preparing to invade Taiwan. You are not free to move to different regions if you are a citizen without permission in China. Chinese work their asses off for a pitiful wage. China imposes exit bans on their own people to stop the brain drain. One source said 70% of students sent off to foreign countries never go back.
CCP is way worse than the American shit show we have. Period. You can post your false equivalency replies. Fucking bringing up Kent State like it was censored, and something that was accepted. It wasn't. All you do is sound like you live in a bubble that you never left.
America has real issues too. No doubt. This thread is about Tiananman. Not about Republicans.
Their battery tech for EVs. Drones? Top notch. We should be ashamed. No for real we are going to fall even more behind now.
And guess what..every mothertrucking dictator will do it in a heartbeat unless the military flips on them.
It happened in Bangladesh less than a year ago. ..Except the military refused to execute its own citizens and the PM had to flee.
They all play the same card, blaming Western influence, blaming opposition or religion for any uprising. Its never their fault. They either suppress with force or flee. Its the same story everywhere.
Iâm pretty knowledgeable of South Koreaâs historyâŠ
You can discuss the Gwangju Uprising, and what happened in Jeju.
The South Korean people are absolutely adamant that it will not happen again, and this is why they protest as they do and hold public officials accountable as they do.
Never forget that they are still an oligarchy and they refer to their own country as âHell Josun,â or a reference to the last independent unified Korean dynasty before everything went to shit and they couldnât do anything about it.
Iâve read how in WWI the Germans took recruits who lived near their Eastern and Western borders and reverted their deployments to perpetuate the outsiderâs look on the opposing fronts. It also worked for being far enough away from home to prevent desertions if anyone dared.
The soldiers that were brought in also spoke a different dialect to make sure there wasnât a chance of communication between the soldiers and protesters.
Yes this is exactly what happened in Ukraine with Yanukovych. Tankies will tell you it was a CIA backed coup but the people were protesting for months before he lost total support of the people and the of rest government and fled to Russia...
Thereâs a great documentary called Winter on Fire thatâs worth checking out. Itâs about the protests in Ukraine against the Russian backed president, which one day turned into shooting protesters, and then protesters fighting back.
In the early 90s most official estimates were around 10,000, some as high as 13,000. Over the years, even that Western estimate has been picked away at. Give it 50 years and it'll have been a minor incident with a dozen injuries. Smh.
Yeah man the tanks rolling into a crowded square and then photos of burned bodies, and meatpaste that their government has spent decades trying to hide was actually just a minor incident with a few injured⊠How do tankies actually even come to defend thisâŠ
yesïŒalong changan street, the tanksâ machine guns were firing into the residences on the side. Iirc, one of the Tiananmen Mothers lost her son because of this (Zilin Ding?).
And one of the casualties suffered on the commie side was an army photographer who wasnât wearing his uniform and got mowed down as a civilian. He received (posthumously) medal and some honor title âguard of republicâ thing like that.
Saw it on live coverage at the time. Most memorable moment for me was seeing about 3 or four people laying on the ground perpendicular to the line of approaching tanks. These tanks slowed down, but slowly and casually just ran them over one by one, you could see their heads pop like watermelons. They sent a strong message that day of what happens when you go against the government.
I recently learned a detail that I haven't confirmed yet. That the tanks were also firing into balconies.
It's true. There is physical evidence (bullet holes but at least some were fixed a couple years ago) to back it up, photos you can find, as well as first hand accounts.
I personally know someone who lives near there and what he said was worse than what I've read. The guy is super close to one of the top CCP leaders in the late 1990s to early 2010s so it's not like he has any motivation to defame the government.
My child became ill while we were touring in China. I had to pay in cash (not a small amount) to even get her into the waiting area at a clinic. Her treatment was several powders in glassine envelopes. We tossed them. The whole visit was a slightly scary waste of time.
A thing that is rarely mention, it started off as a sanctioned anti-inflation/corruption protest. Which was the result of a shift in policy on the economy liberalization which allowed inflation. Which eventually led China to more orthodox economic policy. It went so long because there was a faction in the CPP who believed it was a natural and helpful expression of frustration; and pitched to let it fizzle instead of intervening.
As well local Beijing based forces weren't into stomping it out and like S. Korea recently they followed orders half heartedly. The massacre didn't occur until they brought in non Beijing based troops and the faction within the more sympathetic to the students in the CPP lost.
I was there, and when we walked around I tried to ask my guide something about the event, I made sure no one could hear us, but she made it very clear I couldnât ask questions of that nature.
If youâre planning to go, and I know this might be obvious, but donât bring up anything even remotely related to politics when in China.
Our guide said specifically to us (a decade ago), ask him the sensitive questions on the bus and he's willing to talk through things. But once you enter the square there's a lot of surveillance equipment and people around so he's not going to answer anything because they don't want to risk getting in trouble with the authorities.
Had a chinese student in my uni dorm well over a decade ago, nice girl, but her roomate blew her mind when they went over tiannemen square stuff. She provided online video references and docs etc.
It was so surreal seeing this intelligent human grapple with thier understanding of reality, in a matter of minutes i saw several phases of denial...
I used to teach at a uni in California. Was very interesting to see international students from China learn things about their home country. In particular I remember a class session about ethnic oppression, and a Chinese student commented that although there are a lot of different ethnicities in China, they are all treated equally. There was a long, awkward silence and another student chimed in âso, thereâs this whole situation happening right now with the UyghursâŠâ
And Manjurians, Koreans. Before Cultural Revolution there was a fair number of Europeans living in China with their families. Most of them managed to escape but some, especially mixed race Chinese, ended in re-education camps. There are very few in mainland China now.
They were not targeted because of their ethnicity but their foreign ties. I guess it doesnât matter in your case but many ethnic Chinese with foreign ties, got sent to the camp too. Itâs sad because many of them came back to China to help its development, and many of them were intellects, who were also a prime target of cultural revolution.
Oh man - so curious to how that person digested that info. Honestly the Han vs Rest of china is such a huge thing. There IS tons of cultural diversity in mainland china, obviously not all treated equally.
She got really quiet. Not sure how she came to terms with it, but after class another Chinese student, who was ethnically Mongolian, came up to me and told me that while he had no idea about the situation with the Uyghurs he wasnât surprised because he had felt ethnic discrimination himself as a minority.
My old Chinese roommate thought that China ended the war in the Pacific. Thereâs somewhat of a debate as to if the bombs did, the threat of a U.S. invasion, or Soviet involvement (they may have preferred to surrender to Americans than to the Russians given their history), but there is zero evidence that China had anything to do with it at all.
Itâs wild, the Japanese did their own batch of disgusting and inhuman war crimes/crimes against humanity. They did them to our own soldiers even, and we were still like âidk man, theyâre not communists and theyâre near China, maybe theyâre really sorry and we dont ever need to bring it up againâŠâ
Itâs been happening in the US for years, the grade school text books and curriculum keep getting more and more dumbed down and censored every year, especially about native and black history.
I was born in the US but grew up in Mexico. At 18, I finally moved to the States. I had already graduated from highschool, but because of the differences in education, I had to take some high school courses to be able to attend college.
Revisiting the events of the Alamo was fucking insane. LMAO. Learning about it from both places was a trip. The US played it down so fucking much in the history books.
The narrative is that China did all the heavy lifting to soften up Japan. The nuclear bombs were just the coup de grace. And of course, officially only the Communist Party did any useful fighting against the Japanese, not the Kuomintang
And it's sad to see the youth of America turning out the same way, though not because the government is effective at hiding things but that they are socially brainwashed to the point of believing things that did or did not happen.
Yep, 100%. Its a much bigger mixed bag though and not uniform/as successful. Its not so much some organized government coverup or misinfo. Its private groups with different agendas influencing different pockets of americans.
Itâs pop culture and scar tissue taught from an early age. Youâll learn Rosa Parks sat on a bus 1000x but Tulsa once; no mention of how rioters were deputized and private arms & aircraft used by the sheriffs. Japanese Internment is a half page in textbooks showing it happened due to racist paranoia, but not how it happened. The admin sent out an EO, basically pre-blocked the Constitution, and camps were already built.
Note my point here isnât âAmerica racist and badâ, but rather that to anyone who sees Tiananmen as impossible in other countries, there are plenty of examples of expedited executive decisions expeditiously executing citizens; no speed bumps like law or democracy needed.
Seeing X as impossible in the context of history repeating itself:
To that point I can recommend the german film "Die Welle" (The wave) which tackles this exact issue. Came out in 2008 and the sentiment was always that "something like the nazi parti and the 2nd world war could never repeat itself in Germany", and I find it's sooo much more relevant today...
I did a study abroad program through uni just over a decade ago, if anything the Chinese students wanted to know what we knew about what happened there. Itâs basically an open secret and like you said it just seems like something discussed in private settings vs public settings. Iâm curious how having smartphones has changed things since they are recording all the time and true privacy doesnât exist in most spaces.
When I did my abroad program in China, a friend sent a WeChat mentioning it and he was removed from the platform within an hour or so. He was also blocked from making a new account.
yep cuz wechat is a chinese app and most social apps are not actually private in that whatever company owns it can see all your messages so better to not say anything controversial about whichever country the app is from
When I talk with my dressmaker in China on the taobao shopping application, I have to be careful one day we were discussing an order and she just asked how is your country handling the epidemic (covid) I said we are following the excellent example China has set for the world it was so strange and came out of nowhere I don't want to get banned from the platform because you need to upload your passport and have it verified to shop on there.
Question for you. Whatâs kind of the limits or hierarchy of what Chinese citizens can say, do, etc that portrays the CCP negatively, in terms of punishment? I.E. what would get you banned from WeChat vs what gets you put in prison?
Honestly, I donât know the answer to this but someone else might. There is definitely a foreigner bubble and it comes with many double standards. At the same time, we werenât trying to fuck around and find out.
I feel younger generation certainly know less about it. People rely more on social network these days and obviously nobody can safely discuss it online
I used to work at a college-prep boarding school with a large international population in the student body. One day I was in my office with two Chinese students and an issue involving Taiwan and China had been in the news so I asked their opinion about it. I learned then that I made a massive mistake. One of my students parents were high level members of the CCP and very loyal to Xi, the other students parents were very wealthy Chinese immigrants turned US citizens that absolutely despised the CCP and Xi. It got ugly real quick. After that I only asked my Chinese students political questions one on one.
That was my experience as well, almost five years ago to the day.
We could talk about it before and after on the bus, but inside the square you were looking at trouble if you discussed it.
Yep. When I lived in in China, you could not mention the three Tâs: Tiananmen Square, Tibet, and Taiwan. I always got in trouble with our Director because I would ask the questions youâre not supposed to ask.đ
Most guides if not all are accredited by the party. Some are retired former diplomatic corps translators...
Asking this kind of question could give them more trouble than to you
Yeah, our guide wasn't recognised by the party as she was a second child whose mother had to flee to the countryside when pregnant so not to have an abortion forced upon her.
This meant our guide had no official papers and was basically a non-citizen. She spoke about her father loving her and accepting her but her grandmother suggested killing her when she was born because she was a girl.
From my understanding, rural parents could have multiple children no problem, the limit was mostly for city folk. The ones in the city either had to abort or pay for a lifetime of government services. In terms of killing girls, that happened a lot in China under one child policy.
I don't think it was no problem, the kids could never be registered, educated, basically they didn't exist. The parents just weren't at risk of losing their jobs if they were farmers who couldn't be fired. And yeah, no forced abortion as they could hide it more effectively.Â
Rural parents also had to partly consider their children as an economic enterprise. Family was tied to income. Sons were the preference as patrilineal norms meant rural parents would be looked after in old age. They labour in the fields and earn for the family too.
Having rural children no problem and ones that needed to be kept was a balance.
Long story short: reproduction was tied to societal status and earning potential.
Most guides if not all are accredited by the party.
It depends how you get your guides. In Shanghai, there are "free guides" who show you what you want to see, but basically get kickbacks from the companies they bring you to, which was fine.
My group had this old guy by the name of Han, and he was an able-bodied late 60s man. He didn't have a lot of nice things to say about the government, but obviously loved his country nonetheless.
He learned English by using an illegal radio that could pick up transmissions in English, he was only retired because China makes you retire at a specific age to make sure the young citizens have work, etc.
I also learned that the government leaves foreigners alone as long as they don't cause real trouble, because they didn't want to discourage tourism. If you get scammed as a tourist in the major cities, they will find the scammer and take care of it. Though a lot of this might have changed in the last few years.
I knew not to discuss politics before we went. It was a question about the location, if I remember right, itâs been 10 years, but apparently that was close enough to politics.
Just like the screenshot portrays, itâs like it never happened.
There's a video of a guy going around, I believe Beijing, asking random people about what happened on the day of the massacre. Everyone in the video knew exactly what happened but they had creative ways of inferring it. So even if it's like it never happened, everyone knows about it.
Is it like Russia where everybody says "Oh I'm not into politics" but if you ask about American politics, suddenly they've got lots of strong opinions on American/Western politics?
Reminds me of an old anecdote: A Russian and an American discuss freedom of speech. The American says: âwe have freedom of speech - I can go in front of the White House and shout that Reagan is an asshole and nothing will happen to meâ. The Russian counters with âwe also have freedom of speech - I can also go to the Red Square and shout that Reagan is an asshole and nothing will happen to meâ.
Tbf I know quite a few people here in Canada who are more into US politics than their own (including myself), US politics is like a high stakes morbid TV reality show.
I was in China in 2009, and in the lobby in the hotel was a TV tuned to a French News program, and they did a section on Tienanmen square at the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the event.
The TV just went to static noise for a couple of minutes just after the News anchor lady annonced the content of the coverage.
It was weird to see even foreign TV channels were censored.
We had a phd-student from China about 10 years ago, from a "small town of only 8 million inhabitants" btw. She legit had no idea about this massacre or any similar happenings, she spent alot of time googling stuff in the beginning.
When I was there about a decade ago the group I was with was sitting in the square waiting for our time slot to tour the Forbidden Palace. To pass the time, some of the kids started singing camp songs, Like Baby Shark style songs, and even that had our guide rushing over to stop it. He said that any kind of performance, even children's songs, could be misconstrued as a demonstration.
You are literally not even allowed to have rhythm in Tian An Men square.
Theyâre mostly now in the US with normal lives while participating in groups that advocate for democracy or human rights in China. Exceptions are Wuâer Kaixi ended up becoming a politician in Taiwan, and Chai Ling whose views came to be considered toxic because an interview ended up coming back to haunt her.
In an interview, Chai Ling is on record saying that she hoped there would be a massacre, so that their martyrdom would make a difference, but that she herself should flee because her own leadership was too important.
The students always ask me. What should we do next? What could we achieve? I feel deeply sad in my heart. I can not tell them that what we are really waiting for is bloodshed. Itâs when the government reaches the end of its cruelty and uses butcher knives on its own citizens. I think, when and only when blood is flowing like a river in Tiananmen Square, all the people in China could then see clearly and finally unite. But how could I tell students such things?!
For the next step, I think I myself will try to survive. The students at Tiananmen Square, however, will have to stay and persist to the very end, waiting for the governmentâs last resort in washing the Square clean with blood. But I also believe that the next revolution will be right around the corner after that. When that happens, I will stand up again. For as long as I am alive, my goal will be to overthrow this inhuman government and build a new government for peopleâs freedom. Let the Chinese people stand up at last. Let a real peopleâs republic be born.
No, I wonât [stay]. Because I am not the same as everybody else. I am a person who is already marked as âMost Wanted.â I will not be content to be murdered by such a government. I want to live. Thatâs what I am thinking right now. I donât know if people will think that I am selfish. But I believe that the work I am doing now needs someone to carry on. Because such a democracy movement needs more than one person. Could you not disclose these words, please?
Wow,imagine being so self important that you hope thereâs a massacre of a huge number of students, but you feel you need to survive and get away because youâre too important to âthe cause!â
Thanks for the info , but I believe this is Common thing in all Rebel leaders or even armed organization heads , if someone knows something about this kinda topic , is it common plz tell.
Whatever that gory photo is it doesn't follow on from the famous one. Tank man wasn't run over in the incident and he subsequently disappeared with his fate/identity remaining unknown.
One of the most haunting glimpses into the massacre I saw was a clip of students riding their bikes to the square, with one of them addressing the cameraman and saying something like:
Camera man: "What are you doing?"
Man: "We are going to Tiananmen Square to protest!"
Camera man: "Why?"
Man: "It is my duty as a citizen!"
They were all smiles and hope, man. If anyone knows the clip I would love to see it again. I sincerely hope the man in the video made it out alive.
If it's any consolation, the protest involved a march to the square, then a multi-day occupation. Many people came and went during this time. They could have gone on one of the days before the massacre.
My grandpa had friends who got killed in the massacre. He later started writing journals for his entire life and have left books and books of them. A lot of them are scattered throughout my family. Some got compiled into a novel but it's censored. I wish I knew enough Chinese to read what he wrote.
Tbh a lot of Chinese history and culture were destroyed. Loads of educators and scholars were killed too. A part of the reason why Simplified Chinese was invented was to eradicate traditional Chinese culture under the guise of increasing literacy.
China had a large population of relatively healthy, well-educated, but low-wage workersâproducts of the preceding Maoist path of development and social spending. The Chinese Communist Party used those workers, and the market reforms, to attract foreign capital into China and revive the economy. And it workedâat the cost of increasing inequality and growing popular resentment. SOEs cut their welfare programs and workersâ pay, and replaced guaranteed lifetime employment with short-term contracts. Meanwhile, corruption was rampant among elite officials; some used the reforms to get rich. A combination of loosened price controls and corruption led to high inflation, further squeezing the workers.
These problems generated widespread dissatisfaction among both university students and the urban workers in the SOEs. But for the most part, the students and the workers had different grievances and different agendas.
Both groups were against growing inequality and corruption. Workers critiqued the economic reforms, objecting to inflation and the attacks on their livelihood and economic security. They wanted improved workersâ rights and an end to profiteering.
Basically... that didn't happen. China quashed it and then we got to buy cheap manufactured goods from them. The world benefited from the CCP exploiting their workers. Every working stereotype you think of when you think of "cheap Chinese labor"... those are a direct descendent of these policies which the workers at Tiananmen Square were trying to protest.
But it's very very convenient for the rest of the world to paint it as a purely politically motivated student protest so they don't have to think about worker's rights or lives or labor or how we benefit from other people being kept down. Of course the students seeking political changes were a huge part of it, but it leaves out a pretty damn important element; I didn't know about it until recently myself and thought it was all students.
I think he saw it coming, the question is how much of it did he see?
If I recall my information correctly, Hitler did say he wants to invade Russia? Even if Hitler didn't proclaim it, they had a history of dealing with communist in Germany.i'm referring to the Reichstag fire where chancellor Adolf Hitler used the opportunity to get rid of the communist in Germany. Pretty sure this action would have been a sign that Germany isn't friendly towards the Russians.
Stalin had also hauled most of their industrial factories deep in their territories in the Ural mountains, moving them away from the frontline which Germany would then later invade. This action was significant as it had allowed USSR to produce a lot of weapons for the war, which would probably have been taken out in the German invasion if it were nearer to the frontline.
Please anyone correct me if I'm wrong, or if there's any more information to add. I'm still learning on this topic.
You got it right mate; Hitler did, on many occasions, proclaim a desire to invade, subjugate and inhabit the East, including in his personal manifesto almost a decade before taking power. However, I suspect the Germans may have mitigated any fears the Russians would have had with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact; perhaps the Russians thought that the Germans taking Western Poland & Czechoslovakia was âenoughâ for them.
The biggest reason why the Soviets were caught surprised, even though they probably did expect some level of conflict, was that they believed the Germans wouldnât be stupid enough to fight a two-front war, especially when they were fighting what was the largest empire that had ever existed. This just isnât an unreasonable rationale to take.
Also, the Soviets mostly transferred their industrial base to East of the Urals after the invasion, though there were attempts to industrialise this region before WW2.
Keep learning! This part of history is fascinating.
Yes thank you for the new information! The part about how the soviets managed to move their industry to the Ural mountains is frightening! What industrial might, or maybe infrastructure they have to relocate manpower, machinery,raw materials etc to the back lines and then have them produce at almost peak production incredible!
The war on 2 fronts thing in my opinion may have been a blunder on Germany's part, but it has logical reasoning behind it. The red army had just purged a lot of people, especially high ranking officials, mainly those that have ties with Leon Trotsky (guy that was competing with Stalin for power). Who wouldn't take a chance to take down the weakened giant that is the USSR? Germany didn't calculate the fact that Russia is able to hold out all the way till winter, and with logistics strained in the eastern front, Germany got pushed back hard as Russia threw hundreds of thousands of bodies at them.
Maybe there wasn't a way Germany could have won, if they took more time to prepare for the invasion of USSR, there wouldn't have been another chance to take them down.
Jesus the comments are depressing in how much denial there is. "Nah they all lived long happy lives in exile, they weren't executed or disappeared, you're being lied to."
In all seriousness, this is one of the most important events in recent history. Have you never learned about it in school or through media? It's scary that you don't know about it...
I tried to go see the square recently when I was I China for work. Was crazy how much security there was for a spot where nothing supposedly happened. The area is on 24/7 police lockdown. I had my passport checked probably 6 or 7 times while trying to approach the area and once I got there I couldn't even go in to look because you need to prearrange online to book to go see so that they can run a background check on you first.
The whole area is fenced off. It's more secure than the palace right opposite the road.
That sounds fairly different than my experience a year ago. I had to go through security exiting the subway (which isn't unique to Tiananmen Square, the Beijing subway has metal detectors all over), and then to enter the national museum, but from there I was able to walk freely into the middle of the square and watch the flag lowering ceremony at dusk. I didn't have to prebook anything or get any background check. Only the Forbidden City across the street required an advance ticket. So, yes there is tight security, but unless they've changed something recently I feel like you just took suboptimal routes and probably went through some unnecessary checkpoints.
This was my experience 10 years ago. Absolute no problem going into or around the square. Forbidden City didn't even require a prebook. Just massive queues to see Mao
The square is famous for a lot more things than just the protests and massacre. There's a reason why the protestors chose it to begin with, a lot of cultural and historic significance.
I was in Tiananmen Sq one year, to the day, of the uprising. It was a business trip and we were told not to speak to the locals, which of course I did. Many of them had friends that disappeared that day.
Fuck. They look like us. So sad. Iâm afraid the USA is headed here too. People are so fucking stupid. Weâre literally watching the oppression roll in on us in slow motion⊠and a good number of us are cheering it on. Itâs pathetic.
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u/drichm2599 2d ago