
Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/asia/china-tiananmen-1989-photographs.html
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SurrealSoul
Kind of a personal story, but my fiancé is from Beijing. She found out about
Tiananmen square about a year ago. She only knew that she shouldn't ask about
the Tiananmen incident growing up and that it was a bad thing that happened.

She has been in the states for several years now and when she found out what
really happened with our even blurry images and stories we have now it really
changed her perspective on things.

Even though its 28 years old, many of the younger generations don't know a
thing about what happened, regardless if it's censored in their country or
not.

History should not be censored like this. You should not have to move out of
country to know what your country has done. I am extremely grateful for the
brave photographer preserving his images for the world.

~~~
vtange
And the worst part about having to move out of country to find out things that
were censored/hidden? You'll be inclined to believe foreign nations have a
negative bias towards China.

At least, that's China's (and Russia's) narrative.

~~~
SurrealSoul
To be fair, USA hardly ever reports positive articles about China. We didn't
report on their moon landing until a year after it happened and many people
don't even know it happened at all.

Same goes with their space station. The only coverage went to their previous
one that is leaving orbit into earth.

I know that this is a small sample size and only related to their space
program as well as my personal observations, but its really hard (for me at
least) to say that the USA media does not have a negative bias towards China

~~~
vtange
For the past couple months the media has pointed out China's successes in tech
in Shenzhen, how they have a much better stance on climate change than Trump,
and how they have the most prudent position (that doesn't involve all-out war)
on North Korea. That's pretty positive if you ask me.

~~~
srett
Yes, it is getting better. But even then I can't help but feel like it's said
in this "See, even the Chinese do better than trump" manner. Just like 10
years ago the only good news about China was about how well their economy is
doing, but not without some "they took our jobs" vibe.

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blackbagboys
An inspiring collection of photos, but I'd bet it attracts little interest
outside a few select, irrelevant circles. One of the most heartbreaking thing
about the massacre is not just that the mass murderers who ordered it were
never held responsible but that today it barely even tarnishes their
reputations, while the memory of their victims has been thoroughly suppressed.

~~~
JabavuAdams
I'm going to take a kind of despicable position. We don't know what would have
happened had the protests been allowed to continue.

China is a vast country with mostly poor, uneducated people -- especially so
in 1989.

Look at what happened in Syria. Look at the Arab spring. Is it just to kill
hundreds, to prevent the slaughter of hundreds of thousands?

If the answer is no, never, I don't see how we can have states at all.

~~~
k-mcgrady
What you're saying is that it is better for people to live under authoritarian
governments of dictatorships than die fighting for their freedom. It's not a
despicable position but it's incredibly short-sighted.

~~~
ant6n
Is it? In the long term, it's better to be alive than to be dead. Some would
prefer a peaceful, long term transition compared to quick, violent civil war
-- which may result in a worse overall state. Wars destroy civilizations,
sometimes for generations.

This is something that Americans generally won't agree with, because their
foundational myth is closely tied to the revolutionary war. Conveniently this
war was a very long time ago, so one doesn't have to feel the personal
consequences of it when using aphorisms like "you need to fight for your
freedom".

Btw, the Canadians eventually got their independence without a war.

~~~
k-mcgrady
NB: I'm not American and I'm also very anti-war and anti-military in general.

>> In the long term, it's better to be alive than to be dead.

That's short term in my opinion. Long term could be hundreds of years.
Generally these things don't happen in a generation. There is often some civil
rights violations, followed be peaceful protesting which turns violent,
followed by war, and then when it's in both sides interest, peace talks.

As someone from a country effected in this way I can assure you 'you need to
fight for your freedom' is not an aphorism. In some cases it's necessary - to
a degree. Unfortunately once violence begins it's very difficult to stop again
before much more damage than was ever necessary is done. However in the long
term (hundreds of years potentially) it can put an end to an evil which may
have only gained in strength and oppression otherwise.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
Yet another example of "nothing matters like success." Since 1989, China has
gone on to have great success - both economic and diplomatic, and is on the
verge (if not already achieved) super-power status.

Because of that success, there is not much anybody can do about human rights
abuses, so most people don't pay much attention to it.

~~~
nickbauman
A variation of Churchill's "History is written by the victors."

~~~
droopyEyelids
And Churchill knew what he was talking about.

[https://crimesofbritain.com/2016/09/13/the-trial-of-
winston-...](https://crimesofbritain.com/2016/09/13/the-trial-of-winston-
churchill/)

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wonderous
Interesting how even after all this time that no one knows who "Tank Man" was
and within China, few even know he existed at all:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man)

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qwertyegg
Glad to see many reasonable comments here.

I have a vague memory of CCTV(official media, not your backyard CCTV) footage
that depicting students and other people as mobs and killing soliders and
burning the dead soldiers body.

Over the years, I got more and more piece of information about what happened
at the time. clearly Chinese government is still trying to cover up what they
did, and many exiles is still making up fake stories.

Nowadays in China people don't really care that much as you thought they
would. The general consensus is that they are willing to forget about what
happened and move on since it's full of opportunities right now and most
people are more focused on getting a better life.

Not saying Chinese government was right they knew what happened was shameful
and still forbids open news covfefe or discussion about it. In a booming
economy it's just hard to mass up enough momentum to really get into a
discussion about what happens in 1989, people just don't care anymore.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> they knew what happened was shameful

Do they? Are pro-democrasy protests allowed today? Or would people be shot
again?

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clort
Its interesting that they used his english name, to protect his identity (and
his family) but then go on to state his approximate age, that he runs
restaurants, comes from Dalian, has an uncle in taiwan and migrated to the USA
in 2012. Now then, I'm sure many people here could construct a database query
to find the guy based on this information; the question is, does China have
such a database? I know, they have a billion people but I hope some of this
other information is obfuscated..

~~~
greedo
Yup. Mentioned his college, and posted a picture of him. It would be trivial
for any intelligence agency to dox this guy from the information in the
article.

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vtange
There's inevitably going to be people trying to justify the tragedy here by
suggesting America is no better, pointing to instances such as the Kent State
Shootings (Vietnam War protest).

For those people I'd like to point out that unlike China, America doesn't
actively try to hide the negative sides of its history to the extent China
does. I can read about the Kent State shootings all I want, along with the My
Lai Massacre, the Trail of Tears, American involvement in Central America or
the Middle East, etc..

It is in fact sad that China depends on the West to expose the darker sides of
its past, and then claims Western negative bias whenever we do.

~~~
marnett
So the west is superior because their citizens, although having access to
damning documents of the actions of their nation, both domestic and abroad,
choose not to care?

~~~
burkaman
Yes, all other things being equal, open information is better than censorship.
But you are obviously exaggerating, lots of people care.

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throw2016
Without wishing away the massacre or diminishing the kind of despotic
environment that allows this to happen shouldn't the same kind of moral
reprehension be expressed for the massive loss of life in the middle east from
Libya, Iraq to Syria?

Yet we rarely see this in the same context as these actions continue to be
pursued aggressively with little resistance from citizens in the west.

This seems to a very selective form of morality in practice more at ease
judging others than examining our own actions.

Tiananmen is past and beyond but the loss of life and destruction of entire
countries that puts millions of lives in disarray in the middle east is here
and now and continues unabated yet there is little pressure on our leaders to
cease these actions from citizens. No western leader is tainted with the kind
of moral reprehension directed at the Chinese inspite of far more serious
crimes against humanity. There is a definite dissonance here.

~~~
Angostura
The same kind of moral reprehension absolutely were expressed during the
period of the 'Arab Spring'

------
hohohmm
Read some real opinions please:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-are-todays-young-adults-in-
China-s...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-todays-young-adults-in-China-so-
poorly-informed-about-the-Tiananmen-Square-massacre-despite-the-ability-to-
use-VPN)

~~~
abecedarius
I wouldn't assume any particular post is a 'real opinion'. The CCP employs
many shills posting noise to domestic social media, so it wouldn't surprise me
to see chaff on Quora as well.

~~~
hohohmm
You can write off anything with that, to be honest. It's like the nuclear
weapon of arguments that ensures mutual destruction

~~~
abecedarius
Yeah, it sucks. But we do need to keep in mind now that social media psy-ops
(or whatever the spooks are calling it) have become significant -- just as
Amazon user reviews have gotten way more polluted, but without the direct
personal feedback you get from buying the wrong item.

There was a recent story about an academic study of the methods of in-China
Party shills (I forget the link). By my skim they were more about distraction
and noise than obvious pushing of the party line.

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fludlight
Student protests really scare older Chinese because they remember the reign of
terror that the Red Guard kids perpetuated during the Cultural Revolution in
the 1960s.

~~~
Sacho
Wouldn't the "Red Guard kids" in the 1960s and the "older Chinese people" at
Tiananmen have a large overlap?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
That would only mean they remember even better what those kids were capable
of.

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srcmap
I remember watched a fascinate behind the scene documentary on the down fall
of Gorbachev by the old USSR conservative leadership which actually caused the
rise of Yeltsin in Youtube recently.

Likely in China during that period of time, the high level struggle for power
also happened in BeiJing. In China the reformers of the time didn't win.

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justicezyx
The rich and powerful (note I did not separate government & individuals,
increasing these 2 groups are merging together, and seriously, the censorship
in this area is way better than things happen in the past) in China have to
maintain a great public image. Even if a significant fraction of the
population are fully aware of that being superficial, there are definitely
larger fraction of people who does believe in the camouflage. Not that such
people are ignorant, their life is hard enough to really have the spare time
for these stuff.

The reason such history is heavily censored, is precisely for this cause. Such
thing will never be freely available, as long as the social structure and
political system works in the same way.

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bluetwo
English Wikipedia still calls it the "Tiananmen Square protests of 1989"
instead of the "Tiananmen Square Massacre" which is what pretty much everyone
outside China calls it.

Maybe someday we'll stop China from censoring Wikipedia.

~~~
boomboomsubban
The article is about the protests as a whole, they ended in the "Tiananmen
Square Massacre" like the first paragraph of the article says.

~~~
arthur2e5
It may be a good idea to try blending some massacre (um, because
WP:COMMONNAME, a.k.a. "everyone mentions the massacre"?) in and call it some
"protest and massacre" though.

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pilom
I'm a 30 year old in the US. Unfortunately all I know is that there was a
protest and some of the protesters got shot and there was a person standing in
front of a tank. It's not like wikipedia tells accurate information about the
event. Rather than alluding to what happened, can someone just spell out
exactly what happened? Or give a non-propagandized link to what happened?

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perlpimp
really wealth legitimized power of the communists and paved they way to
insidious regime. had it been not for globalization china could've been the
freest country in the world. alas we have this.

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Markoff
not sure what has this to do with hacking/IT, but

Tiananmen square massacre is mislabeled event, more people died in other parts
of Beijing than average in the square, so more appropriate name would be
Beijing massacre or what Chinese use 6/4.

People who died in square were pretty much suicidal since they were warned to
leave and were told to leave even by their own protester leaders.

It should be always mentioned that wife of current hard liner president Mao
2.0 She Gin Pimp was singing at that time to murderers in square.

Overall not sure why are media so obsessed with this event were few thousand
people died instead or mentioning millions who died thanks to glorified Mao.
It's pretty good trade-off with DXP for most of the Chinese compared to trade-
off gained with Mao.

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racl101
Still, I gots to know what happened to tank dude. I gots to know.

~~~
mtmail
"Numerous theories have sprung up as to the man's identity and current
whereabouts."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man)

------
hohohmm
read some real opinions please:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-are-todays-young-adults-in-
China-s...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-todays-young-adults-in-China-so-
poorly-informed-about-the-Tiananmen-Square-massacre-despite-the-ability-to-
use-VPN)

------
pololee
Surprised that the article showed up on HackerNews

