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The Tiananmen Square massacre myth

By GREGORY CLARK

China's recent ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of former leader Deng Xiaoping have given the Tiananmen massacre myth yet another lease of life. Most media commentators, the BBC especially, have rehashed the standard condemnation of Deng as a hardliner who instigated a massacre of harmless demonstrating students in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

Why someone who had suffered cruelly at the hands of Cultural Revolution hardliners and who did so much to push China on the path of liberalization should himself become a hardliner is not explained. Even less does anyone seem to have felt any need to check out just what actually happened in Tiananmen in 1989. Eyewitness accounts that say there was no massacre have been conveniently ignored. Blatantly anti-Beijing propaganda accounts have been unquestioningly accepted. Fortunately we now have a source whose sober impartiality cannot possibly be doubted, namely the de-classified reports from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing at the time (see Google under Tiananmen, Document 30 especially).

They confirm that there was no massacre in the square, that almost all the students who had been demonstrating there for two weeks had left the square quietly in the early hours of June 4, and that the real incident was panicky fighting triggered by crowds attacking troops, initially unarmed, as they headed for the square on June 3.

In the process a still indefinite number of troops, students and civilians were killed and many military vehicles were torched. Call it a mini civil war if you like, with troops eventually getting the upper hand over unarmed insurgents. But that is not a deliberate massacre of innocent students.

Curiously, the photo that most media use to illustrate the alleged student massacre shows a row of blazing army vehicles, some with crews trapped inside, in a long avenue that clearly is not part of Tiananmen Square. Indeed, the U.S. Embassy material speaks of troops only finally entering the square after some students attacked and killed a soldier in a vehicle at the entrance.

True, the Communist Party leadership under Deng later rounded up and imposed severe jail terms on student leaders involved in the Tiananmen demonstrations. But the same leadership had tried in vain to offer concessions to the students when they were camped in the square, and some of the student leaders have since admitted they were foolish to reject those concessions. Troops were only sent to remove the students when things were getting out of hand and the square needed to be cleaned up in advance of a Beijing visit by Soviet leader, Mikail Gorbachev.

Leader Li Peng later admitted that the real problem had been Beijing's inexperience in crowd control. Lacking the devices and trained police squads commonly used in the West for such control, it had had to rely on inexperienced troops.

If Beijing is to be faulted, it is for creating the conditions that encouraged the June 3 fighting outside the square. Years of insane Cultural Revolution economic policies and political oppression had created a sullen and impoverished proletariat only too willing to seize any excuse for antiregime violence. The attempt to remove the students from Tiananmen gave them that excuse.

Surprisingly, the media moralists so upset over the nonexistent Tiananmen massacre have little to say about the very brutal massacres of student demonstrators in Mexico (1968) and Thailand (1973). There, no effort was made to negotiate with or tolerate the students. They were rounded up immediately and killed in the hundreds. Yet both governments continued to enjoy Western approval. Meanwhile Beijing has had to suffer more than a decade of Western odium and sanctions for a non-massacre.

The New York Times, which should know better, recently ran an article by David Brooks opposing a EU move to lift some of these sanctions. He writes blandly of Beijing killing 3,000 students in the square. No sources are quoted. It is taken for granted that a massacre occurred.

This is not the first time Beijing has been condemned for something that did not happen. Perhaps the worst example was the Sino-Indian 1962 frontier war. As China desk officer in Canberra's foreign affairs bureaucracy at the time, I had to watch on impotently as the world, including Canberra, accused China of making an unprovoked attack on India when the evidence in front of me proved clearly that it was India that had first attacked China, across even the furthermost line of control demanded by India. It would be more than a decade before that evidence finally found the light of day. In the meantime, the myth of Chinese aggressiveness would be used to justify a raft of Western atrocities in Asia, the Vietnam intervention especially.

Another favorite of the anti-Beijing media has been alleged genocide in Tibet. This, when Tibetans, along with other minority peoples, have been allowed to have as many children as they wanted and Chinese have been subject to Beijing's one-child policies.

The latest sledgehammer aimed against Beijing, and a major reason for perpetuating the Tiananmen myth, is a claimed lack of Western-style political freedom. Whether Sinitic-culture nations with collective leaderships able to claim moral or revolutionary legitimacy -- Singapore is a good example -- should have to abide by Western-imposed standards of political conduct is debatable, particularly given the political circus we are seeing now in the U.S. But that aside, has anyone thought seriously of what would happen if China had our system of rival political parties competing for votes? First victim would be Beijing's one-child policy. The next victim would be the rest of the world as it tried to cope with the resource shortages and pollution created by a booming Chinese population. China is already destined to become a leading economic and political force in the world. The Western media should try harder to take it seriously.

Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat and vice president of Akita International University. A translation of this article will appear on www.gregoryclark.net

The most credible reporting of the events at Tiananmen Square is depicted in a video documentary entitled: The Gate of Heavenly Peace, © Long Bow Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This report contains video footage by a Spanish television crew and has been shown on Frontline and PBS stations. The complete report and video can be accessed at http://www.tsquare.tv/film/transcript01.html. A pertinent excerpt from the narration is shown below. The speakers are students and allied persons who protested at Tiananmen Square.

FENG CONGDE: At around 3:30, the four people on the hunger strike came to talk to the students. They said, "Blood is being spilled all over the city. More than enough blood has already been shed to awaken the people. We know you're not afraid of dying, but leaving now doesn't mean that you're cowards."

HOU DEJIAN: Chai Ling told us she had heard that leading government reformers hoped that the students could stay on the Square until daybreak. So Liu Xiaobo told her: "I don't care if it's true or not, but no leader has the right to gamble with thousands of students' lives at the Square."

FENG CONGDE: Finally our student headquarters told them, "You can go ahead and negotiate, but you can't represent us."

HOU DEJIAN: So we went ourselves. We got into a van and drove only a few seconds before we saw the soldiers, all lined up on Changan Avenue. As we got closer the soldiers pointed their guns at us. They didn't know what we were up to. A few minutes later, an officer appeared. He listened to what we had to say and went to report to his superiors. He came back and told us that they had agreed to our request. He said, "We hope you can convince the students to leave the Square." We rushed back to the monument to tell the students. Their opinions were divided.

NARRATION: There was little time to debate. The troops sequestered in the nearby Great Hall of the People now came out and moved toward the Monument. Soldiers with guns at the ready converged on the students from all directions.

LIANG XIAOYAN: The soldiers came right up in front of us. They were in full battle gear. The students all stood up. I was in the front row, with a gun pointing straight at my chest. It was only a few inches away. The soldiers looked really mean. Only later did the terror hit me. At the time I was simply stunned. I didn't feel a thing. I can't imagine what would have happened had they really opened fire.

FENG CONGDE: I was in charge of the vote to determine whether we should leave. I said, "On the count of three, those who want to go, shout 'Go!'; those who vote to stay shout 'Stay!'" I couldn't tell which side was louder.

HOU DEJIAN: I knew that those who wanted to leave would be ashamed to shout very loud, while those who wanted to stay would shout with all their might.

FENG CONGDE: Because of this situation, I felt that when the two sides sounded about the same, most likely more people voted to leave. So I announced the decision to leave.

NARRATION: At dawn on June 4th, after occupying the Square for more than three weeks, all the remaining students and their teachers and supporters left Tiananmen Square.

HOU DEJIAN was born in Taiwan in 1956, became a singer-songwriter, and achieved fame with his 1979 song "Children of the Dragon." During the protest movement, Hou took part in the four-man hunger strike of June 2nd. Chinese language newspapers (outside of China) published Hou Dejian's account of the final hours in Tiananmen Squarequare. In one interview, Hou Dejian related:

"Some people said that two hundred died in the Square and others claimed that two thousand died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say that I did not see any of that. I don't know where those people did. I myself was in the Square until six thirty in the morning.
I kept thinking, are we going to use lies to attack an enemy who lies? Aren't facts powerful enough? To tell lies against our enemy's lies only satisfies our need to vent our anger, but it's a dangerous thing to do. Maybe your lies will be exposed, and you'll be powerless to fight your enemy."

Why are media deliberately mis-characterizing the events at Tiananmen Square?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Tuesday urged China to give a full account of the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square and release prisoners taken during the protests, a State Department spokesman said.

"The time for the Chinese government to provide the fullest possible public accounting of the thousands killed, detained, or missing in the massacre that followed the protests is long overdue," Sean McCormack said in a statement on the eve of the 19th anniversary of what China has called the "June Fourth incident."

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters in Beijing earlier that China would not revise its verdict on the protests after calls to stop labeling the student movement a "counterrevolutionary rebellion."

"Regarding the political incident that took place at the end of the 1980s, there is already a clear conclusion," he told reporters one day ahead of the anniversary of the protests on Wednesday.

He would not be drawn further on the subject, saying the events in 1989 were an internal matter for China, and also brushed aside calls for the improvement of human rights ahead of the Olympic Games in August.

While one might reasonably argue that the student uprising at Tiananmen could have been put down with less bloodshed, few doubt that China could be where it is today without strong and decisive leadership.

Chinese troops did not have anti-riot gears. That's the problem when a country is poor.

See US declassified documents:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSA ... /09-01.htm
Troops initially unarmed but were driven back by protesters.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSA ... /13-01.htm
“thousands of civilians stood their ground or swarmed around military vehicles. APCs were set on fire, and demonstrators besieged troops with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails.”

Zhao Ziyang mentions in his recently published memoirs that the PLA was attacked.

I just learned that Molotov cocktails have been used in the WW2 as anti-tank weapons.

Weapons of wars, terrorism and riots. Anti-tank weapons.
http://www.winterwar.com/Weapons/FinAT/ ... tm#molotov

Many protesters were armed - some with Molotov Cocktails. There were dark organized forces at work. You see a lot of fires and burnt vehicles in many Tiananmen videos.

You must view this. They are the most complete videos I have seen. Series 1 to 3 all in Mandarin; all produced by the PLA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otTbOxLe ... re=related

換個角度看六四 八九天安門事件解放軍縂政治部資料片（一）
由解放軍縂政治部拍攝的珍貴官方片斷，雖然片中官方有意"忽略" 了部隊使用過份武力的片段，但也提醒我們重新思考，支聯會年年反 復播放的片段中，是否也有意"忽略"了部分史實？偏聼則暗兼聼則明，無論大陸抑或港澳臺和海外的華人都應該對所謂"反革命暴亂" 或者"屠城"的偏激看法作一次重新的認識。

Posted by: MatthewTan | June 05, 2009 at 04:38 PM

When Li Peng imposed martial law on Beijing on 20 May, the quality of the Fujian demonstrations changed. Some students became more cautious, others bolder.

Fujian officials were reluctant to take tough measures against demonstrators, perhaps because they could not predict the outcome of the crisis. Some officials informally said this was an issue for the central government, not local authorities.

As in Beijing, the chief slogan of the demonstrators was 'democracy'. The meaning of democracy for most Fuzhou demonstrators was vague at best. Their demand had little relationship to Western concepts of popular rule. In the words of Jackie Smith, an American studying Chinese, 'When I asked a student in Fuzhou what democracy meant for her, she defined it as a policy of accepting [educated] people into government roles based upon their skills and not upon their connections. As the system is now, she and many others - though they may be qualified - are unable to enter governing positions'. (4) Others were horrified at the suggestion that truly popular elections would have to include peasants, who would certainly out-vote educated people like themselves.

Fuzhou students seemed mostly concerned with improving their own economic situations. Although students make up only 2 per cent of the college-age population in China, in Fujian they rarely reached out to other groups. Specific complaints about a lack of personal or press freedom almost never reached our ears; they were not prominent even in the slogans shouted. What the intellectuals deeply resented was financial pressures, fearing a drop in living standards. The hottest topic among educators, and the students at our university, who were all future teachers, was the low wages and bad living conditions for teachers. Many students firmly believed that US teachers are the most highly-paid members of society, while Chinese teachers make less money than the lowest peasant or street peddler. This mix of doggedly optimistic ignorance about the West and gloom about their own position in Chinese society formed the basic ideology of the student demonstrators.

The official Chinese media reported far more than most foreigners realize. Even when the editorial twist was hostile, one could glean important information. The Fujian Daily and the Fuzhou Evening News emphasized student apologies for disrupting public order in their 20 May front page accounts of blocking the train tracks. Highlighting the apologies may have been a deliberate effort to protect the students. Other reports gave detailed accounts of riots in Xi'an and Chengdu, complete transcripts of Li Peng's televised meeting with student demonstrators, and of Tom Brokaw's interview with Yuan Mu.