A friend of mine who lives in Shanghai wrote a quick WeChat update today:
“今天64，缅怀一下当年为自由民主牺牲的青年”
which roughly translates to:
“Today is June 4th. Let’s pay homage to those young Chinese who perished in the cause of freedom and democracy.”
(For an in-depth article on June 4th, read “Let’s Talk About Tiananmen Square, 1989” and in Chinese, “且谈1989年的天安门事件.”)
Many of our readers’ reaction might be: “oh no, another idealist who is sold on the ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ religion!” Not so! In fact, there are many in China who use these two terms as a way to solidify grievances they have with Chinese society. They mainly see China as more backwards compared to richer countries like the United States. When asked what China is more backwards on? Many a response come as, “we have less freedom and democracy.” Read more…
(这篇文章是龙信明博客写的. 西方媒体总是会通过扭曲的镜头来看中国、 或中国人。关于六四, 西方媒体还在撒谎. 他们的目标是中国境内挑拨.)
(Propaganda in the Western press had a lasting impact on China. For the Tiananmen Protest of 1989, the “reform and opening up” policies under Deng back-stepped when Western governments decided to scale back loans and FDI into China on the grounds the Chinese government were ‘butchers.’ The ‘butcher’ and ‘massacre’ narratives were concocted by the Western press to demonize the Chinese government (an on-going trend, by the way; see collective defamation). Through Wikileaks, we now know the U.S. government knew then what were the actual truth and confirmed China’s version of the event. The Western press lied all along, as the following excellent analysis by 龙信明 (original, here) pieces together how they systematically distorted truth to defame. Warning: some graphic images of burnt bodies.)
Let’s Talk About Tiananmen Square, 1989My Hearsay is Better Than Your Hearsay
Read more… |
It has been 22 years since the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen incident. While the Western media has over the years toned down this ‘massacre’ myth, they are still using vague language to keep the ‘massacre’ narrative alive. For example, even NPR’s ‘anniversary’ piece yesterday, echoing an Associated Press article, described it as “the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.”
With declassified U.S. government documents and other Westerner accounts, Gregory Clark in this well researched 2008 article published in the Japan Times, “Birth of a massacre myth,” explained how the New York Times and other Western media were still pushing that narrative despite all evidence concluding otherwise. Recent Wikileaked U.S. embassy cables also showed the U.S. government knew there was no bloodshed in Tiananmen Square [editor: link updated on 3/19/2012 from vancouversun – which became unreachable – to telegraph link]. Apparently, condemning China is okay while lying along with the media. Read more…
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