On this episode of China Uncensored,
thanksgiving is coming to China!
And just like the American one...
it hides a tale of mass carnage.
Welcome back to China Uncensored,
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
Local officials in Wenchuan County,
in the Sichuan Province of China
have created a new holiday.
It’s called Thanksgiving Day.
Is it a day where people remember a bountiful feast
between Communist Party officials
and the Tibetans they saved from
the clutches of the evil Dalai Lama,
thanks to the brilliant guidance
of the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong?
Not quite.
Actually, Wenchuan officials created
the new Thanksgiving Day
to commemorate the massive earthquake
that hit Sichuan province in 2008.
Wenchuan was the hardest hit area.
And if it seems weird to give thanks
on the date of a huge natural disaster...
welcome to life under the Chinese Communist Party.
May 12 was the ten year anniversary
of the 7.9-magnitude quake, which killed 70,000 people—
according to official numbers from the Communist Party.
Others put that number at closer to 300,000.
But the most heartbreaking
and controversial part of this disaster
was that thousands of children died
when their schools collapsed
because of cheap construction.
It turns out,
local officials embezzled money
meant for construction materials,
particularly for public schools.
There used to be a school under these rocks.
According to locals,
the Chinese officials who were responsible for that
have not been held accountable.
In fact,
they went on to embezzle reimbursement funds, too.
And “parents and the local people who reported on the officials
or who wanted to appeal are still under surveillance.”
So...what about this terrible tragedy
makes it Thanksgiving Day?
Enter the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department.
State-run Xinhua News writes about these
new “beautiful, tidy buildings”...
...and about the local people who expressed
how thankful they were for the
“gushing springs of generosity”
that came from real donations
from Chinese people around the country.
But more importantly,
they expressed thanks for all the hard work
and dedication of Chinese Communist Party officials.
Not the ones who embezzled all the money.
We don’t talk about them.
And the people who lost their only child
because of corrupt officials and are
still trying to get justice from the government?
They’re under house arrest.
At the time, the earthquake was a hugely sensitive issue.
So it should come as no surprise
that the Wenchuan officials’ decision
to call the tenth anniversary of this disaster “Thanksgiving Day”
was not well received by everyone in China.
That online post has since been deleted.
Censors have been scrubbing the internet
in the lead up to the sensitive anniversary.
It’s so sensitive,
that AFP journalists were even harassed by plainclothes police
for trying to write a feel good piece
about a famous pig that survived the earthquake.
Maybe because it could make people question
why a pig survived but not thousands of schoolkids.
Over the years,
the Communist Party has been a little nervous about
any artistic commemoration of the earthquake.
Artist Ai Weiwei created this three-and-a-half-hour long recording
of people reading five thousand names of dead children.
He was also detained for months and beaten up by police
for trying to find out all the names of the children who died.
And Chinese writer Tan Zuoren spent five years in prison
after trying to investigate the corruption
that led to the collapsed schools.
But you know what?
There are some artists that really get it—
artists that have earned enthusiastic support from the state.
A month after the earthquake,
one Chinese literary figure wrote a poem called
“A Tearful Request for the Earthquake Survivors.”
In it, “He implored parents to stop their protests.
He suggested the parents were being used
by those with ‘ulterior motives’ and by ‘anti-Chinese forces.’”
It’s not very thankful of the parents to protest, is it?
But the Sichuan earthquake is not unique.
This is usually how the Party always responds
to what it calls “sudden incidents.”
Sudden incidents are a broad group
that includes accidents, natural disasters, and...protests.
That’s why, according to Professor of History
at Simon Fraser University, Jeremy Brown,
“Instead of being transparent,
or treating accident victims compassionately,
the impulse is to cover it up,
and target them for surveillance and crackdowns.
Because that’s what you do to a protest, right?”
Officials are basically incentivized to cover things up.
That’s why anytime there is a sudden event,
the Party follows the same protocol—
suppress critical voices,
and talk about how good the government did.
Remember the mysterious Tianjin explosions in 2015?
Sure, the firefighters were woefully unprepared to deal with it.
But don’t pay attention to that!
Focus instead on state-run newspaper articles
about Chinese leaders urging an all-out effort to save people!
And in 2012, Beijing suffered major flooding
after unusually severe rains.
But state-run CCTV didn’t cover much about
how the newly built drainage systems were so bad
that 37 people died from the flooding.
No!
They ran this footage of dedicated rescue workers
keeping everything safe.
Plus this friendly reminder to locals.
“Furthermore, there's a must follow order.
No one can die inside of Beijing.
Local officials would be held accountable if anyone did.”
And I would feel awful if my death
inconvenienced my beloved local officials.
Or here’s an oldie but a goodie.
And it involves our old friend Zhou Yongkang,
the purged top Party official,
Jiang Zemin lackey,
and live-action Thwomp.
In 1994,
he was an official in the state-run oil company
China National Petroleum Corporation.
His company ran an oil town in Xinjiang called Karamay.
A short circuit sparked a fire in the Karamay Friendship Theater,
where about 300 school children were being visited
by high ranking local officials.
Don’t worry, they all made it out alive.
The officials.
Not the children, they all died.
“According to survivors,
a woman who had either helped organize the performance
or was a government official immediately stood up
and told everybody to be quiet,
sit still, and let the leaders go first.
Unfortunately, by the time the leaders had finished exiting
the fire had spread out beyond control.”
Of course footage shows
the quick response of rescue teams...
well after the fire.
Zhou Yongkang took charge in the aftermath,
by “not giving in to the demands of the parents,
who then became targeted as troublemakers
and came under surveillance themselves.”
And then he made a touching speech where he said,
“I believe that all of the little boys and girls in their graves
would hope for Karamay to be stable.
Be steadfast in opposing whatever words and deeds
are not conducive to stability.”
Excuse me, so beautiful.
Zhou Yongkang, by the way,
was the person in charge of
the Chinese Communist Party’s security apparatus
during the Sichuan earthquake.
I guess he really led by example.
I mean, frankly, everyday should be Thanksgiving Day,
because every day is a day to remember
how the Chinese Communist Party saved China.
You see, before the Communist Party took over in 1949,
accidents were common in China.
Presumably, because the evil capitalist system exploited people.
But accidents seemed to totally stop under Communism!
As Professor Jeremy Brown discovered,
if you read state-run People’s Daily,
“There were no accidents in China
between about 1956 and the 1980s...
It just stopped.
There were a few mentions of accidents in capitalist countries,
as proof that capitalist countries exploited their workers
and didn’t care about safety.
But there were actually no accidents in China
openly reported for the rest of the Mao period.”
And that’s why May 12 will not be known as
the day thousands of schoolchildren died
because of government corruption.
But as Thanksgiving Day—
a day to give thanks to the Communist Party.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again, I'm your host, Chris Chappell. See you next time.
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