As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates 100 years
There are things they don’t want to talk about
Like the Tiananmen Square Massacre
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
On July 1, the Chinese Communist Party will be turning 100.
And they’re throwing themselves the birthday party of the century.
You know what they say: Ain’t no party like a communist party ‘cause a communist party
insinuates itself into every part of your life, subverting society until there’s no
escape.
It’s a catchy song.
The Chinese Communist Party is big on anniversaries.
Celebrating the ones they want you to remember, and arresting people ahead of the ones they
want you to forget.
And this 100th anniversary celebration is a theme party.
The theme is Without the Communist Party, there would be no new China.
It’s the same theme as all their parties.
This year, they’re celebrating that theme with everything from patriotic films to mass
weddings.
And the message to “follow the Party forever.”
How romantic.
The Chinese Communist Party is also using this year’s celebrations to further elevate
its own mythology.
Using some pretty religious language.
“In party literature and state media, former revolutionary bases are labeled ‘holy sites,’
and the almost obligatory visits to such locations by the rank and file are meant to ‘baptize’
members in the Communist ‘faith.’”
Of course, you can’t baptize people in the Communist faith without sweeping a few things
under the rug.
“Thornier subjects--infighting and purges in the upper echelon, and ruthless mass political
campaigns dating back to the party’s early days--are almost never touched on.”
You mean the Communist Party isn’t telling the truth about history?
I’m shocked.
It’s happening in Chinese state-run media as well.
For example, here’s a poster series of “key events during the Party’s 100-year path
to glory”
They’re doing one poster for each year since 1921.
Like, in 1987, the poster is about the 13th national congress.
In 1988, it’s about the establishment of the Hainan Special Economic Zone.
And in 1990, it’s about the opening of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Hmm.
The posters go from 1988 straight to 1990.
There’s no poster for 1989.
I guess nothing important happened in China in 1989.
You know, after seeing all of this excitement, we want to get in on the festivities, too.
So here on China Uncensored, we’re going to do a special series to celebrate 100 years
of the Chinese Communist Party.
But we’re going to cover the things that the Chinese Communist Party might want to
skip.
We’re calling it: 100 Years of Things That “Never Happened.”
More after the break.
Welcome back.
First up on 100 Years of Things That “Never Happened”: The 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Or as many young Mainland Chinese people call it, “What’s that?”
The Chinese Communist Party simply refers to the massacre as the “June 4th Incident”.
That is, when they are forced to mention it at all.
The Party much prefers making people forget the whole thing ever happened.
Which has led to what some call Generation Amnesia.
The official Party line is that student protests in 1989 were a “counterrevolutionary riot.”
You see, violent students attacked the poor, heavily armed soldiers who had to shoot the
students, as well as innocent bystanders, to defend themselves.
The Tiananmen Square Massacre is a huge turning point in modern Chinese history.
There may well be a parallel universe where the crackdown never happened, and China is
now a liberal democracy.
And only Quinn Mallory has seen it.
Yes, Sliders.
I said we’re talking about things people have totally forgotten.
The massacre was the Chinese Communist Party's final response to 7 weeks of protests led
by students demanding political reform, less corruption, freedom of speech and the press.
Only towards the end of the protests did people start talking about democracy.
The students weren’t trying to overthrow the Communist Party.
They believed the Communist Party could reform itself.
Turns out, the answer was no.
The student protests at Tiananmen Square started after Hu Yaobang died on April 15, 1989.
Hu was one of the only outspoken liberal reformers in the Communist Party.
He had been purged from the Party by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, after Deng blamed Hu
for student protests in 1986.
At the time, people were like, “Who got purged?”
“That’s right.
Hu got purged.”
Hundreds of thousands of students showed up in Tiananmen Square for Hu Yaobang’s funeral.
That morphed into a series of protests and marches.
But it all could have died down again, if the Party hadn’t issued an editorial in
the People’s Daily on April 26.
“Titled ‘The Necessity for a Clear Stand Against Turmoil,’ it described the protests
as a ‘well-planned plot’ to overturn Communist rule.”
This editorial gave new life to the student protest, and sparked protests across the country
in support of the students.
The students saw themselves as patriotic.
They were protesting for the good of the country.
And now workers, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens started to join in.
Tiananmen Square witnesses remember this time as having an air of celebration, with feelings
of joy and hope.
People paraded through the streets.
Some even brought their kids to see this historic event.
On May 13, the students started a hunger strike.
These were some of the reasons the students gave for the strike: “widespread illegal
business dealings by corrupt officials, the dominance of abusive power, the corruptions
of bureaucrats, the fleeing of a large number of good people to other countries, and the
deterioration of law and order”
Sounds kind of familiar.
One of the quirks of history is why we have so many photos and videos of the Tiananmen
protests.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was visiting China at the time.
It was the first time Soviet and Chinese leaders had met since the Sino-Soviet split in the
1960s.
And the Chinese Communist Party had allowed in lots of foreign journalists to cover the
meeting.
It turns out, foreign journalists were more interested in covering a million Chinese people
marching on Tiananmen Square.
But while all this hope and change was happening in the square, the Party leadership, especially
paramount leader Deng Xiaoping , decided to crack down on the protests and declare martial
law.
General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was against martial law.
He was forced to resign and purged from the Party.
Zhao then famously went to Tiananmen Square and apologized to the students, begging them
to leave.
After his speech on the square, Zhao would spend the rest of his life under house arrest.
Zhao’s secretary, Bao Tong was imprisoned for the protests.
He says that Deng Xiaoping was already planning to get rid of Zhao, and the protests were
just a good excuse.
Deng replaced Zhao with Shanghai Party leader Jiang Zemin , who would spend the next 20
years amassing power through his own crackdowns on innocent citizens.
This is basically the prequel to General Hostility, everyone’s favorite soap opera about Communist
Party power struggles.
But Zhao Ziyang wasn’t the only person to stand against martial law.
A PLA general who commanded one of the most elite units refused to deploy his soldiers
against the protesters.
He was also arrested and imprisoned.
Martial law didn’t go exactly as the Party leaders had planned.
As the first PLA soldiers tried to enter Beijing on May 19, Beijing citizens actually convinced
them to turn back and leave.
Meanwhile, the protests continued to spread to other cities.
They continued for another two weeks, before the Party sent in the troops again, on the
night of June 3rd to June 4th.
This time, there was no turning back.
The soldiers drove the students out of Tiananmen Square.
Even as they left, the students were still singing the Communist Internationale and the
Chinese national anthem.
When the soldiers opened fire on the unarmed civilians, most of them were killed on the
surrounding streets outside the square.
Here’s what one BBC reporter saw.
"The young man in front of me fell dead.
I fell over him.
Two others were killed yards away.
Two more people lay wounded on the ground near me."
We still don’t know how many people died in the massacre.
Estimates are in the thousands.
A recently declassified British diplomatic cable puts the number at 10,000.
But the legacy of Tiananmen Square wasn’t just the massacre.
The real legacy was what happened afterwards.
More after the break.
Welcome back.
You might be wondering why I haven’t talked about this guy yet.
Well, Tank Man actually faced down those tanks on June 5, the day after the soldiers killed
people in the streets.
Which, if you think about it, makes it even more ballsy than you previously thought.
Also more ballsy: when you see how many tanks this guy was actually facing down.
One of the photojournalists who took photos of Tank Man had to hide his film in the toilet
to keep it from getting taken by Chinese police.
That’s because the suppression of any information about the Tiananmen Square massacre was already
starting.
The Communist Party spent the next 18 months running a mass political campaign designed
to scare the crap out of the Chinese people and make sure this never happened again.
Over 4 million Chinese Communist Party members were investigated for involvement in the protests.
Chinese state-run media showed video after video of police capturing “counterrevolutionaries”
in raids.
Some of the students involved in the protests escaped, others were arrested and sentenced.
People were told the best thing to do was to forget.
To the point where many were even afraid to admit they had family members who had been
killed in the massacre.
The Chinese Communist Party had a new bargain for the Chinese people: shut up about politics,
and we’ll let you make money.
And most people took that bargain.
The Party also started a new patriotic education campaign that used nationalism to erase the
memory of any wrongdoing by the Party.
As Chinese artist and former Tiananmen soldier Chen Guang says, “China’s political education
forces you to forget what happened in the past--forget the bad things that the party
did, and only remember the good things.”
A few years ago, we interviewed Tiananmen survivor Fang Zheng . He lost both of his
legs after he was run over by a tank on June 4.
Fang says the Party is waging a memory war.
Fang Zheng: This has been one of the most difficult problems in China, under the Chinese
Communist Party's rule, this type of memory war.
The Chinese Communist Party has continuously committed crimes against the Chinese people
during different periods of history, over and over again, from when it first started
to rule to the present day, almost 70 years now.
But why is it still successful?
The biggest reason is that through propaganda, brainwashing, and thought control, they've
made people unaware of what happened in the past.
According to Fang Zheng, the only way to fight back is to remember.
Which explains why the Communist Party is so against anyone who won’t forget the Tiananmen
massacre.
Like the Tiananmen Mothers, whose children were killed.
Or the people of Hong Kong.
For decades, Hong Kong was the only place in China where people could remember the Tiananmen
Square Massacre.
Every year, they held a vigil.
But now authorities warn that people could be sentenced to five years in prison for doing
that.
So as the years go by, the Chinese Communist Party is getting more and more successful
at treating the Tiananmen Square Massacre as a thing that never happened.
One among many things that never happened.
Let us know what other things you’d like us to talk about in this new series.
The Great Leap Forward?
The Cultural Revolution?
Leave your ideas below.
And now it’s time for me to answer a question from a fan who supports China Uncensored on
the crowdfunding website Patreon.
Bruce Johnson asks "Chris, with Taiwan beginning to take center stage with the CCP's increasing
aggression, is there any chance the US will get serious before a conflict begins?
I realize there would be serious repercussions.
However, if the US is serious about defending the island, getting started now with a new
security agreement including US bases seems like the best bet, rather than reacting AFTER
the fighting begins."
Good question, Bruce.
It seems the US has already begun to take steps to get serious about Taiwan, though
it's in the early stages.
Last August, the US sent the Secretary of Health and Human Services to Taiwan—angering
China.
And the next month, the US sent another high-ranking diplomat—also angering China.
This year in April, the US sent another delegation to Taiwan—further angering China.
The problem with all these visits, though, is that too many idiots in the media frame
this as "angering China," rather than supporting our democratic ally.
And that makes politicians afraid to anger China.
So progress has been slower than it could be.
The US needs to start stationing troops in Taiwan, doing military training with Taiwan,
and having consistent high-level strategic talks with Taiwan.
This might "anger China" in the short term, but actually acts as a deterrent to a Chinese
invasion, since the better prepared the US and Taiwan are for war, the less of a chance
that war will happen.
Hopefully, the current administrations in both countries can see that.
Thanks for your question, Bruce.
And thank you for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.