Comment by akfanta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akfanta | Hacker News Reader

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"It is very hard to figure out what happened exactly" - This is exactly the reason why I am very skeptical about all these articles. Growing up in China, I first learned about this on Wikipedia back in the days when it was not blocked. I was furious about it back then. The fact that I had to learn this from Wikipedia for the first time just made it even worse. I tried a lot to collect more information about this. Most of the stuff I found was pointing fingers at the government and military. Being young and naive, I full-heartedly trust every single piece of it.

Now I live in Canada and have stayed outside of the Chinese censorship for almost 6 years now. My opinion have changed quite a lot. I used to believe the idea of communism brainwashing, but now I have a feeling that this sort of brainwashing and censorship goes both ways. Remember the famous tank man? It's one of the important icon of this event and was marked as a symbol of the Chinese government's oppression and brutality. That image/video was widely spread in the western medias. The majority of the public believe he was rolled over by the tank, because you know, Chinese government are evil. The full video was posted earlier on Reddit. Many was shocked to find out that the tank tried to drive around him and eventually stopped until the tank man was pulled away by someone else. Why the mainstream media never showed the full video to the public? Because it contradicted with the brutal image of Chinese government/military that they were trying to portrait to the public. Propaganda is a funny thing. Bearing stereotype and ignorance, both side will hold a strong belief that they are right.

I am by no means saying Chinese government is innocent. They pretty evil imo. I am just trying to say is that it is very hard to figure out what really happened now that both sides are extremely biased and ignorant towards the other end. I personally believe there were students killed and injured during the military intervention, but I am strongly skeptical against the massacre claim as there was no solid evidence so far. The truth probably lies somewhere in between the stories.

I was here in the US during Tiananmen. The western media at the time reported the full story about the "tank man", and that he was pulled away. No western outlet (that I can recall) ever asserted that he was crushed by the tank. They were showing the utterly remarkable video on a loop, constantly - the tank trying to drive around him, but not being willing to run over him. So it's not so much explicitly censorship, as much as the fact that through the lens of time, that fuller story is not really told.

I agree that there is a lot of bias and ignorance from both sides.

But concerning the example you bring up, I remember having watched the video with the tank stopping and trying to go around the man several years ago (I believe in '89 but I can't be sure). In particular, I don't remember that there was even a period when I thought that the tank went over the man - the video of the tank's attempted maneuver is still very vivid in my memory. On the other hand, I never believed that the people pulling the man away were helping him. I have always assumed that they were arresting him. Of course I could be wrong.

One thing people tend to forget is China lucked out in some ways by 9/11. On April 1st, 2001, less than three months after Bush became president, he sent a US plane to the Chinese border, it rammed into a Chinese pilot's plane, killing him, then landed on Chinese soil without permission. Then the US government and press went crazy because the Chinese went in to inspect the plane. Continual press reports about how "we can see with satellites them looking at our plane and technology".

Luckily for the Chinese, all this warmongering ended five months later when the guy who the US armed to overthrow Afghanistan's secular government crashed into the Pentagon etc. because he opposed US bases on Saudi soil.

In all the mawkish tributes to the dead in the Pentagon and changed focus to Afghanistan and the Middle East, the Chinese got about a decade's breathing room from US imperialism. Of course the US is now redeploying to the Philippines and so forth, so that is changing again.

> Luckily for the Chinese, all this warmongering ended five months later when the guy who the US armed to overthrow Afghanistan's secular government crashed into the Pentagon etc. because he opposed US bases on Saudi soil.

The best part of this whole story is that the day the infamous "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" photo was taken, the US was complying with the terrorists' key demand and pulling all troops out of Saudi Arabia. Someone's mission was definitely accomplished that day.

the whole event was somewhat manipulated by western forces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8OnM3heTO4

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