Zhao Ziyang
Today 20 years ago in the infamous TianAnMen Square in Beijing China, it was a day where the bloodbath of hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese students, civilians happened. It was an incident that changed the face of the Chinese government in the eyes of the world. Though its brutal, I've got my own views of it. Before I start my own interpretation of it, let's see some main figures during the incident.
Important Facts:
REUTERS - China's 1989 pro-democracy movement split the Communist Party leadership and triggered a power struggle that ended in a bloody crackdown on student protesters in the pre-dawn hours of June 4 that year.
Following are brief profiles of government leaders and key members of the protest movement at the time:
* DENG XIAOPING, then the power behind the throne in China, sent in tanks and troops to crush the student-led demonstrations for democracy centred on Beijing's Tiananmen Square. He died on Feb. 19, 1997, aged 92, after reviving the economy with a dramatic tour of the south in 1992.
* ZHAO ZIYANG was toppled as China's Communist Party chief after challenging Deng's decision to crush the protests. Zhao died in Beijing in 2005, after 15 years under house arrest. His secret memoirs were published last month.
* JIANG ZEMIN rose from Communist Party boss of Shanghai, where he ended parallel protests without bloodshed, to oust Zhao as national Party chief in 1989. Jiang held on to power for 13 years before retiring in 2002.
* LI PENG is known as the "Butcher of Beijing" for declaring martial law on national television days before the crackdown. Reviled by many, Li remained premier until 1998. Writing in retirement, Li has reportedly sought to clear his name, but the Party has banned publication of his memoirs.
* HU JINTAO, now China's top leader, was Party secretary in Tibet in 1989. He declared martial law in Lhasa in March 1989, following clashes between Tibetan protesters and police.
* WEN JIABAO, Zhao's chief of staff, accompanied him to Tiananmen Square when Zhao tearfully appealed to students to leave. Zhao was ousted, but Wen became premier in 2003.
* BAO TONG, Zhao's top aide, was the most senior official jailed for sympathising with the protesters. Still under constant police surveillance, he is now a critic of China's human rights record and the slow pace of political reform.
* WANG DAN, then a 20-year-old Peking University history major, was a high-profile student leader. Jailed twice, he was released into exile in 1998. Wang is now a guest researcher at Oxford University and chairman of the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association. He has not been allowed back to China.
* CHAI LING, then a 23-year-old psychology student, urged students to stay in Tiananmen Square rather than accept a negotiated withdrawal in May 1989. She escaped China after 10 months in hiding, graduated from Harvard Business School and is now chief operating officer of Jenzabar, a Boston-based firm that develops Internet portals for universities.
* WU'ER KAIXI, then a 21-year-old Uighur, was a hunger striker who rebuked then-premier Li Peng on national television. He fled to France and then studied at Harvard University, but came under attack for his extravagant lifestyle in exile. He now works at an investment firm in Taiwan, and China rejected his request to return to visit his ageing parents.
* FANG LIZHI, a professor of astrophysics, inspired Chinese intellectuals in the mid-1980s by declaring science should not be determined by Marxist theory. He sought and was granted political asylum in the United States and is now a physics professor at the University of Arizona.
* LIU XIAOBO, a literary critic, led hunger strikes on Tiananmen Square and was subsequently jailed. He was the most prominent of the signatories of "Charter 08", a manifesto calling for more rights, freedom of speech and multi-party elections. He was detained before its December release and is held in an undisclosed location near Beijing.
* HAN DONGFANG, then a 27-year-old railway worker, helped set up the Beijing Autonomous Workers' Federation, the first independent trade union in communist-ruled China, during the 1989 protests. Imprisoned and exiled, Han is now in Hong Kong where he runs China Labour Bulletin, a non-governmental organisation that seeks to defend the rights of Chinese workers.
Source: Reuters, 4th June 2009 (accessed 4th June 2009)
A View of the happening 20 years ago:
My point of view:Personally, though this act of shooting own citizen is brutal, I felt there is a need for this act to be conducted and for sure, someone has to bear the responsibility. And for this, LiPeng has been labelled the Beijing Butcher as he is the one who ordered the martial law.
The Chinese government since those days has been growing in the direction of a 'hybrid' government, a mix of socialist government with a bit of democracy. There is a need to supress this uprising with force to serve as a hard lesson for everyone to learn. China has come a LONG way to progress to what it is now today, thanks to its central government system, where redtape of democracy is avoided. After the mass killing of protestors 20 years ago, there is no further uprising ever since! This means that the act is effective. One thing we always have to remember in mind. Without such brute force, China wont be able to maintain the country with 6billion population in order untill today. For me, this act of ruling with force sometimes is necessary to show that the government is really in control of the nation. What democracy for people, is all rubbish. Which election is not being 'bought' by money? Look at our own nation. Money politics is spilling out even from mouth of politician. Money as bait luring politicians to jump party. Such a shame!..
We really need a 'hybrid' government to maintain order in such a huge country.
Which government in this world has not conducted such a mass killing before?Even the Americans who advocates human rights done more mass killing in the name of peace! From Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, how many innocents had the US killed directly or indirectly? In addition, its foreign business, not even their own!
Throughout human civilization, blood need to be shed in order of maintaining peace. The same occurs to every nation. Its a mere process we have to go through. China is clever not to open the doors to foreign widely by fullfilling these students demands as it knows that they are not ready for it.Being invaded, humiliated since the the fall of the Qing dynasty, CHina has enough of bowing down to foreign powers. To stand up strong and have negotiating power, the nation must be strong from within. A split nation cant even stand by its own, what more to negotiate with others? It takes them years to build self fulfilling economy before opening their doors to others and this makes them a low leveraged nation, low in debts as compared to the Americans! Chinese Banks are rich, packed with cash unlike Americans and Western Banks which are packed with unbalanced balance sheets, packed with debts.
I am not agreeing nor objecting the act of the Chinese government back then. But then, I guess without the supression that the Chinese government has done 20 years ago, things would be much different now. China will be held back for much of its development due to unfair and corrupted election process. I guess we should just take this as a blood shed for the progress of China.
THe dead wont be risen. Face the fact of those who has perished in that incident although it is a hard one to face especially those who has lost their loved ones. What we can do more effectively is to do things in a more 'powerful' way instead of taking the streets..and let history repeats itself.
The Military Rule and Malaysia
We should be glad enough to have peace and stability in our nation. We certainly dont need any brutal ruling method as like what happened in China 20 years back. But then, it seems that our people are getting restless as well as our elected representatives or what known to be MPs. Having different parties, be it ruling or opposition, havocs start to wreak around the nation with Perak being the highlight of the nation with a political chaos.
Do we really need something what happened in TianAnMen 20 years ago to take place in Malaysia to shut these people up and get our elected MPs back in their seat and start to advocate for the sake of people's benefit instead of trying to shout in streets, going on hunger strikes, going in and out of police station cells and topple the ruling government? That's really unmatured way of doing things. That's what students in China did 20 years back. Our MPs are merely repeating, mimicking their act!! That's really how 'young' we are in terms of civilisation!
The Ultimate Aim of Whatever government system is Peace and Prosperity. That's what people wants and we dont give a damm on who is ruling. Wake UP my dear MPs. Stop being a 'circus' around the nation, entertaining people where they find it not funny but annoying! Do things in a more matured way.... TianAnMen 1989 is a clear history that things wont work through shouting , hunger strike and camping in streets.
Even polls have been recently released regarding such a statement. People dont care who is ruling. The important thing is carrying out their job and bring the nation towards progress.
Zhao Zi Yang - The Ghost of TianAnMen
* ZHAO ZIYANG was toppled as China's Communist Party chief after challenging Deng's decision to crush the protests. Zhao died in Beijing in 2005, after 15 years under house arrest. His secret memoirs were published last month.
A book of his journal was recently released after his death in 17th January 2005. Published last month, Prisoner of State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang provides an intimate look at one of the world's most opaque regimes during some of modern China's most critical moment.
*Read Time 25th May 2009 - TianAnMen Ghosts. Twenty years after China's tragedy, a secret journal reveals new details of the power struggle that led to the massacre at:
