Chinese Censorship In China

He said it so casually, as if he never gave it a second thought. “It is no big deal. Everyone was there.” How did it take 19 years for this to come out? “Well were you scared?” How was this not one of his back-when-I-was-younger stories? “Not really.” How could he not want to tell us about how he was at Tiananmen Square in 1989? My dad just happened to be apart of one of the most important moments in Chinese history. Yet, he was acting like it was just something he decided to do because he was bored. “Dora, could you pass me a napkin?”
All I ever knew about the incident came from maybe a paragraph in my middle school history textbook. I can still remember the half page of text, that explained, in so many non descriptive words, how there was
a pro-democracy demonstration that ended badly. Here I was, basically an expert on the topic, sitting next to a first hand witness at the dinner table. My mind started going wild with the tidbits of information I was just granted. Not before long, I was picturing a younger and thinner version of my dad as the one, the only, Tank Man. He was a global visual sensation, symbolizing courage, determination, and strength. I remember the first time I saw the image of the nameless Tank Man, with a bag in hand, waving frantically at the tanks while standing absolute in reserve. For all I knew, that was my dad. The world saw him block a row of ginormous tanks who were trying to pass. Now he was sitting in his boxers spooning white rice into his mouth while watching the Celtics game out of the corner of his eye. Tank Man is an easy story to tell. Just Google Tiananmen Square Massacre and Tank Man will be the first photo that pops up. However, there is so much more to June 4th 1989, that the world does not know about. It was horrific, and tragic. Yet, only 27 years later, there is not much that remains in the conscience of the general public except for Tank Man. It feels as if the world has forgotten to care or remember that, “on 3-4 June, units of the People’s Liberation Army entered Tiananmen Square and began forcibly evicting demonstrators. Between 1,000 and 2,600 demonstrators were killed, although estimates vary considerably. Six thousand soldiers reported nonfatal injuries, and un unknown number of civilians were wounded” (Mason). This was not a little rally, that can be brushed off as minimal and inconsequential. But, as time goes by, I cannot help but fear that eventually no one will remember. If those demonstrators, like my father, do not feel compelled to share their story, how can generations to come give the incident the importance it deserves? The sad fact is that, “the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 has been banished from the collective memory of the Chinese people. Or so we are often told. It’s certainly true that many older Chinese don’t want to talk about it, and some young Chinese don’t know what happened” (Wu’er ). Many people commentating on the situation will immediately blame the government for this dilution of history, myself included. When I first started looking for information, the questions I asked were demonizing. Everyone knows the Communist Party of China is corrupt, right? I mean they are communists. They steal all the wealthy’s money. They have these crazy socialistic ideas of controlling everyone. They bulldozed their own people, after all. I was a prosecutor, digging through articles that told me the same thing. In all seriousness, the government is the biggest scapegoat for the submission of the events of Tiananmen Square. Although this is not entirely fair, there is good reason for why they are to blame. At this point, it feels like a broken record to talk about censorship.
However, I must proceed as a conformist and address this part of the media. Westerners tend to look down upon the people of China with pity as we report on all the injustices perpetrated upon them. Indeed, it is shocking that “Chinese Communist party authorities, fearing a threat to their legitimacy, forbid open discussion of the so-called June 4th incident in the country’s media and on its Internet” (China). Especially in the case of Tiananmen Square, the media has proven to be lethal to it’s commemoration. As Wu’er Kaixi, an exiled dissident puts it, “the state-owned media is tightly censored, and anyone who attempts to spread dissident views will be arrested and their family mistreated. It’s no wonder that most Chinese don’t even contemplate speaking out”
(Wu’er). Looking deeper, all the examples I found of censorship did not help to sway my negative view on the Chinese government. A professor of journalism at Shanghai Jiao Tong University writes that “China has censored words such as ‘today’ as an Internet search item…Sina Weibo, the country’s most popular microblog, [censored] ‘tomorrow’, ‘that year’, ‘special day’ ahead of the anniversary of the massacre” (China). The absurdity of the situation does not end here. “According to the Guardian, they have also censored many number combinations that could refer to 4 June 1989, such as 6-4, 64, 63+1, and 35” (China). Like most people, I found this absolutely ridiculous. How bad does a situation have to be for numbers to be censored? Thankfully, people want to preserve the collective memory of China’s history. To accomplish such a goal, users are getting online, and joining in on the game of cat and mouse, not yet willing to lay down and admit defeat. As an act of resistance, “some began quoting a poem by ninth-century literary figure Li Shangyin that includes the line ‘A candle tears do not dry until it has burned down to ash,’ an apparent reference to the disappearance of the candle icon as well as the blocking of the term ‘candle,’ through the poem uses as an older character that wasn’t blocked” (Chin). In addition, “internet users have reacted by using ever-more oblique references to commemorate the tragedy, with many posting pictures, which can often elude automatic detection: a girl with her hand over her mouth; a Lego man facing down three green Lego tanks; the iconic ‘tank man’ picture with its tanks photoshopped into four giant rubber ducks” (China). In essence, the resistance exists. It may not be as large as the Communist Party of China, but the people are putting up a good fight. Based on the experience I have had researching, this part of the story, gets the most attention. Like Tank Man, the topic of censorship in Chinese media, has taken the spotlight away from the demonstration itself. The demonstrations were more than one man standing in front of a line of tanks. In the same way, the massacre and its commemoration is about more than the government and censorship. Ironically, this infatuation for discussing censorship, has turned into sensational journalism for Western media. As a member of the next generation, I believe it is far more productive to independently try and understand what happened, instead of perpetuating the universal commentary on the government’s actions. By doing so, the memory of Tiananmen Square cannot die.
***
I enjoy playing devil’s advocate. It is easy to see the rebels as peaceful students, citizens, and bystanders. It is even easier to see the government as cruel, especially when a Western journalist writes, “one thing seemed clear: there was nothing here that needed the People’s Army to counteract…no one thought there would be shooting, no one carried weapons. Some had face flannels in case of tear gas—the only defense we saw” (Abas). However, most of the time, there are two sides to every story.
Just like their enemy, the students would do anything to win. In fact, “the counter-revolutionary agenda was deliberately cloaked in imprecision and nebulousness, with some student leaders going so far as to say that what they wanted was ‘democracy,’ although they weren’t sure what exactly it was” (Vidyarthi). They seemed to be fighting tooth and nail for something they did not completely understand. The demonstrators, if anything, were passionate, however, their cause may not have had the purest intentions. This does not negate the tragedy of the massacre, but it does shine a light on the nature of the situation and how the demonstrators may have been perceived by their government. In addition, as a Westerner, I must admit that we are not without fault. As Josh Chin, a Wall Street Journal reporter states it “[the western media and the governments of the major capitalist countries] had been proclaiming the demise of communism, and now the events leading up to June 4th gave them much succor” (Vidyarthi). With the help of the West, dissident leaders we're able to alienate communism while fostering the rise of their pro-democracy movement. It did not help the situation that, capitalist media continued to “besmirch the banner of communism by constant allusion to the Chinese government as ‘communist,’ even though all the facts showed its capitalist and indeed, fascist nature” (Vidyarthi). Therefore, the West only added fuel to the fire. Unfortunately, it was the Chinese people who got burned. Nevertheless, Tiananmen Square was a tipping point. Like a balloon begging to pop, the tension was unbearable, and the repercussions of the demonstration showed just how volatile the situation was. The demonstration was a culmination of pent up emotion, “at one point it was estimated that close to half a million people took to the streets in Beijing, and there can be no doubt that this was a reflection of the tremendous hardship and exploitation the Chinese people had endured, particularly in recent years. They took to the streets to vent their anger and frustration against the regime” (Chin). Such a hostile political situation was bound to blow up in the worst way.
Coming from the Communist Party of China’s perspective, the magnitude and scale of the demonstration was dangerous, threatening, and unacceptable. The government was scared, dealing with a situation that “involved not just students but urban workers and even employees of party and government offices. The emergence of this cross-class dissident coalition was a source of grave concern for the CPC leadership and no doubt contributed to their willingness to repress the movement with unprecedented force” (Mason). This is not a valid excuse. This does not make brutal military action acceptable. But, this may reveal why the government acted so aggressively. Now, the government wants to prevent a resurgence. “In the aftermath of Tiananmen Square, China’s leadership implemented a strategy of social control intended to head off a recurrence of those events” (Mason). This strategy is at times progressive, as the government addresses the grievances that their people have, and seem to be working to change them. For example, “by stimulating growth while bringing inflation under control, the party hoped to diminish the material grievances of urban workers and students, thereby discouraging any further dissident coalition between the two groups” (Mason). On the other hand, this strategy also has a tyrannical taint of suppression when it comes to the demonstration itself, and many will say, the CPC is only thinking of their party’s preservation. Turning to propaganda, the CPC wants to guide their people back on the path that the party believes is best fit, by crushing “student and worker organizations, imprisoning dissident leaders, and re-emphasizing political education in the university curriculum and the mass media” (Mason). In the end, they are trying to pretend like June 4th never happened. Out of fear, the CPC is going to extreme measures. “The anniversary of the Tiananmen incidents has made the Chinese leadership quite nervous…death anniversaries always produce unpleasant consequences” (D., G. P.). For that reason, they may be wrong, aggressive, and un-rational, but above all, the CPC is afraid of the potential chaos that could ensue. To many, their measures seem to be motivated by a desire to rewrite history in their favor. “A massive security clampdown is underway, apparently aimed at ensuring that June 4 this year passes unremarked in the capital. This is not amnesia. It is anxiety” (Wu’er ). In trying to have a clean slate, the nation is stuck in the past, in a deadlock, between forgiveness and resentment. Instead of moving forward from the massacre, “no anniversaries, no flowers, no demonstrations was what the Chinese government had decided” (D., G. P.). Such actions do not erase the past, they only further demonize the CPC for being dishonest, untrustworthy, and irresponsible in the eyes of the world. However, if the memory of 1989 does not prevail, the fault will not only be on the government. The only thing one can do that is worse than perpetrating evil, is being the person that stands by while it happens. Politically and economically, China is a huge player in the game. Immediately after the incident, the “People’s Republic of China recovered quickly from the domestic trauma and the international opprobrium brought on by Tiananmen Square…the Chinese state returned to ‘business as usual’ as far as attracting foreign investment is concerned, and China’s major trading partners soon grew silent on the need for sanctions of any sort in response to the repression of dissent” (Mason). Slowly but surely, the headlines were replaced, and the news stations stopped talking about the massacre. It was a gradual shift, but in retrospect, the fade into obsoleteness began extremely early. We have just as much responsibility in preserving history as those who stood on June 4th, 1989. However “within two years of the Tiananmen Square incidents, the whole episode looks so frightfully dated. Nobody is interested in it any longer. The investors are not. The West is not” (D., G. P.). The Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 has endured twenty-seven years of suppression, constant ignorance, and everlasting denial to come to a point where one image and one side of the story is all that is left.
***
He ascended a beat up bus with a megaphone in hand, separating himself from the other students.
Wearing a tucked in white button down shirt that was surprisingly clean after a few days of protesting, my dad blended into the crowd. Yet as he stood up straight on the hood of the bus, everyone could not help but want to listen to what he had to say. With a cigarette smoldering in between his fingers, my dad read one of his poems to the crowd. As he began, the sound of people running interrupted him. Suddenly the square was agitated by a soft vibration. My dad climbed off his makeshift pedestal just in time to catch a glimpse of the tanks getting in formation. He crushed his cigarette with the sole of his worn boot and headed in the direction that everyone was running from. At least that is what I like to
imagine.