I believe you to have the memory of an elephant and am very comfortable with your posts. The question becomes is your Chinese communist esteemed historian as good as you?
You I know to be an honest person yet we are getting different stories. We unfortunately are forced to reach our conclusions by wading knee deep through deceptive texts.
Is this true?
The facts of Tiananmen have been known for a long time. When Clinton visited the square this June, both The Washington Post and The New York Times explained that no one died there during the 1989 crackdown. But these were short explanations at the end of long articles. I doubt that they did much to kill the myth. http://dehai.org/archives/dehai_archive/nov04-jan05/0488.html
The claim that no one was killed in the square itself appears to be generally accepted. Hundreds of people were killed around the square, but when the troops surrounded the square itself, the protesters within the square made the decision to evacuate the square in good order rather than to create a blood bath. This is all well documented by eyewitness accounts of people within the square, and I don't know of anyone that seriously disputes this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
The following appeared today on Google, that bastion of truth. Zhao claims hundreds if not thousands of deaths, the window he uses seems to imply low thousands as the high mark as he starts in the hundreds.
I have no idea where this guy is coming from nor his agenda. Thus I will make a note of his statement but will not take it as truth.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Are these authors reporting of just the Square itself or the surrounding area? Given the nature of the incident I think it easy to reach different conclusions.
What perplexes me is that this heinous affair goes against the Chinese mindset. The Chinese are the most or one of the most private people on the face of the earth. It is ingrained in them. Why would they do this in public, in front of cameras?
Yet they did do something.
-Am
Crackdown on China's little-read book
03jun05
A SECRET manuscript Beijing is desperately trying to stop from being published outlines purged leader Zhao Ziyang's plea for China to abandon one-party rule and follow the path of democracy.
It also airs Mr Zhao's opinion the government blundered in its crackdown on the 1989 democracy protests that led to hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens being killed, the author says.
The sensitive manuscript is now at the centre of the arrest of Hong Kong-based Singapore Straits Times reporter Ching Cheong.
He was detained while trying to obtain a copy of the manuscript that has yet to make its way out of mainland China.
China on Tuesday said Mr Ching was arrested for spying and had confessed.
Its authorities have pressured author Zong Fengming, an old friend of Mr Zhao's, not to publish the book.
The 85-year-old, who compiled the manuscript from conversations he had with Mr Zhao while he was under house arrest, said what makes it so threatening to Beijing is the late Mr Zhao's belief China must have democracy in order to prosper, and economic reforms are simply not enough.
"He said China's development must be on the path of democracy and rule of law. If not, China will be a corrupt society," Mr Zong said.
Mr Zhao, a former premier and secretary general of the Communist Party, was purged in 1989 for opposing the use of force to quell the six-week-long, unprecedented Tiananmen Square democracy protests.
He spent the rest of his life under house arrest and died this year.
His death was limited to a terse few paragraphs in the state-controlled media as part of an official campaign to erase his memory.
Mr Zong, a Chinese "qigong" or meditation master and former colleague of Mr Zhao, was one of the few people who had access to him at his tightly guarded compound in Beijing.
Mr Zong believes the government fears if a book about Mr Zhao's views is published overseas and copies find their way to China, it could have a detrimental effect on the communist regime, making Mr Zhao a hero even in death.
Mr Zhao's views run contrary to the path China's leaders are taking. The Chinese leadership is intent on maintaining one-party rule and quashing dissent or freedom of expression.
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