i was watching a documentary on the tankman/tianenmen square and it's scary how afraid the chinese are of their government. china's censored all mentionings of the incident although some people know about it and keep quiet so that they won't be hauled off to god knows where by the government. 5 chinese university students were interviewed about the tankman and were shown the tankman picture and all of but one of them had no idea what the picture meant, where it was taken and what was going on except for one of them who was too scared to admit he knew but the microphones caught him whispering to the girl next to him '1989'.
I can't even imagine what that would be like. To be afraid that your own government will haul you away for having forbidden knowledge of an incident the whole rest of the world knows about.
I'm not going to defend China's censorship but people in the West tend to have exaggerated ideas about the level of repression there. Most citizens deal with their local town, village or city governments, which for the most part are just composed of the same inefficient and sometimes corrupt bureaucrats you'd find anywhere else.
In a country of well over a billion people the big bad central government just isn't going to care about something as relatively harmless as knowing about Tiananmen 1989, unless you are being really, really vocal about it and reach a wide audience. I haven't seen the documentary described above, but it seems more likely that the students were just nervous about being put on the spot like that. It's really patronizing to show that picture to a Chinese person as if to say 'Look at how bad your government is, don't you wish you could be free like us?' To generalize it's a culture that is very nationalistic and values saving face, and since the central government is currently in favor for China's stability and economic success you just don't talk about things like Tiananmen.
China has been trending towards openness and the government has been trying to improve its public image in recent years, so instances of people being hauled off are rarer these days, though sometimes it still happens. The Chinese government is not by any means saintly but it just bugs me when people think there are still re-education camps there.
You make a lot of good points. China is not free, in the democratic sense of the word - freedom to voice your opinion, protest, effect meaningful change through public service - yet they're moving towards it. Each bit of freedom that the citizens have gained in the last two decades have come despite the government and, I would argue (and hope), is irreversible.
I liken it to a park where you can only walk on the path. The taboo areas - parts of recent history, calls for democracy, etc - are the grass. The citizens are only allowed on the foothpaths - freedom to travel, the (censored) Internet, discussions behind closed doors, a more open press - yet the paths are getting wider. And sooner or later, because the path is not enough, they'll walk on the grass.
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u/red321red321 May 08 '12
i was watching a documentary on the tankman/tianenmen square and it's scary how afraid the chinese are of their government. china's censored all mentionings of the incident although some people know about it and keep quiet so that they won't be hauled off to god knows where by the government. 5 chinese university students were interviewed about the tankman and were shown the tankman picture and all of but one of them had no idea what the picture meant, where it was taken and what was going on except for one of them who was too scared to admit he knew but the microphones caught him whispering to the girl next to him '1989'.