[ccccppppp]

Or how many Russians don't understand why Ukraine for example is upset.

Is as if propaganda works. Who would have thought.

Once I was discussing with a Chinese colleague and the Tiananmen subject came up (it was in the news, I didn't bring it up), and he told me that the students were not that innocent either, that they killed 150 soldiers the night before. I asked him, how could some students with rocks kill 150 soldiers with machine guns, but he said it was true. As suspected, I couldn't find any reputable sources for this later when I did extensive googling.

[seanmcdirmid]

There is a lot of nuance there. Some soldiers were killed by protesters, but it wasn’t the student protesters rather beijingers who were pissed about the PLA coming into town (the PKU students were already mostly back in their dorms by this point). The soldiers also weren’t armed, this being early and back then they were afraid to just give the soldiers weapons (not all of the PLA agreed with the crackdown). They eventually brought in troops from further away garrisons fully armed that were less sympathetic to the protesters (local garrisons back then were staffed with soldiers from Beijing).

So your colleague wasn’t completely lying, but the truth belies a lot more intrigue. I think this is all in the wiki article.

The biggest problem (at least from the CPC’s point of view) is that the PRC completely lacked non lethal riot suppression capabilities. They literally had nothing in between just standing there unarmed and full on military assault. Afterwards, they built up the PAP (people’s armed police) very quickly, and you can see them often practicing in Beijing.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

It's worrying that our concept of extensive searching relies entirely on one advertising conglomerate.

[spaced-out]

Maybe that's YOUR concept, but not everyone's. If you go to Wikipedia, you can look at citations from a variety of sources, which doesn't depend on Google. You could go to the website of various news organizations and search through their archives, which also does not depend on Google.

[Mengkudulangsat]

Worry not! These days we also have Scihub, which is an absolute eye-opener for me as someone who never bothered with research papers before.

[awakeasleep]

Sean's comment above about 'a lot of nuance' is a huge understatement.

First off, I think China is a corrupt superpower and a huge threat to the USA, and there is no comparison or ambiguity about who the good guys are (the USA).

But the Tiananmen Square thing was severely fucked up. Originally the soldiers were not allowed to fire on civilians, and they were lynched and burned alive. There are lots of photos of the corpses of the soldiers being displayed or placed in conspicuous places by the civilians.

The civilians could kill the soldiers because the soldiers were under orders not to hurt civs.

[cassbot]

As a Chinese American, I've noticed that propaganda is everywhere and we all need to be wary of it.

Tiananmen is often brought up, but did you know that the US experienced a parallel event? I didn't learn about this in US history class, but apparently soldiers fired upon unarmed student protesters in the Kent State shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

[cthalupa]

The Kent State shooting is taught in almost all high school history classes. Not sure how you missed it.

It's also a totally different scale - 4 vs. a number in the hundreds to thousands.

We don't even know the numbers for sure because it's been clamped down so massively, vs. Kent State, where we know exactly what happened.

[PavlovsCat]

Notice how you can link to an US website for a lot of information on it, which in turn is linking to 100+ more. Compare this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings#Memorials... with this https://vimeo.com/44078865

and also compare "Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds" with this, which itself is just a tip of the iceberg: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cth1c0/reposting_...

[seanmcdirmid]

You are free to talk about Kent state, it is covered in a lot of documentaries. There is even a monument at Kent State about it (as opposed to the “nothing happened here 6/4/89” plaque at Tiananmen Square). It isn’t taught in HS history class for the sake reason that Vietnam war is not taught (there is simply too much history and not enough time to cover it all).

A reasonable comparison might be Black Wall Street, but even then discussion about the event isn’t suppressed, just at the time the event was covered up by the local government of the area. But the CCP doesn’t remember the Siege of Changchun either.

[bart_spoon]

Kent State is incredibly famous and covered in the context of the US's wars in Southeast Asia in any US History class. I definitely learned about it in high school. It also isn't actively scrubbed from the internet or other sources of information like Tiananmen square is in China. If you are unaware of Kent State, it isn't due to propaganda or censorship, it is due to your own ignorance.

[Nasrudith]

It is the cover up - not the crime essentially. China shuts down stock markets when they come up with shared dates to Tiananmen Square. The US teaches it in textbooks and acknowledges impacts like radicalizing domestic terrorism groups. If not for premature detonation of an apartment it would have lead to another school massacre of a ROTC in retaliation.

[mythrwy]

Ya but see, you can post that and we can talk about it.

That's the difference.

[AFascistWorld]

Wow, don't know where you got your education, but that's some cheesy argument, it's not even worth wasting time to reason with you.