BEIJING, May 31, 2009
Return To Tiananmen Square, 20 Years Later
Some Things Have Changed Since China's Bloody Crackdown On Demonstrators In 1989, Including The Dreams Of Democracy
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Photographer Jeff Widener's iconic image of the Chinese government's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. The lone figure has been dubbed the Tank Man. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)
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Play CBS Video Video Anniversary Of Chinese Tragedy Barry Petersen looks back 20 years to China's pro-democracy student uprising that ended in tragedy.
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Video Remembering Tiananmen Square In his reporter's notebook, CBS News correspondent Richard Roth provides a firsthand account of the massacre of pro-Democracy students in China's Tiananmen Square, 20 years after the tragedy.
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Interactive Focus On China Explore the history, people and economy of China, the world’s most populous nation.
Looking for democracy in China? You can find it by millions voting on their cell phones in a Chinese version of "American Idol," choosing to ignore the paradox that the citizens of the world's most populous nation are free to vote for a singer … but not for their own leaders.
How distant from 20 years ago when students took over the heart of their nation's capital, Tiananmen Square, demanding reforms of all kinds, under the gaze of a statue they called the Goddess of Democracy.
Attracting support from millions in all walks of life gave students the bravery to go face-to-face with their leaders, thinking their cause could bring change.
It's a page of history written largely by coincidence: The world press was actually in Beijing to cover a summit between the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev and China's Deng Xiao Ping.
And yet there we were - reporting on a nation unraveling.
China's leaders soon realized that not only were they losing face … they were losing control of the streets.
Twenty years later, it now seems clear that what brought these people to the square was less about democracy as we know it - free speech or elections - and about more fundamental demands.
(CBS)
In 1989, the Chinese Communist Party was so domineering it controlled virtually every aspect of day-to-day life.
Princeton professor emeritus Perry Link, who's spent his career studying modern China, said, "You have to get permission of your work leader to move, to have children, to get married. All these personal freedoms were constricted.
"And there was a sense that this party system that's been with us for three or four decades now, is holding us back. That was what really fueled the movement."
To Western onlookers, it seemed as if a new China was taking-shape in the square. But behind closed doors, party leaders felt their political survival was in grave danger.
And so in the early hours of June 4, China's hardliners ended the two-month old movement by killing their young.
(CBS)
Jeff Widener (left), then working for the Associated Press, took pictures through the night and came back the next day to snap one more image from a balcony.
"This is a nice compressed shot of tanks coming," he recalled, "and this guy walks out." Widener thought, "'This guy is going to screw up my picture.'"
The result: An image now known simply as the Tank Man.
"Why do you think that image resonated around the world?" Petersen asked.
"Well, it's David and Goliath," Widener said.
(CBS)
Sheng is called the "Four Finger Artist" - after the Tiananmen massacre, he cut off a finger as a kind of protest, then fled to London, where he first saw the Tank Man picture.
Now back in China, his artwork mocking state power might have gotten him arrested in 1989. But China has changed just enough that, today, the authorities don't bother him. Still …
"I can tell you're nervous about talking to us about this," Petersen said.
"Yeah, but I still talk," he laughed.
"Why do you still talk, then? You have courage?"
"Little bit."
Indeed, the Tank Man image and others from Tiananmen Square remain censored in China - as are Internet sites about the events.
(Red Gate Gallery)
The result: Most people here have never seen this iconic picture.
What they have seen is increasing prosperity across their country.
That may explain why few people expect any new uprising here on Tiananmen Square. The party eased its control over people's daily lives, as the protestors wanted, and in exchange for keeping its power … it let the country get rich.
The deal worked. In a generation, says the World Bank, China lifted 500 million out of poverty.
"If you're repressed for a long time and then suddenly it's said, 'Okay, on this side you can go whole hog but not this,' well, of course you go where you can go," said Perry.
"The hallmark of the new generation that's been educated since the '90s is to shut up about ideals and pursue your own self interest."
And self interest means letting the Communist Party rule ... and letting go of the dreams that 20 years ago - if only for a brief time - so many believed could come true.
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- Interesting comparisons:
1> 20 years ago, a few powerful people in the Chinese government ordered army to crush peaceful demonstrations by millions ordinary citizens. At least hundreds were brutally killed. Today, the Chinese government still refuses to let the world know the death toll. No one has been punished for the massacre.
6 years ago, a few powerful people in the US government used made-up 'facts' to invade Iraq that has nothing to do with the 9.11. Thousands of Americans and perhaps much more Iraqis have lost their lives. Today, the US government still refuses to reveal the death toll of Iraqis. No one has been punished for starting the unjustified war.
2> The government controlled schools don't tell students the truth of 6.4. Today, young Chinese know little about what happened in Beijing 20 years ago.
Many people and some schools in the US want to stop teaching evolution. They only want kids to believe the Earth is a few thousand years old and everything was created by a single God.
3> The economy in China is booming. Many become very rich by bribing officials so that the government ignores hundreds of death each year in illegal mines, thousands of under age workers in sweat-shops, and unwanted ingredients in foods for profit. Crooks and corrupted officials are enjoying piling cash at their homes. Very few are held responsible for these crimes.
The housing market in the US was booming and the country was occupied by wars and terrorists. Many corporate executives and crooks on the Wall street became very rich by inflating the market with derivatives, selling mortgages to those who couldn't afford, back-dating their stock options, hiding their profits in off-shore banks, awarding themselves with taxpayers' bail-out money, etc, etc. The looting finally caused the US and world financial systems to collapse, leaving many financially responsible law-abiding citizens to suffer the consequences. Very few crooks are held responsible for their actions.
4> After 6.4, many reporters and citizens in China have been beaten or put into jail. Some even lost their lives for telling the truth of 6.4 or for revealing illegal activities by corrupted government officials. Their websites have been shut down. They have been silenced.
After 9.11, the media and some journalists in the US censored themselves because they didn't want to be labeled as unpatriotic. One guy did speak out the truth and his family member's CIA identity was leaked to public. A federal grand jury indicted and convicted a White House official on related charges in the following investigation but the President took the jury conviction as a joke and ordered the convicted felony to be released on the same day... - Reply to this comment
- I truly believe that the 'tank man' is a real hero, you need courage to look into a tank's gun and stay put, but I also believe that there is a second hero, the man driving the tank, he didn't face a tank but a court martial, in a not very nice fashion. What happened to him? I'd like to know. So let's call them the 'tank men'
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- alphaa10000 said "Your comment ignores scores of eyewitnesses who saw soldiers firing into the crowd, who watched people fall to the ground, some bleeding, and saw bodies of the dead and dying, many of which were left behind."
Yes, there was soldiers firing into the crowd and people died, one of the place where alot of people died was at Muxidi Bridge west of Tiananmen square. Barricades was set up to stop the tanks. In a couple of cases when the tanks got stopped by these barricades, the soldiers were pulled out from the tanks by the protesters beaten and even killed. So the next wave of soldiers used guns to disburse the crowds. By the time the tanks actually rolled into Tiananmen square, the Student protesters left peacefully and nobody died there. - Reply to this comment
- I would ask a simple question of what the 'tank man' means to you. The Western media including cbsnews glorify this tank man as some kind of iconic symbol of david vs goliath. He didn't stop any tanks going thru Tiananmen Square. He didn't invent a better light bulb. He didn't even save any lives. Yet the Western media portray this unknown person as the 'lone hero' , the Chinese Media would probably dismiss this person as the tank driver was nice enough not to run over this guy.
So many of you in think that many Chinese are dumb and don't know about the Tiananmen Square Incident. They know more than you think about the 'June 4th incident' starting with that there was nobody killed at Tianammen Square in June 4, but people died in the surrounding areas of Beijing. - Reply to this comment
- What is the matter with you people?
Posted by mjinba07 at 3:51 PM : May 31, 2009
What the matter with you? Huh? What the matter? What the matter? What the matter? Aaaaa! Ha Ha Ha Ha - Reply to this comment
- oiaf17 what is the matter with you?
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- What is the matter with you people?
- Reply to this comment
- If you took EVERY job in the US and CANADA and shipped it to CHINA , THEY would still have a SURPLUS of workers! GOT ANY IDEA OF WHERE WE ARE HEADED!
Posted by eyesC at 9:57 AM : May 31, 2009
Obama don' t know, so he will try it and see. - Reply to this comment
- Obama is a faillure. Obama want to make America like China. He hate America.
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- The Communist Chinese government is exploiting its people and resources to acquire the wealth that is only distributed among the Communist elite. While a few Chinese are enjoying the China's new wealth, the majority of the Chinese people live as paupers and peasants.
Posted by veils-2009 at 2:47 PM : May 31, 2009
Obama and Pelosi want the same plan in America. They call it free trade. - Reply to this comment
- CBS failed to mention how Dan Rather was at Tiananmen during this tragedy and risked his life to get the footage out of that country.
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- What does making money have to do with Tienanmen Square? The Communist Chinese government is exploiting its people and resources to acquire the wealth that is only distributed among the Communist elite. While a few Chinese are enjoying the China's new wealth, the majority of the Chinese people live as paupers and peasants. They are treated no more better than those China has enslaved in Tibet
Free Tiber! Free the Chinese from the dark clouds of the aristocracy of its "Communistic" government. - Reply to this comment
- I am appalled to say that we have and we let the govt do it. I can see it coming.
Posted by barbaram99 at 11:17 AM : May 31, 2009
Bye-bye America. - Reply to this comment
- What your reporter fails to mention is that the wealth that was created as mostly for the elite both in China and here in the US as Chicago School advocates of Milton Friedman convinced the Chinese leadership to sell off the government owned corporations. Which they did...to friends and relatives who all made off with billions
Posted by bjdzyak at 8:27 AM : May 31, 2009
Now GM CEO made off wilth billions thanks to Pelosi.
Obama is a failure. But Amerians no protest. Americans no have courage to protest. Amerians are sheep.
Bye-bye America. - Reply to this comment
- Everybody acts like making money were a crime. Why?
Posted by edward761 at 11:17 AM : May 31, 2009
Nothing wrong with making money, edward761, just using money and commercialism as a way of pacifying the citizens of our country out of participating politically and demanding a real democracy.
sprowlindak at 11:46 AM : May 31, 2009, I don't think our Congress is ignorant at all. We've let our government corruption get so out of hand that by the time the Bush administrations came along it seemed they felt they could just do whatever they darn well pleased... Even openly.
That level of arrogance is in direct proportion to the complacency of the general population. Why else would they tell us a pack of lies, which were provable as lies, and have been proven lies, in order to invade Iraq?
Heck, Cheney is still out there getting air time and he doesn't even have a JOB in politics anymore. And nary a word is said or heard about that lying, or the changes in FCC regulations that pulled the rug out from getting objective news, or even real news, from "news" media. Nary a word about what those things mean about our so-called democracy.
Our economic trouble has been coming for a long time. In part, it's connected to the fact that for the large we're part in a global economy now, yet we still live here like kings compared to the rest of the world.
So while we wring our hands over things like the fate of that brave Chinese fellow standing in front of the tanks, or the genocide in Darfur, or the unimaginable strength of drug cartels in Mexico, we're still willing to be hypnotized by pro sports, fancy gadgets, big houses and the promise of continuing to drive our Escalades and Tundras and F-350s.
My hope is that this economic crisis wakes us up as Americans. My fear is that as long as we enjoy a certain standard of living we don't really care about things like democracy, sustaining checks and balances, global relations, or whether our grandchildren will have a tolerable future at all. - Reply to this comment
- Journalist talent is lacking ... the whole story is about Tiananmen Square mass protest of college students who were slaughtered by the Chinese Communist Government and what a horrible tragedy the loss of sooo many of their brightest young people. However, the article doesn't mention how many were slaughtered ... not even a range of deaths which was what shocked US. And, as Rich asked, what happened to the little guy who stood up against the tanks? Who is he? Knowing the facts is essential in understanding China, then and now.
It's good to have a President who focuses on the middle-class not just the rich for a CHANGE. In the beginning of US there were no parties, just the People. I think we're better off without the 2-party system as it creates hatred and violence among our own.
When we 'shut up about ideals and pursue our own interests' we shut down what is most important about being human .. As we are all brothers and sisters of the same family, when one is suffering we all suffer ... acknowledged or not.
Brian's comment is worth repeating, "The bravery and courage the young Chinese man demonstrates in this picture is incredible. It shows to the world that people still have the power to rise up and defy tyranny. This message must be made clear in the minds of the leaders of all nations that we the people do have a point we will not be pushed beyond. Blood has run in the streets through out world history for these very reasons, lets hope we will not have to experience that again." We the People were certainly naive and ignorant about what was going on behind closed doors of Bush Administration ... who woulda thought? We thought the structure of checks-and-balances would have prevented such a catastrophic economic crash but it didn't .. was our Congress as ignorant as the rest of US? If the Democratic Administration can pull US out of this mess, it is nothing short of miraculous. So much for Republican 'centralized' government ... - Reply to this comment
- The hope of having a government for the people by the people. Instead China's government is in reality an aristocracy.
Democracy in China is not a dead idea. The heads of the communist party is constantly applying fear and prosecution to any person or party who openly supports democracy. These pr democracy advocates in China often disappear without a trace or are falsely imprisoned.
Don't believe it? I dare any visitor of Tienanmen Square to try to leave a small statue of liberty there. - Reply to this comment
- I ' member that. It was on TV. How the years fly. I was appalled at the way their govt treated them. I was floored. I can't understand a govt that controls the people like that. Not to hurt any one I can't understand that tthey can't enjoy the freedom that Americans take for .granted. I don't take it for granted. I am trully scared that the US of A will fall to that and has has to some degress. I am appalled to say that we have and we let the govt do it. I can see it coming.
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- Another anniversary for anti-property psychos to rant about their own agendas instead of the actual news item described.
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- If you took EVERY job in the US and CANADA and shipped it to CHINA , THEY would still have a SURPLUS of workers! GOT ANY IDEA OF WHERE WE ARE HEADED!
- Reply to this comment
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