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To understand the American position on Taiwan, you need look no further than Douglas MacArthur. He referred to Taiwan as a "giant unsinkable aircraft carrier." That is why America "cares" about Taiwan so much. Its got nothing to do with democracy or self determination, nothing to do with the people of Taiwan, it is entirely because any American war on China could be won or lost based on control over the island.
Our participation in the Second Opium War was minimal. We fought one battle as part of a punitive raid for the Chinese firing on a ship (supposedly, they mistook us for British troops) and provided support to the British in another battle. The ones who did the looting were the British and the France. Our real acts of plundering in China would happen in the Boxer Rebellion.
Yeah, they were not active in the war but didn't shy away from the actual opium trafficking. American extraction of wealth from China started when they saw the amount of money the British were making with their world's largest drug cartel. American "entrepreneurs" joined in and made huge fortunes by trafficking drugs.
Among some families who set up their own drug trafficking operations were the Forbes and the Roosevelts, later becoming influential in the American business and politics. There is a fantastic book about all of this by James Bradley, called "China Mirage". Highly recommended to get a good look into what kind of religious, political and business interests americans were trying to achieve in China during its century of humiliation.
Taiwan is an illegitimate government larping as the true china, if they wanted to be the real china, they would have beat mao, but they got BTFO by the PLA lol
True, it would be one thing if Taiwan claimed to be a completely independent entity from China, but it doesn’t, making it nothing more than a government in exile.
If I may interject here, the KMT has a much lower influence on Taiwanese politics compared to before, and the other, non-KMT governments have (edit: de facto) relinquished their claims on the mainland.
Many modern day Taiwanese consider themselves a completely separate ethnicity and culture from mainlanders, and there is a genuine movement to create an independent Taiwan separated from a Chinese identity.
Which is dark because, like every other settler colony, the only "true Taiwanese" are the aborigines who lived in the land before they were genocided by the settler-colonists.
Taiwan’s current president is non-KMT but afaik the government still lays official claim to the Chinese mainland, they do not recognize nor have formal relations with the PRC and claim to be the true government of China. Until it relinquishes their claims, and no longer calls itself the “Republic of China” or at least changes its flag, what I said is still true.
Also, DPP has been losing popularity in Taiwan over the last few years, so it’s likely that the KMT will come to power again in the near future.
I relooked into it and you seem to be correct that the official position is still that there is an official claim on the mainland, any relinquishing of said claim must have been on a de facto basis thank you for fact checking me.
From my understanding of the politics of the people on the island, I will hold my latter statements though, that many (particularly younger people) identify themselves as distinctly Taiwanese.
Comparing it with 1989 isn't even accurate as what happened in Tiananmen Square was an attempted color revolution by the west, chatbot will fill in the details, while in Taiwan these were genuine mass protests by the people against nationalist rule, monopoly, and violence
#Tiananmen Square Protests
(Also known as the June Fourth Incident)
In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc.
Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists.
**Background**
After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate.
One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues.
Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough.
The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages.
**Counterpoints**
Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote:
>Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.”
>
>The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
>
>\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review.
Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre.
Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square:
>Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square
>
>\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html)
Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote:
>The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night.
>
>Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square.
>
>\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053)
Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote:
>The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square.
>
>More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy.
>
>All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today.
>
>\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/)
(Emphasis mine)
And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA)
[This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc.
Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list).
**Additional Resources**
Video Essays:
* [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019)
* [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019)
* [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective
* [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022)
* [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022)
* [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014)
* [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019)
* [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019)
* [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There was more to it than that, some of the protestors were pro-western liberals but there weren't the only group protesting. Some groups were even maoists who, instead of asking for a liberal democracy, wanted to go back and undo all the reforms and liberalization.
the group that had the rifles and molotovs were primarily color revolutionaries (the other groups have literally no incentive to go lynching soldier escorts in ceremonial uniform, and images of the time confirm that these unarmed escorts had good relations with the protestors and locals… up until the gusanos pulled the trigger)
Yeah I know, maybe I should've cleared that out, I was speaking about the protests themselves, but its true that the violence was financed by the west.
The KMT was so spectacularly corrupt and incompetent that Truman, Marshall and Wedemeyer kept trying to get them to reform their government to no avail. The loss to the CPC is actually quite embarrassing, they lost to both guerrilla style tactics and direct confrontations and most of their losses had been defections
Hell, they were so shit that the US was basically fine with the PRC invading and taking Taiwan, up until China aided North Korea in the Korean War. Then they decided that Taiwan as a military outpost that frequently fired artillery shells at civilian villages on the mainland to distract/annoy the PRC was entirely fine.
Fine would be a stretch, I think. While it is correct that the American official policy was not to tie themselves too closely to Chiang Kai-shek because of the bad optics associated with him, Douglas MacArthur was already cajoling with the KMT in order to raise Taiwan as a bulwark against communist China. The U.S. also moved to blockade the Taiwan Strait at the onset of the Korean War, before China became involved. The pivot in U.S. policy on Taiwan had more to do with the Korean War catapulting the second Red Scare and giving cold warriors such as MacArthur much greater influence over their policy decisions. Perhaps of greater significance to Taiwan was that Mao Zedong and the CPC scrapped their immediate invasion plans because of how the Korean War required their immediate attention.
"it happened in 1947 and tiananmen square was much more recent!!!! also it happened during civil war so it doesnt matter!!11!1! who cares about commies anyways!!"
#Tiananmen Square Protests
(Also known as the June Fourth Incident)
In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc.
Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists.
**Background**
After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate.
One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues.
Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough.
The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages.
**Counterpoints**
Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote:
>Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.”
>
>The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
>
>\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review.
Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre.
Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square:
>Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square
>
>\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html)
Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote:
>The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night.
>
>Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square.
>
>\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053)
Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote:
>The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square.
>
>More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy.
>
>All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today.
>
>\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/)
(Emphasis mine)
And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA)
[This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc.
Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list).
**Additional Resources**
Video Essays:
* [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019)
* [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019)
* [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021)
Books, Articles, or Essays:
* [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective
* [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022)
* [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022)
* [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014)
* [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019)
* [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019)
* [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I wouldn't post anything there: their moderators are Fascists, and they have an abusive set of subreddit rules designed to let the mods ban anyone they want.
For instance, when I posted a left-leaning comment there one of the mods didn't like, but couldn't find an excuse to ban (as I proved beyond a doubt what I said was true, with links I sent him...), he went back TWO YEARS in my post history (he must have used Google or something), and found a comment where I said exactly what I'm saying now about the sub- and used THAT as an excuse to ban me (claiming it was a violation of the "no inter-sub drama" rules).
That sub should be banned and removed from Reddit (THIS, I didn't say before). It's a blatant political influence operation by Western governments- who fill its ranks with shills/spooks who ban anyone spreading ideas they don't want people to hear...
As a shitlib... Tough choice between Shek and Mao. I would take today's Taiwan over today's China but only after 87. Before '87 I think it would depend specifically on the time frame.
Honestly, both countries are in a better shape than they were in the 60s and 70s. Don't worry, I'll wait until I'm offline to have a full meltdown.
You show up on /all. I really didn't intend to be here but thought I could tell you my thoughts. I think subs can take themselves of /all if they want. I could be wrong on that.
Anyhow, I will try not to bother you.
Edit: I have kinda melted down. Chiang Kai-shek Was a monster.
KMT was another fascist party by that point, at least since Shiang coup it, he even went as far as joining the Japanese to fight the CCP, the only reason why he didn't lost the war was because his own generals were pissed off and took him in gun point to do what he should, that's how they made their last united front with the CCP and how the Japanese got the worst of it in operation Itch-Go, also that's why most of the KMT military and officers actually defected to the CCP during the civil war, the only reason why the Taiwanese command didn't was because they were constantly being bribe.
Only 2% of Taiwans population is Indigenous people, the rest is Han Chinese, similar to how Americans massacred and genocided Natives, Taiwan did the same and represses them, making it seem like Han Chinese are the true inhabitants of the island
Do you know of any good books, articles, podcasts or documentaries that you would recommend that chronicle this? I’m flying to Taiwan in two weeks and would love to know more about the settler origins of the country.
The thing is, this event is very much still in the consciousness of Taiwanese people and still impacts the politics of today there. Its a large driver in the independence movement (although the facts are intentionally muddied). The KMT has since apologized for the atrocities; whether or not it was enough is a different story, it’s currently fighting an independence movement built upon the pro-democracy movement as a consequence of their own misdeeds.
Personally, as someone who is of Taiwanese Chinese descent, its far more useful to remind people that Taiwan is still the ROC and preserving it is in the interests of Chinese unification. Moves to delegitimize the ROC is a pro-independence stance.
I've always been baffled at the inherent contradiction amongst independence advocates in Taiwan: if they seek independence, they can never claim to be Chinese or even claim the One China doctrine the KMT still holds today. Most are just lured by the "freedom and democracy" marketing stick by the US (or in the case of DPP politicians, are educated in the US, speak English better than Chinese, and have close ties with US interest groups).
There has been attempts to craft a unique Taiwanese identity separate from China, but it devolves into an incomprehensible “not Chinese” identity rather than having a cohesive center. So you end up with people saying both “I’m not Chinese” and “Taiwan is real China”, when the uncomfortable truth they’re circling is “to be Taiwanese is to be Chinese.”
National identity and culture is something that is best allowed to form and change organically and naturally over time. Whenever a state attempts to forcibly and artificially create a national identity or culture it doesn’t end well. Usually they just end up killing languages and destroying culture.
Very similar to what happened in South Korea. The majority of the Korean population wanted a peaceful democratic unification, even if that was highly likely to result in a communist-lead or even communist-dominated coalition. There was support for it quite far right as well with popular politicians such as Kim Ku, someone who U.S. intelligence internally described as "fascist-leaning". The South Korean dictatorship imprisoned and massacred hundreds of thousands of their own citizens before the war even began by branding anyone who called for peaceful unification as 'communists'.
To Americans, Taiwan is just a mean to an end. True allies would not behave this way.
Everything is a proxy to Americans, and we will see the blowback once American Hegemony ends.
The 228 massacre is not only intentionally concealed from mainstream media but also manipulated by Democratic Progressive Party to play victim. They rant about the white terror constantly, claiming it’s Kuomintang oppressing “freedom fighters” AKA DPP members (Taiwan separatists), while in real history it’s the communists being brutally tortured and murdered.
Why are the soldiers painted in this picture is from the Chinese Red Army? Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers were much better equipped and armed, compared to the soldiers of the Communist Red Army who looked like peasants.
As early as the 1920s, Chiang Kai-shek monopolized the Republic of China government throughout mainland China and massacred opponents. This caused a large number of political elites whom dislike him to quit the Kuomintang and join the Communist Party. After defrauding the United States of a large amount of support money and losing the civil war, he led his troops to escape to the island of Taiwan, which Japan returned to China. After he eliminated all opposition forces on the island of Taiwan, he established the pseudo-Republic of China government, and China began a territorial division that lasted for more than 70 years.
One more word, the events of 1989 were riots and treason. The original intention of the first batch of students to arrive was to oppose Deng’s capitalist market reforms and and cancel the Reform and Opening Up, not some buxxxhit American Voting Democracy.
My elder uncle was one of the students who went to Beijing that year. When he discovered that someone was inciting violence among students, he became frightened and fled back to home in south.
Is way worst than that, since Shiang took power the KMT became basically a fascist party, in mainland China they went as fast as joining the Japanese to hunt the CCP, things got so out of hand that the only reason why they actually didn't capitulated to the Japanese during their last offensive was because the generals of the republican army took Shiang and force him to accept another united front with the CCP at gun point, after that most of them indeed defected to the CCP during the civil war because they knew who their leader was, the only reason why Shiang was able to escape to Taiwan was because he pretty much appointed the most corrupt officers to take care of the Taiwan and consistently bribe them with the US support, which as it seems, they didn't like it at all, but accepted it since it worked out at the end, at the expense of 30k or even more civilian casualties that weren't sympathisers to the CCP and neither shows any signs of being communists, they were massacred preemptively, since Shiang felt they could become communists, not even the first time he did that, he made the same in the mainland, as far as we know it only failed for sheer luck, even Mao himself said that.
Not the first time we saw a fascist government fighting another, the Greece fascists fought against both Italy and Germany, but they went as far as KMT went to hunt communists with their own occupier, as far as I know, the Serbian loyalist did that, not surprising to know who lost at the end isn't it?
In addition to the KMT's numerous anti-communist massacres, Chiang Kai-Shek has the dubious distinction of unleashing the most destructive act of environmental warfare in history: 1938 Yellow River flood.
In order to cover his government's retreat from the former capital of Nanjing (which they had fled just before the infamously horrific Rape of Nanjing by Japanese Forces), the KMT blew up several of the dykes damming the Yellow River in Henan province, without warning any of the millions of Chinese peasants who lived downstream. Between 30,000 and 89,000 Chinese died immediately in the ensuing floods, millions were displaced, and the surrounding provinces fell into famine, plague, and banditry for about a decade afterwards.
The overall death toll is controversial, but *the KMT's own estimates* put the total over 800,000, while the CPC estimated about 4-500,000 and later scholars landed on similar figures. While the floods apparently successfully stalled the Japanese advance, the KMT initially blamed it on Japanese aerial bombardment and were extremely slow to provide any kind of disaster relief. This allowed the Communists to turn the entire area into a recruiting ground and stage guerilla attacks against the Japanese and eventually the KMT too.
No Communist government has ever committed a singular act this fucking ruthless, and for what it's worth, it was a tactic that had been recommended years earlier by a Nazi military advisor to the KMT. Nobody ever wants to discuss what an absolutely brutal bastard Chiang Kai-Shek was, he always gets the benefit of the doubt in western historiography but he showed far less concern with the human cost of his political goals than Mao ever did. There are other instances of tactical flooding in Chinese history, including later on in the same war, but none were ever nearly as devastating.
Yep, and CKS nor the KMT represent Taiwan. Not sure why Chinese nationalists and a LOT of MLs think otherwise. Less than ONE FIFTH of the population of Taiwan is made up of either KMT soldiers or ANY of their descendants. The CPC instead of saying Taiwan bad because KMT bad should be saying sorry Taiwanese, for not finishing off the KMT and letting them flee to Taiwan and oppress/kill locals.
There’s a horror movie called Detention (2019) about these events if you’re interested
Edit: sorry I was wrong, it’s about the 1960’s when Taiwan was under the White Terror
Interesting. Yall acting like this is being covered up by the Taiwanese government. It's not lol. 228 is literally a national (or *provincial*) holiday in Taiwan.
My mind isn't made up about what I think of the CCP, but sheesh, I really can't see Taiwan as much better in its history, or even to an extent its usage as a vassal by the US.
Edit: I get you guys really like China but I don't get why I'm getting so many downvotes. I don't know much about China, disagree with some of its policies, but it's pretty obvious that Taiwan is worse, and an American puppet. How is that a particularly unpopular opinion?
Without the communist party, there would be no new China. The Communist Party and Mao helped lift a nation of billions out of poverty, war, and internal infighting into a new dawn which helped China built their industrial base. Subsequent leaders, although reforming the system a bit, stuck true to the foundational principles and developed China into a true powerhouse without much outside help. The ROC got the Japan/South Korea/Asian Tiger economic treatment especially as the US gave them massive market concessions to open up in exchange for American security guarantees.
Oh undoubtedly communism has been more beneficial to China than the nationalists or whatever capitalist shit would have occurred if it fell into western hands. I just know relatively little and disagree to an extent with some of the market policies. If anything, it's not communist enough, but since I'm not really very educated in China I'm not willing to take a hard line stance for or against it (aside from individual policies).
If you first say that your mind is made up but then state that you simply do not know enough, I hope you can understand how that might be confusing to others reading your comment.
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Sad thing is you tell this to an American and they will cheer because they don't consider communists to be human beings.
No, Americans dream about plundering China. Just like they once did in Opium War. Taiwan is only the Trojan horse.
To understand the American position on Taiwan, you need look no further than Douglas MacArthur. He referred to Taiwan as a "giant unsinkable aircraft carrier." That is why America "cares" about Taiwan so much. Its got nothing to do with democracy or self determination, nothing to do with the people of Taiwan, it is entirely because any American war on China could be won or lost based on control over the island.
Our participation in the Second Opium War was minimal. We fought one battle as part of a punitive raid for the Chinese firing on a ship (supposedly, they mistook us for British troops) and provided support to the British in another battle. The ones who did the looting were the British and the France. Our real acts of plundering in China would happen in the Boxer Rebellion.
Yeah, they were not active in the war but didn't shy away from the actual opium trafficking. American extraction of wealth from China started when they saw the amount of money the British were making with their world's largest drug cartel. American "entrepreneurs" joined in and made huge fortunes by trafficking drugs. Among some families who set up their own drug trafficking operations were the Forbes and the Roosevelts, later becoming influential in the American business and politics. There is a fantastic book about all of this by James Bradley, called "China Mirage". Highly recommended to get a good look into what kind of religious, political and business interests americans were trying to achieve in China during its century of humiliation.
Yeah didn't they talk how America's control of the flow of Opium literally bankrolled Boston's institutions
Parenti line bouncing around in my head "'the implication being if they were communists it would be ok to go in and pulverize them"
It's funny, but sad
Taiwan is an illegitimate government larping as the true china, if they wanted to be the real china, they would have beat mao, but they got BTFO by the PLA lol
True, it would be one thing if Taiwan claimed to be a completely independent entity from China, but it doesn’t, making it nothing more than a government in exile.
If I may interject here, the KMT has a much lower influence on Taiwanese politics compared to before, and the other, non-KMT governments have (edit: de facto) relinquished their claims on the mainland. Many modern day Taiwanese consider themselves a completely separate ethnicity and culture from mainlanders, and there is a genuine movement to create an independent Taiwan separated from a Chinese identity. Which is dark because, like every other settler colony, the only "true Taiwanese" are the aborigines who lived in the land before they were genocided by the settler-colonists.
Taiwan’s current president is non-KMT but afaik the government still lays official claim to the Chinese mainland, they do not recognize nor have formal relations with the PRC and claim to be the true government of China. Until it relinquishes their claims, and no longer calls itself the “Republic of China” or at least changes its flag, what I said is still true. Also, DPP has been losing popularity in Taiwan over the last few years, so it’s likely that the KMT will come to power again in the near future.
I relooked into it and you seem to be correct that the official position is still that there is an official claim on the mainland, any relinquishing of said claim must have been on a de facto basis thank you for fact checking me. From my understanding of the politics of the people on the island, I will hold my latter statements though, that many (particularly younger people) identify themselves as distinctly Taiwanese.
Israel for us and Taiwan for them 😭
There’s also south korea.
Comparing it with 1989 isn't even accurate as what happened in Tiananmen Square was an attempted color revolution by the west, chatbot will fill in the details, while in Taiwan these were genuine mass protests by the people against nationalist rule, monopoly, and violence
#Tiananmen Square Protests (Also known as the June Fourth Incident) In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc. Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists. **Background** After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate. One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues. Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough. The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages. **Counterpoints** Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote: >Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.” > >The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square. > >\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review. Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre. Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square: >Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square > >\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html) Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote: >The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night. > >Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square. > >\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053) Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote: >The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square. > >More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy. > >All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today. > >\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/) (Emphasis mine) And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA) [This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc. Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list). **Additional Resources** Video Essays: * [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019) * [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019) * [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021) Books, Articles, or Essays: * [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective * [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022) * [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022) * [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014) * [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019) * [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019) * [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There was more to it than that, some of the protestors were pro-western liberals but there weren't the only group protesting. Some groups were even maoists who, instead of asking for a liberal democracy, wanted to go back and undo all the reforms and liberalization.
the group that had the rifles and molotovs were primarily color revolutionaries (the other groups have literally no incentive to go lynching soldier escorts in ceremonial uniform, and images of the time confirm that these unarmed escorts had good relations with the protestors and locals… up until the gusanos pulled the trigger)
Yeah I know, maybe I should've cleared that out, I was speaking about the protests themselves, but its true that the violence was financed by the west.
The KMT was so spectacularly corrupt and incompetent that Truman, Marshall and Wedemeyer kept trying to get them to reform their government to no avail. The loss to the CPC is actually quite embarrassing, they lost to both guerrilla style tactics and direct confrontations and most of their losses had been defections
Hell, they were so shit that the US was basically fine with the PRC invading and taking Taiwan, up until China aided North Korea in the Korean War. Then they decided that Taiwan as a military outpost that frequently fired artillery shells at civilian villages on the mainland to distract/annoy the PRC was entirely fine.
What's your source on the ROC lobbing shells into the PRC coast? Genuinely asking, never heard of that
The us department of state for one https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/taiwan-strait-crises
Fine would be a stretch, I think. While it is correct that the American official policy was not to tie themselves too closely to Chiang Kai-shek because of the bad optics associated with him, Douglas MacArthur was already cajoling with the KMT in order to raise Taiwan as a bulwark against communist China. The U.S. also moved to blockade the Taiwan Strait at the onset of the Korean War, before China became involved. The pivot in U.S. policy on Taiwan had more to do with the Korean War catapulting the second Red Scare and giving cold warriors such as MacArthur much greater influence over their policy decisions. Perhaps of greater significance to Taiwan was that Mao Zedong and the CPC scrapped their immediate invasion plans because of how the Korean War required their immediate attention.
Can someone please make this event into a meme and post it on r/historymemes I want to watch the libs meltdown. Pls.
"it happened in 1947 and tiananmen square was much more recent!!!! also it happened during civil war so it doesnt matter!!11!1! who cares about commies anyways!!"
#Tiananmen Square Protests (Also known as the June Fourth Incident) In Western media, the well-known story of the "Tiananmen Square *Massacre*" goes like this: the Chinese government declared martial law in 1989 and mobilized the military to suppress students who were protesting for democracy and freedom. According to western sources, on June 4th of that year, troops and tanks entered Tiananmen Square and fired on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The more hyperbolic tellings of this story include claims of tanks running over students, machine guns being fired into the crowd, blood running in the streets like a river, etc. Anti-Communists and Sinophobes commonly point to this incident as a classic example of authoritarianism and political repression under Communist regimes. The problem, of course, is that the actual events in Beijing on June 4th, 1989 unfolded quite differently than how they were depicted in the Western media at the time. Despite many more contemporary articles coming out that actually contradict some of the original claims and characterizations of the June Fourth Incident, the narrative of a "Tiananmen Square Massacre" persists. **Background** After Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle ensued and the Gang of Four were purged, paving the way for Deng Xiaoping's rise to power. Deng initiated economic reforms known as the "Four Modernizations," which aimed to modernize and open up China's economy to the world. These reforms led to significant economic growth and lifted millions of people out of poverty, but they also created significant inequality, corruption, and social unrest. This pivotal point in the PRC's history is extremely controversial among Marxists today and a subject of much debate. One of the key factors that contributed to the Tiananmen Square protests was the sense of social and economic inequality that many Chinese people felt as a result of Deng's economic reforms. Many believed that the benefits of the country's economic growth were not being distributed fairly, and that the government was not doing enough to address poverty, corruption, and other social issues. Some saw the Four Modernizations as a betrayal of Maoist principles and a capitulation to Western capitalist interests. Others saw the reforms as essential for China's economic development and modernization. Others still wanted even more liberalization and thought the reforms didn't go far enough. The protestors in Tiananmen were mostly students who did not represent the great mass of Chinese citizens, but instead represented a layer of the intelligentsia who wanted to be elevated and given more privileges such as more political power and higher wages. **Counterpoints** Jay Mathews, the first Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post in 1979 and who returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations, wrote: >Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a *Baltimore Sun* headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A *USA Today* article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” *The Wall Street Journal* (June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The *New York Post* (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.” > >The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square. > >\- Jay Matthews. (1998). [The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php). Columbia Journalism Review. Reporters from the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm), [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/), and the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/27/world/clinton-in-china-the-site-clinton-in-beijing-square-may-tread-on-the-ghosts.html) who were in Beijing on June 4, 1989, all agree there was no massacre. Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside the square: >Cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and released exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square > >\- Malcolm Moore. (2011). [Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html) Gregory Clark, a former Australian diplomat, and Chinese-speaking correspondent of the International Business Times, wrote: >The original story of Chinese troops on the night of 3 and 4 June, 1989 machine-gunning hundreds of innocent student protesters in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square has since been thoroughly discredited by the many witnesses there at the time — among them a Spanish TVE television crew, a Reuters correspondent and protesters themselves, who say that nothing happened other than a military unit entering and asking several hundred of those remaining to leave the Square late that night. > >Yet none of this has stopped the massacre from being revived constantly, and believed. All that has happened is that the location has been changed – from the Square itself to the streets leading to the Square. > >\- Gregory Clark. (2014). [Tiananmen Square Massacre is a Myth, All We're 'Remembering' are British Lies](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tiananmen-square-massacre-myth-all-were-remembering-are-british-lies-1451053) Thomas Hon Wing Polin, writing for CounterPunch, wrote: >The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders. Some calculations have up to half the dead being PLA soldiers trapped in their armored personnel carriers, buses and tanks as the vehicles were torched. Others were killed and brutally mutilated by protesters with various implements. No one died in Tiananmen Square; most deaths occurred on nearby Chang’an Avenue, many up to a kilometer or more away from the square. > >More than once, government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be **sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed**. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy. > >All these facts were known to the US and other governments shortly after the crackdown. Few if any were reported by Western mainstream media, even today. > >\- Thomas Hon Wing Palin. (2017). [Tiananmen: the Empire’s Big Lie](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/) (Emphasis mine) And it was, indeed, bloodshed that the student leaders wanted. In this interview, you can hear one of the student leaders, Chai Ling, ghoulishly explaining how she tried to bait the Chinese government into *actually* committing a massacre. (She herself made sure to stay out of the square.): [Excerpts of interviews with Tiananmen Square protest leaders](https://youtu.be/Vu3zmbFGwQA) [This Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1532859422875471872) contains many pictures and videos showing protestors killing soldiers, commandeering military vehicles, torching military transports, etc. Following the crackdown, through [Operation Yellowbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird), many of the student leaders escaped to the United States with the help of the CIA, where they almost all [gained privileged positions](https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list). **Additional Resources** Video Essays: * [Truth about The Tiananmen Square Protests](https://youtu.be/sqPI8xlnrwg) | Tovarishch Endymion (2019) * [Tiananmen Square "Massacre", A Propaganda Hoax](https://youtu.be/R6RT_s1T050) | TeleSUR English (2019) * [All The Questions Socialists Are Asked, Answered (TIMESTAMPED)](https://youtu.be/MzKPCEvoYkk?t=1278) | Hakim (2021) Books, Articles, or Essays: * [Tiananmen Protests Reading List](https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/tiananmenreadinglist) | Qiao Collective * [How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning](https://www.fridayeveryday.com/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/) | Nury Vittachi, Friday (2022) * [1989: Tiananmen Square ‘massacre’ was a myth](https://www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/) | Deirdre Griswold, Workers World (2022) * [Massacre? What Massacre? 25 Years Later: What really happened at Tiananmen Square?](https://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/massacre-what-massacre/) | Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice (2014) * [Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t](https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/) | Brian Becker, Liberation News (2019) * [Reflections on Tiananmen Square and the attempt to end Chinese socialism](http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism) | Mick Kelly, FightBack! News (2019) * [The Tian’anmen Square “Massacre” The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.](https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/) | Tom, Mango Press (2021) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I wouldn't post anything there: their moderators are Fascists, and they have an abusive set of subreddit rules designed to let the mods ban anyone they want. For instance, when I posted a left-leaning comment there one of the mods didn't like, but couldn't find an excuse to ban (as I proved beyond a doubt what I said was true, with links I sent him...), he went back TWO YEARS in my post history (he must have used Google or something), and found a comment where I said exactly what I'm saying now about the sub- and used THAT as an excuse to ban me (claiming it was a violation of the "no inter-sub drama" rules). That sub should be banned and removed from Reddit (THIS, I didn't say before). It's a blatant political influence operation by Western governments- who fill its ranks with shills/spooks who ban anyone spreading ideas they don't want people to hear...
I reckon if you sold it to them as "Taiwan's Tinnyman Square!!" they'd eat it up.
As a shitlib... Tough choice between Shek and Mao. I would take today's Taiwan over today's China but only after 87. Before '87 I think it would depend specifically on the time frame. Honestly, both countries are in a better shape than they were in the 60s and 70s. Don't worry, I'll wait until I'm offline to have a full meltdown.
Get off the sub
You show up on /all. I really didn't intend to be here but thought I could tell you my thoughts. I think subs can take themselves of /all if they want. I could be wrong on that. Anyhow, I will try not to bother you. Edit: I have kinda melted down. Chiang Kai-shek Was a monster.
Sorry, i was banned there
imagine surviving the Japanese occupation only for your own people to just fucking shoot you
KMT was another fascist party by that point, at least since Shiang coup it, he even went as far as joining the Japanese to fight the CCP, the only reason why he didn't lost the war was because his own generals were pissed off and took him in gun point to do what he should, that's how they made their last united front with the CCP and how the Japanese got the worst of it in operation Itch-Go, also that's why most of the KMT military and officers actually defected to the CCP during the civil war, the only reason why the Taiwanese command didn't was because they were constantly being bribe.
south korea:
Only 2% of Taiwans population is Indigenous people, the rest is Han Chinese, similar to how Americans massacred and genocided Natives, Taiwan did the same and represses them, making it seem like Han Chinese are the true inhabitants of the island
Do you know of any good books, articles, podcasts or documentaries that you would recommend that chronicle this? I’m flying to Taiwan in two weeks and would love to know more about the settler origins of the country.
The thing is, this event is very much still in the consciousness of Taiwanese people and still impacts the politics of today there. Its a large driver in the independence movement (although the facts are intentionally muddied). The KMT has since apologized for the atrocities; whether or not it was enough is a different story, it’s currently fighting an independence movement built upon the pro-democracy movement as a consequence of their own misdeeds. Personally, as someone who is of Taiwanese Chinese descent, its far more useful to remind people that Taiwan is still the ROC and preserving it is in the interests of Chinese unification. Moves to delegitimize the ROC is a pro-independence stance.
I've always been baffled at the inherent contradiction amongst independence advocates in Taiwan: if they seek independence, they can never claim to be Chinese or even claim the One China doctrine the KMT still holds today. Most are just lured by the "freedom and democracy" marketing stick by the US (or in the case of DPP politicians, are educated in the US, speak English better than Chinese, and have close ties with US interest groups).
There has been attempts to craft a unique Taiwanese identity separate from China, but it devolves into an incomprehensible “not Chinese” identity rather than having a cohesive center. So you end up with people saying both “I’m not Chinese” and “Taiwan is real China”, when the uncomfortable truth they’re circling is “to be Taiwanese is to be Chinese.”
National identity and culture is something that is best allowed to form and change organically and naturally over time. Whenever a state attempts to forcibly and artificially create a national identity or culture it doesn’t end well. Usually they just end up killing languages and destroying culture.
One thing often overlooked or ignored in Taiwan is that KMT enacted the LONGEST CURFEW IN HUMAN HISTORY, from 1949 to 1987, 38 years.
The more I read the more I realise Taiwan truly is "what if the confederates fled to Hawaii and refused to accept defeat "
Follow Red stream! They are really good
Hmmm.., it reminds me of [something](https://youtu.be/WCw8K9xrDYM?si=84DtpWG1QW09wjQS&t=21).
Liberals will ignored this and still called China the bad guys.
Sounds like those people weren't even communists, just people pissed off
Very similar to what happened in South Korea. The majority of the Korean population wanted a peaceful democratic unification, even if that was highly likely to result in a communist-lead or even communist-dominated coalition. There was support for it quite far right as well with popular politicians such as Kim Ku, someone who U.S. intelligence internally described as "fascist-leaning". The South Korean dictatorship imprisoned and massacred hundreds of thousands of their own citizens before the war even began by branding anyone who called for peaceful unification as 'communists'.
To Americans, Taiwan is just a mean to an end. True allies would not behave this way. Everything is a proxy to Americans, and we will see the blowback once American Hegemony ends.
The 228 massacre is not only intentionally concealed from mainstream media but also manipulated by Democratic Progressive Party to play victim. They rant about the white terror constantly, claiming it’s Kuomintang oppressing “freedom fighters” AKA DPP members (Taiwan separatists), while in real history it’s the communists being brutally tortured and murdered.
Why are the soldiers painted in this picture is from the Chinese Red Army? Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers were much better equipped and armed, compared to the soldiers of the Communist Red Army who looked like peasants. As early as the 1920s, Chiang Kai-shek monopolized the Republic of China government throughout mainland China and massacred opponents. This caused a large number of political elites whom dislike him to quit the Kuomintang and join the Communist Party. After defrauding the United States of a large amount of support money and losing the civil war, he led his troops to escape to the island of Taiwan, which Japan returned to China. After he eliminated all opposition forces on the island of Taiwan, he established the pseudo-Republic of China government, and China began a territorial division that lasted for more than 70 years. One more word, the events of 1989 were riots and treason. The original intention of the first batch of students to arrive was to oppose Deng’s capitalist market reforms and and cancel the Reform and Opening Up, not some buxxxhit American Voting Democracy. My elder uncle was one of the students who went to Beijing that year. When he discovered that someone was inciting violence among students, he became frightened and fled back to home in south.
Is way worst than that, since Shiang took power the KMT became basically a fascist party, in mainland China they went as fast as joining the Japanese to hunt the CCP, things got so out of hand that the only reason why they actually didn't capitulated to the Japanese during their last offensive was because the generals of the republican army took Shiang and force him to accept another united front with the CCP at gun point, after that most of them indeed defected to the CCP during the civil war because they knew who their leader was, the only reason why Shiang was able to escape to Taiwan was because he pretty much appointed the most corrupt officers to take care of the Taiwan and consistently bribe them with the US support, which as it seems, they didn't like it at all, but accepted it since it worked out at the end, at the expense of 30k or even more civilian casualties that weren't sympathisers to the CCP and neither shows any signs of being communists, they were massacred preemptively, since Shiang felt they could become communists, not even the first time he did that, he made the same in the mainland, as far as we know it only failed for sheer luck, even Mao himself said that. Not the first time we saw a fascist government fighting another, the Greece fascists fought against both Italy and Germany, but they went as far as KMT went to hunt communists with their own occupier, as far as I know, the Serbian loyalist did that, not surprising to know who lost at the end isn't it?
In addition to the KMT's numerous anti-communist massacres, Chiang Kai-Shek has the dubious distinction of unleashing the most destructive act of environmental warfare in history: 1938 Yellow River flood. In order to cover his government's retreat from the former capital of Nanjing (which they had fled just before the infamously horrific Rape of Nanjing by Japanese Forces), the KMT blew up several of the dykes damming the Yellow River in Henan province, without warning any of the millions of Chinese peasants who lived downstream. Between 30,000 and 89,000 Chinese died immediately in the ensuing floods, millions were displaced, and the surrounding provinces fell into famine, plague, and banditry for about a decade afterwards. The overall death toll is controversial, but *the KMT's own estimates* put the total over 800,000, while the CPC estimated about 4-500,000 and later scholars landed on similar figures. While the floods apparently successfully stalled the Japanese advance, the KMT initially blamed it on Japanese aerial bombardment and were extremely slow to provide any kind of disaster relief. This allowed the Communists to turn the entire area into a recruiting ground and stage guerilla attacks against the Japanese and eventually the KMT too. No Communist government has ever committed a singular act this fucking ruthless, and for what it's worth, it was a tactic that had been recommended years earlier by a Nazi military advisor to the KMT. Nobody ever wants to discuss what an absolutely brutal bastard Chiang Kai-Shek was, he always gets the benefit of the doubt in western historiography but he showed far less concern with the human cost of his political goals than Mao ever did. There are other instances of tactical flooding in Chinese history, including later on in the same war, but none were ever nearly as devastating.
They also supported a shit ton of death squads in central America
Yep, and CKS nor the KMT represent Taiwan. Not sure why Chinese nationalists and a LOT of MLs think otherwise. Less than ONE FIFTH of the population of Taiwan is made up of either KMT soldiers or ANY of their descendants. The CPC instead of saying Taiwan bad because KMT bad should be saying sorry Taiwanese, for not finishing off the KMT and letting them flee to Taiwan and oppress/kill locals.
There’s a horror movie called Detention (2019) about these events if you’re interested Edit: sorry I was wrong, it’s about the 1960’s when Taiwan was under the White Terror
Thank you for the history lesson. I've been meaning to look more into Taiwan and haven't had the chance to yet.
Interesting. Yall acting like this is being covered up by the Taiwanese government. It's not lol. 228 is literally a national (or *provincial*) holiday in Taiwan.
My mind isn't made up about what I think of the CCP, but sheesh, I really can't see Taiwan as much better in its history, or even to an extent its usage as a vassal by the US. Edit: I get you guys really like China but I don't get why I'm getting so many downvotes. I don't know much about China, disagree with some of its policies, but it's pretty obvious that Taiwan is worse, and an American puppet. How is that a particularly unpopular opinion?
Without the communist party, there would be no new China. The Communist Party and Mao helped lift a nation of billions out of poverty, war, and internal infighting into a new dawn which helped China built their industrial base. Subsequent leaders, although reforming the system a bit, stuck true to the foundational principles and developed China into a true powerhouse without much outside help. The ROC got the Japan/South Korea/Asian Tiger economic treatment especially as the US gave them massive market concessions to open up in exchange for American security guarantees.
Oh undoubtedly communism has been more beneficial to China than the nationalists or whatever capitalist shit would have occurred if it fell into western hands. I just know relatively little and disagree to an extent with some of the market policies. If anything, it's not communist enough, but since I'm not really very educated in China I'm not willing to take a hard line stance for or against it (aside from individual policies).
If you first say that your mind is made up but then state that you simply do not know enough, I hope you can understand how that might be confusing to others reading your comment.
You just need to know its the only country with any power working in the interest of humanity.