We've had experience dealing with morally ambiguous countries that abuse power. The USA locks up about 7% of it's adult population and is second to China in sanctioned murder. USA has been at constant war outside it's borders and laughably calls this "defense". ("better over there than here" is the justification for constant aggression.)
The worst thing about the GFC is that china may be given too much power as the US was for the last few decades. This plus overpopulation and jingoistic press might make Tiananmen Square look like a garden variety LA riot.

It may be a surprise that on this same day Joel Fitzgibbon, Labor's Special Liaison Officer to China, departs. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25586121-31477,00.html

That combination of financial zeal and comradely relations with China (and admittedly with the US insurance industry) deserve better.

Soon will be an essential Winter study trip to warmer climes (maybe agricultural methods of the Bordeaux Region - as the Hunter constituency has wine...).

Our gallant ex Minister deserves another fitting Ministerial role to renew the unofficial relationship with China - and soon.

Pete
(Fall of Defence Minister Fitzgibbon http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8745 )

Your comment is well linked Ozandy. When will we learn to deal with the morally ambiguous countries that abuse power?

To remember that at least 3,000 students or more were killed by bullets, bayonets and tank treads at Tiananmen Square during 1989, while others still waste in jail or are missing.

Today our politicians make speeches, maybe shed a tear, but China being also our main trade customer gets away with this bloodshed, as well as supports other regional governments for their abuse to citizens.

As you say Peter Coates "The Party is so powerful and China so wealthy that it is highly unlikely that any prominent Chinese leader will apologise for 1989, certainly not to a Chinese audience." I am equally concerned by the parties power in the UN Security Council where it is equally as spinless in pushing or influencing all governments to curb their abuse toward their citizens.

This is why there is a issue of Trust by many, when it comes to supporting the Government of China in the progress of World affairs. It is also how China fails to gain the full respect as a great nation, that she would otherswise have, for all her efforts made in development, which I believe China would otherwise attain.... in the eyes of the whole world.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Ozandy,<We’ve had experience dealing with morally ambiguous countries that abuse power>

So has just about every other country and people on earth since day one. It was ever thus, in the future it will be ever so, unless!! something that hasn’t happened yet happens to stop it. The only thing to hope for is to be on the side that’s winning at the time.

Maybe governments will fail eventually and we will go back to being under the control of the Kings in the form of new warlords. They could execute you on a whim too.

American History: THE LUDLOW MASSACRE, 1913-1914 - Wikipedia

R.B. Mellon <YOU CAN'T MINE COAL WITHOUT MACHINE GUNS>
Excerpted from Howard Zinns ; Declaration of Independence – Cross Examining American Ideology :-

I was still in college studying history when I heard a song by folksinger Woody Guthrie called , The Ludlow Massacre. A dark, intense, ballard with a haunting melody. It told of women and children burned to death in a strike of miners against Rockefeller- owned coal mines in Southern Colorado in 1914.

This led me to look at American Labour Struggles by an English teacher named Samuel Yellen:-
<The miners held out through the hard winter and the mine owners decided on more drastic action. In the spring 2 companies of National Guardsmen stationed themselves in the hills above the largest tent colony. They provoked the miners with beatings and jailings and escorting strikebreakers to the mines until the miners retaliated also with violence.
On the morning of April 20th, 1914, they began firing machine guns into the tents.
The men crawled away to draw fire and shoot back, while the women and children crouched in pits dug into the tent floors. At dusk the soldiers came down from the hills with torches and set fire to the tents. The countryside was ablaze. The occupants fled. The next morning a telephone linesman going through the charred ruins of the Ludlow colony lifted an iron cot that covered a pit dug in the floor of one tent and found the mangled burned bodies of 2 women and eleven children. This became know as the Ludlow massacre. …………………………………………….continued next post

There is no way that anyone could possibly condone the events in Tiananmet Square which will alway be remembered in the lists of examples of humankinds inhumanity to humankind.

But it is untrue to say that nothing has changed since then. One thing that the writer of this piece did not mention is the huge change that came about when the Chinese Government finally broke the silence and prohibitions of mention surrounding this event and brought it into the public forum. That was huge.

A whole generation who had no idea of what took place in their own country was suddenly confornted with this unpalatable truth that had been common knowledge throughout the world for their entire lifetimes.

It had a traumatic effect upon them and has forced them to look upon their countries history with different eyes.

While it is true that there has been no actual "Sorry" speech, the fact that public debate on TV, radio, in the news and throughout China during this Anniversary year has not included attempts to whitewash facts is also huge.

No, we should not forget what took place. But this article did not clarify the fact that, in China, no attempt is being made to do so.

The fact that very real, and public, steps have been taken throught this year to ensure that the Anniversary of this plack page in history will not be forgotten and that the family and friends of those who suffered are at last given the freedom to mourn, is an extremely big step forward.

If the writer is unaware of any of this then this is a badly-researched propagandized piece of hype. If he is aware, then he is being deliberately dishonest. Either way, his article implies that those three thousand deaths were for nothing.

Had he acknowledged the very real changes that have taken place in this memorable anniversary year then those who died would have been granted the dignity of being seen to have achieves a lasting memorial to the struggle towards human rights.