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/
.

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.

Hi Romany

You said "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."

Hmmm...please lift your hands from the keyboard...have a think...look around...leave the alternative Party universe...and enter the zone of individual thought not governed by the Party.

Difficult, I recognise.

Now please watch this short clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3DHqom5DUQ

and especially this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crJp0L2qzWQ

I appreciate your loyalty to mainland China, but the Communist Party is just a cruel new dynasty in China's long histry. There will be new, better dynasties or even democratic governments.

Maybe one day, even the current Dynasty, will allow the Chinese people to speak for themselves, outside Party lines. Those Chinese who know a little about Tiananmen are aware of the fate of many who speak.

I recommend you watch the short clips above.

Regards

Peter Coates

Dear Romany,

I'm also surprised at the picture you paint
of what the Government in China is allowing
the Chinese people to do regarding the
anniversary of Tiananmen Square.

We're getting quite the opposite view on our
news programs here. There was actual footage
taken by journalists in Tiananmen
Square who as we saw on camera - were being
prevented from even so much as filming the
Square by Chinese secret police - intruding
in front of the TV cameras with huge umbrellas
to prevent anything being filmed or seen on
camera.

News reports from Reuters and CNN and other
news sources tell us that Internet sites are
also being blocked as are TV programs that even
mention Tiananmen Square. There is also a very strict
ban on journalists and news media in general.

This paints a very different picture
from the one you're presenting.

…………………………continued from previous post (excerpted from Howard Zinns- Cross-examining American Ideology.)

SIMILARITIES between the SUPPRESSION Of the Tiananmen Square incident by the Chinese and the lack of record in American history books of The Ludlow Massacre, continued………………

<As I read about this I wondered why this extraordinary event , so full of drama ,so peopled by remarkable personalities was never mentioned in the American history books I was studying.
A close look at the Colorado strike would reveal that not only the state Government of Colorado but the National Government in Washington, was on the side of the Corporations. While miners were being beaten, jailed and killed by Rockefeller’s Detectives or by the National Guard the federal Government did nothing to protect the constitutional right of it’s people.

I concluded that a certain unspoken understanding lay beneath the writing of textbooks and the teaching of history : that it would be considered, bold,radical , even “communist” to emphasize class struggle in the United States, a country where the dominant ideology emphasized the oneness of the Nation e.g. “We the People, in order to ……etc….etc.

Pete Plantagenet,

Why on earth should I have "loyalty" to mainland China? And what was the idea which fuelled this? : -

"Hmmm...please lift your hands from the keyboard...have a think...look around...leave the alternative Party universe...and enter the zone of individual thought not governed by the Party.

Difficult, I recognise."

An inference that I don’t have individual thought? That I’m divorced from reality? That thought is difficult for me? That I’m influenced by the Chinese government?

What have I ever posted that would give rise to these ideas?

I get rather tired, when trying to introduce some objectivity into any subject, of being accused of partisanship. Though I do recognise the irony in standing accused of bias when my purpose is to introduce some balance.

Is the purpose of your put-downs to say that China has NOT lifted the ban on discussion of Tiananmen? Or that it’s NOT progress for a totalitarian regime to open public dialogue on Tiananmen? Or do you, perhaps, simply disagree with any posts that seek to point to the fact that change has been and is going on all the time?

Foxy,

Yeah, I can quite understand how you would be surprised to learn the extent of change. Certainly Western media seem loath ever to report on the more heartening news from China. Judging from many of the responses on these and other threads, people like their enemies all black and their heroines all white and the propaganda machine obligingly continues to churn out these stereotypes.

I, in turn, was very surprised to read the thread of the Indian demo. That, so far , deals with racism in the community. Whereas in overseas publications it is presented solely as an indictment of the Austrlalian police, who are called thugs and louts.

I remain staunchly a-political and all the Governments of the world can go to hell in a handbasket for mine.I’m just saying give ‘e fair go.