Frontline : The Tank Man

[xpgeek]

This is a blog post I wrote, about a show that is going to be available to be seen for free on the internet. I'm posting it here and not in the TV forum because it might spark some real discussion.

Frontline : The Tank Man

After all others had been silenced, his lonely act of defiance against the Chinese regime catalyzed the world. What became of him? And 17 years later, has China succeeded in erasing this event from its history?

I'm one of those people that actually like watching shows on PBS, which stands for public broadcasting service. A lot of people think of PBS as that boring extra free channel that they made you watch in school. When I didn't have cable TV for a couple of years, and didn't have the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, PBS was almost the only channel I ever watched. I've just always been one of those weird, different from the society considered normal, people that would rather actually learn something and watch shows about the world and history instead of the major network sitcoms and action shows. I've continued to watch PBS very often, even after getting cable TV again, and one of my very favorite PBS shows continues to be Frontline, a documentary news type show covering major political and newsworthy topics.

I was looking over the TV listings tonight for something interesting to watch, the major network sitcoms and action shows, tho I do watch a few of them, bore me so much, so I always check to see whats on the Discovery channel and the History channel and I always make sure to see whats on PBS too. Tonight I saw there was an episode of Frontline on, and immediately read the episodes description to see what it was about. The description for the episode was the following;

An unarmed protester's confrontation with a line of tanks becomes a symbol of the fight for freedom after Chinese troops expel thousands from Tiananmen Square in 1989.

This description interested me greatly, as I really have a love for history, and a fascination about China as well, and I turned off the computer entirely to sit and watch it without interruption. After watching it, I feel compelled to write a little about it.

Frontline : The Tank Man, is about the events leading up to, and the events following, the taking of this photograph. Its one of the most famous photographs ever taken, but just so everyone knows what I'm talking about, and unfortunately to absolutely guarantee this blog post will never be included in any search results in China, I will display the photo I'm talking about.

http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/3798/tankman1mu.jpg

As I said I have a love for history, and always have. I knew what this photo was of, but I admit, I didn't really know the history of it as well as I thought I did. I know what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989, but I admit, until tonight I never realized how much I really didn't know about the subject.

I knew that the event of Tiananmen Square was a violent government crushing of a pro democracy movement, but I never really knew how violent it really was, how many innocent people were killed, how much courage and outrage and wanting of change the tank man really showed by standing in front of that tank. I never knew the photograph itself almost never got out at all, Chinese officials storming the hotel room of the journalist that took it minutes after it happened, and the only reason it did was that he knew they wouldn't allow it to get out, and had already hidden the film inside the toilet.

I honestly will never look at this photograph the same way again. I always knew what it was of, but I didn't really know. I didn't know the event in this photograph occurred after the governments crackdown was complete, after all voices of opposition were silenced, after the Army was in complete control of the city, and enforcing that control with brutal force, shooting and killing even ambulance workers just trying to help people shot while still approaching Tiananmen Square in defiance. I never really thought about what the man in the photograph was really standing up to before, never realized much complete force and opposition was already in place, and how much courage it took.

The second focus point of the show, the complete history of the Tiananmen Square event being the first, is how well this event is actually remembered in China today. And this show makes it apparently obvious that, it isn't. I was amazed, and completely shocked even, when they took four Chinese students from the top university in China, four highly educated citizens of China, and showed them this photograph and asked them what it meant to them, and it quickly became obvious that not one of them had ever actually seen this photograph before, even once, and had no idea what it was of. "It looks like some kind of parade.", one of them remarked. The real history of this event has been practically erased in China by the government.

The third focus point of the show I think, is how it remains so erased. I found this part probably the most interesting, being the internet savvy computer geek that I am. I've seen and read the major news storys of the last several months about Google censoring in China, but I admit here as well, that I never really put that much thought into it. Censoring is wrong of course, but I always just said to myself, well they have to, are being forced to, have no choice in the matter, and never really thought about the affects of it. This show talks about Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems, operating in China. Do a Google image search here in the US for the term Tiananmen Square, and this famous photograph of the tank man is the very first result, and is again a result hundreds of times. Do this same exact image search for the term Tiananmen Square in China, and this famous photograph does not come up as a result even one single time. As I said, me displaying the image here in this post absolutely guarantees this blog post will never be included in any search results in China. This has honestly given me a whole new perspective on the issue of Google censorship in China.

I enjoyed this show as a whole very much. And if you're still actually reading this, I know its a long post, you can too. Starting tonight PBS will begin airing the show, in its entirety, for free on the internet.

You can watch the show here on the shows website (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/), where I also would encourage people to read the 'Memory of Tiananmen' timeline of events.

[Micron]

Very cool post. I remember learning about all this from seeing the death statistics on TV once, and I remember thinking, how can so many die like that and why. But, Riots about rights went on in the US in the 1932 suppression and many for more years to come.

Parts of this have been used from various sources, for reference.

BEIJING June 4, 1989 - A Massacre - Washington DC 1932... Read on.

It was early Summer in the capital city. Tens of thousands of ordinary citizens, many with their entire families, squatted on vacant public buildings and land and set up a makeshift village, at the foot of the seat of power, and in the shadow of important monuments.

They demanded an audience with their government and the passage of certain legislation. To the heads of government and the press, they were agitators with a political agenda that threatened to disrupt and endanger the nation.

After their demands were rejected, the protesters did not leave their encampments. The head of government, refusing to meet with them, called on the national army to disperse the crowds. Soldiers charged with bayonets while tanks and tear gas chased crowds and leveled tents and shacks. Fires burned the camps to the ground.

In the aftermath, scores were dead, including at least two infants suffocated in the gas attack. The total number killed remains unknown.

[ Parts below describe protests on the anniversary's of the Massacre, and name other riots ]

The military commanders who executed the removal of the “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” as the protesters called themselves, were three of the United States’ greatest heroes: Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Patton. Eisenhower later became one of the most popular USA Presidents and defined an era that emphasized order and conformity.

There were no television cameras and satellites to relay images of what happened in the USA capital that summer day.

A few newspapers condemned President Hoover’s response but the event was quickly put to rest. Since then, there have been no anniversary remembrances and there is no monument in Washington, DC, to the victims.

Most Americans have never heard of the Bonus Army and its fate.

Neither the USA nor China has much experience handling large unsanctioned demonstrations. Riots are rare in both countries but when they occur they are often put down with brute force.

When Chicago police fought protesters at the Democratic Party national convention in 1968, crowds chanted “the whole world is watching.” The young protesters believed television would shame the authorities by broadcasting their actions.

But two years later students were gunned down during protests at Kent State University in Ohio.

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s riots were put down in USA cities, including the capital, with troops and tanks.

It had been almost twenty years since that era, and almost two generations since the 1932 suppression in the USA capital, when world audiences watched the protests in Tiananmen Square unfold on television in the Summer of 1989.

Western media, frustrated by Russian restrictions on covering the "glasnost" movement in the Soviet Union, diverted all attention to the growing crowds in Tiananmen, assisted by an almost uncontrolled flow of information via fax machines, email, and even cell phones.

The ensuing media blitz created the allure of a Chinese "Woodstock" complete with rock music, motorcycle riders (the "Flying Tigers," Beijing's "Hell's Angels" who patrolled the square), and a heady dose of "flower power."

When the Chinese government decided to order the army to end the demonstrations and dispel the crowds, which it believed were out of control, most viewers were horrified.

The prize winning Associated Press photograph of a lone Chinese man standing down a tank in the square ( Shown in XPGEEK's Post) has come to define China for many Americans. What an awful place, they believe, to send in tanks when all the people want is change.

Of course, the question is how would the government of the USA or any other government respond if over one million people were camped out at the very seat of power, demanding an overthrow of the leadership?

In Washington, DC, such an event is an impossibility. Marches on the USA capitol must be approved and coordinated in advance with the assistance of Congress, several police forces (city, Park Service, Capitol Police, Secret Service) with preparations for toilets, parking, crowd and traffic control in place.

If a spontaneous protest on the scale of Tiananmen ever did occur in Washington, DC, it would be dealt with no differently and probably much more swiftly.

This June marks the sixteenth (16) anniversary of the end of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Anniversaries are important in the USA where each decade is marked as though it was a distinct era.

Each year at the anniversary of the riots, the American press prepares special reports in every major newspaper, television news show, and news web site to mark the occasion.

On the tenth anniversary in 1999, the USA press was certain that remembrance would spark several news stories in China. But the anniversary passed, in China at least, largely without notice.

In Tiananmen Square that year, a man tossed leaflets about corruption and was detained, another displayed slogans on an umbrella. The square itself was under extensive renovation in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic and closed to the public.

In the years since June 1989 China has changed enormously.

Since that time the USA and the world have witnessed several genocides (Rwanda and Bosnia for example).

Yet Americans are peculiarly fixated on what happened in Tiananmen Square that summer in 1989.

It is time to stop dwelling on this one particular event in modern Chinese history. We must look at our own past, see our own experiences, and not pass judgement blindly.

In the words of the memorial to the Kent State massacre, we should "Inquire, Learn, Reflect"

[xpgeek]

I think the lingering fascination about China for a lot of people, at least for me definitely, is not so much about what happened then, but what is going to happen sometime in the near future.

I did know about the Washington DC event in 1932, it was almost entirely Army veterans from WW1 being completely ignored and uncompensated by the government, as even then the laws said veterans must be.

But again, the difference with China here is, in my opinion, the US has many of its own black marks on history it doesn't want people to really remember, many massive mistakes in judgement, but in the end, in the scope of all things, the US is still a pretty great country, its citizens do have incredible levels of freedom. There is no state sponsored censorship on the internet or media, citizens have rights to due process and fair trials. All slowly disappearing under Bush, lol, but thats another discussion.

China continues to remain at the forefront of a lot of news all of the time because its people lack even basic freedoms. Government authority is total, and enforced brutally without question, and enforced brutally on small levels as well as large scale ones on a constant daily basis.

For an example of the difference I say, in the US talk show hosts, and comedians, and political commentators, constantly on a daily basis now mock the government and the president, calling him a moron and so many things you get the point, and they have the right to do it. In China, even today, anyone of these people mocking the government and the leadership would be immediately arrested, and probly never get a trial.

Another example that they talked about in this show, was a radio show host, broadcasting into China from free Taipei, better known as Taiwan, with a daily show about the state of China's working class people. China has tried to block these radio signals, and the host is considered an enemy of the state.

I have a couple Chinese friends, a family of Chinese neibors, and have just generally been fascinated by China and its culture and history since I was a little kid. Some of its citys are the oldest still standing citys on the planet, some predating Rome by a good thousand years. And like to think I actually know quite a bit about the current situation in China.

It is my belief that the government of China is a system teetering on the brink of collapse, and they know it. The people of China are tired of having everything they desire controlled for them, their internet, their media, their beliefs, communism by definition outlaws all religions and any worshiping of anything besides the state itself, and China is a culture rooted in deep beliefs practiced for thousands of years. Its people are not even allowed to choose on their own where they live. China is trying to reinvent itself into a global economic superpower, building hugely expensive and lavish citys, but the working class people who actually build the stuff, are required by law to leave the city when they are done, they are not allowed to take permanent residence in the city.

The entire population of China is just silently beggingggg for democracy. They want it so bad they can taste it. They are witness to it constantly in movies and all forms of content originating in the US and Europe and they want it for themselves. This is a population that doesn't need intervention and it forced upon them for their own good, they actually want it, want it so bad the entire population is literally at the point of cracking from the pressure of not being able to even speak of it.

Anyway, thats what makes China in its current state so fascinating to me still. I have said it for years, another ten or fifteen years tops, and China will be a democratic country, the government can only postpone the inevitable for so long, and they know it, which is why their total control has only grown more brutal over time, they know its coming, know that like it or not the entire population is just waiting for some spark to set it in motion, and is just trying its best to keep it from happening and the current system in power for as long as possible.