June 07, 2007

Historical references to the Tiananmen Square massacre have been eliminated from most of mainland China. So it it surprising that mistakes will be made?
posted by Northern Exposed 17 years ago
  • Well-presented in Frontline's The Tank Man, repeated this week after an original April '06 broadcast. It presented the whole sequence of the crackdown from various perspectives, and much speculation as to the identity and whereabouts of the Tank Man himself, but it had a lot to present about the current knowledge of the massacre in China, and the complicity of Yahoo, Google, Cisco, etc. in helping to bar those images. Worth a watch.
  • [...] the complicity of Yahoo, Google, Cisco, etc. in helping to bar those images [...] Stop this talk about complicity. These companies are not allowed to be legally in China unless they comply with the government censors. They did not make the rules. You might think that they should stay out of China then as a matter of principle, but that is your juvenile idealism coursing through your neurons. Companies exist to make moneys and there are lots of moneys to be made in the most populous nation.
  • With all due respect, I did not suggest that they should have stayed out, nor make any value judgement as to their business practices for going in on that basis. But are those companies complicit with the government? Yes -- they are partners in a questionable act. They as much as said so themselves in the news report when they testified in front of Congress (regarding supplying information to the government used to convict a journalist) that they were not proud of what they've done, but did so as a business reality.
  • I think they should have stayed out. And I vote! And second The Tank Man Frontline special. Muy bueno.
  • I think they should have stayed out, too. Some things aren't worth money. But I am not a massive, soulless corporation.
  • Well, you need a certain kind of soullessness to run a business. It's no big deal. I'm sure these companies suck at raiding tombs. Stick to what you're good at, I say.
  • Hm. I am massive. Might I be soulless as well? China, here I come! In sum: Of course they're complicit. Except when they're trying to beautify the world's cities with billboards.
  • The best way to deal with nations with bad human rights records is not to avoid them and isolate them. The best method is to trade with them. Get them nice and rich and dependent on that trade and then you have real power ($$$) to affect the changes you want. It takes patience and a whole lot of ideals-swallowing, but it works. Not that that's Yohoo's and Google's motivation, mind you. They're strictly in it for the money. But my point still stands
  • Or they wind up owning all of your country's debt, in which case they have real power over you and force you to change your own labor and tax laws.
  • Oh, snap.
  • The best way to deal with nations with bad human rights records is not to avoid them and isolate them. Boycotts and sanctions against South Africa seem to have worked okay.
  • Only because we were previously trading with them and they depended on it.
  • How's that isolation and boycott of Cuba working out?
  • Lots of people still trading with Cuba. Plus, we've been trading with China for a long time, so I don't get your point.
  • I knew about the censorship, but I'm still a bit shocked that the clerk hadn't even heard about the crackdown. I had thought word of mouth would get around, even after, though I realise she could have been born after (I don't remember the Iran hostage crisis). Or maybe she is from another region, where something happened in Beijing might have been so remote or unrelated that it just wasn't talked about. But I'm still slightly shocked.
  • I don't get your point My point is that if Yahoo, Google, et al had decided to not enter the Chinese market because of the censorship rules, China's policies and human rights abuses wouldn't have changed at all. By agreeing to the rules, and entering the market, they can become an integral part of the internet experience for Chinese citizens and businesses, something the Chinese economy will find difficult to do without. At that point, they can selectively and creatively violate the censorship rules and Beijing will be less likely to throw them out.
  • There's probably a generation of Chinese who don't know about the massacre. Maybe more, if the Chinese media didn't report anything internally. And few Chinese eyewitnesses would have anything to prove what they saw. Apparently there was an organized effort to have these articles printed. Two senior editors have been suspended as a result, they may not have known about the massacre either. (Sorry about the stub references, but they seem sufficient to make the point.)
  • > Yahoo, Google, et al had decided to not enter the Chinese market because of the censorship rules, China's policies and human rights abuses wouldn't have changed at all. Okay, agreed. Though I suspect their motives were not pinned on future liberalization and respect for human rights.
  • Yes, those that cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it.
  • Newsflash!! Yahoo in China for the money. Well, that's the context.
  • The Beijing News mistakingly published a single image showing citizens who had been shot during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. The "propaganda-meisters" have yet to do anything, some say they're waiting for the Olympics to be over... The editors wrapped up their initial investigation into the matter swiftly. It did not take long for them to conclude that this was an unintended gaffe. There had been a missing hole in the layout. A fourth image was needed to fill it. So, the journalist sources were informed, a young layout editor simply scanned the Internet, lifted another image... Oops! I would hate to be that layout editor right now...