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Tiananmen Square 1989 death toll was at least 10,000 according to UK documents

(www.bbc.co.uk)
362 points ComputerGuru | 3 comments | 23 Dec 17 12:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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mutteraloo ◴[23 Dec 17 14:29 UTC] No.15994264[source]▶
Lest we forget, this is still the same government that mowed down 10,000 innocent lives, that still runs China today. They've gotten better at hiding behind marketing, propaganda, and strong arming other countries, but they're still ruled by a small, powerful group of elders that control every aspects of Chinese people's lives.

It's sad that we keep feeding this dangerous psychopath which threatens democracy and freedom worldwide. This psychopath will eventually cause harm to a few countries (Taiwan, South Korea) when said and done, maybe enable North Korea to strike a few nuclear missiles into Los Angeles or Tokyo, who knows.

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glenstein ◴[23 Dec 17 15:32 UTC] No.15994498[source]▶
There's a serious problem with our own (US) culture's ability to think clearly about the problem posed by Chinese authoritarianism in the 21st century. I would attribute the problem to our tendency for centrism, both-sideism, and probably to the just-world hypothesis.

People are tempted to bury it in a larger narrative of global complexity, thinking that treating it like a trick question is evidence of sophistication. But what if it's not a trick question?

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bufordsharkley ◴[23 Dec 17 15:38 UTC] No.15994515[source]▶
Some things are not cut-and-dry. Some are. Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society.

I'm curious how China currently views Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People"[0], one of which is Democracy. Does his philosophy attract any attention today?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People

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marcosdumay ◴[23 Dec 17 16:48 UTC] No.15994920[source]▶
> Something like abolitionism has been justified by history as mere common sense, and an absolutely necessary component of a humane society.

If taxation by a non-representative government isn't as much common sense as abolitionism, it's only because of a huge amount of propaganda. It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery.

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lostlogin ◴[23 Dec 17 18:34 UTC] No.15995500[source]▶
>It is not even much fundamentally different from slavery.

Yes it is.

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1. marcosdumay ◴[23 Dec 17 18:53 UTC] No.15995610{3}[source]▶
How so?

What is that large difference? Authoritarian states deal with their people basically as if they were their property. They dispose of their lives at will, they dictate what they think and what they work on, they take their labor at will.

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2. lostlogin ◴[23 Dec 17 22:38 UTC] No.15996654[source]▶
Sorry, I misunderstood your original comment as referring to the the US. However I don’t think that the system in China is like what happened with slavery (it is China you refer to?). People aren’t kidnapped, chained and transported in conditions that kill large numbers. They aren’t traded in degrading markets and are not routinely beaten to death or mutilated by masters. They aren’t branded. As bad as conditions currently are it doesn’t seem like slavery to me.
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3. marcosdumay ◴[24 Dec 17 01:14 UTC] No.15997322[source]▶
I wasn't talking specifically about China, or specifically about America colonialism style slavery. But I would bet that there are plenty of people kidnaped and forcefully transported around the country on China for labor, that's what that kind of government normally does.

They may not be traded on degrading markets, but that just make people valueless from the point of view of a dictatorship. And I do actually expect people are being mutilated by the Chinese government all the time, we just probably don't hear about it. Again, that what this kind of government normally does.