33 years after the crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstration, authorities make sure such movements never even get started. https://t.co/fqI7uGHRbC
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 4, 2022
Hong Kong deployed heavy security near a major park on Saturday as it warned people not to gather to commemorate China’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square 33 years ago, as Taiwan decried efforts to erase the memories.
Saturday marks the anniversary of Chinese troops opening fire to end the student-led unrest in and around the square in central Beijing. China has never provided a full death toll, but rights groups and witnesses say the figure could run into the thousands…
Chinese authorities ban any public commemoration of the event on the mainland, and the Hong Kong authorities have clamped down too.
In Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, where people had come together for an annual vigil before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, authorities blocked off main parts of the venue and warned residents against illegal gatherings.
Soccer pitches and basketball courts, which would usually be full on a Saturday, lay empty as hundreds of police, some with sniffer dogs, patrolled the area…
Activists have been jailed, the alliance that organised the annual vigil disbanded, the June 4th Museum closed its physical location and reopened online and two universities removed the Pillar of Shame – an artwork of anguished human torsos – and the Goddess of Democracy statues from their campuses.
Hong Kong has banned the annual vigil since 2020, citing coronavirus restrictions. Some democracy campaigners accuse authorities of using those rules to suppress activism, a claim that officials reject…
In Chinese-claimed but staunchly democratic Taiwan, where public commemorations are due on Saturday in Taipei, President Tsai Ing-wen decried the “collective memory of June 4 being systematically erased in Hong Kong”.
“But we believe that such brute force cannot erase people’s memories,” she posted on her Facebook and Instagram pages. “When democracy is threatened and authoritarianism in the world is expanding, we need to uphold democratic values.”…
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, at a routine news conference on Thursday, reiterated Beijing’s line on the events. “The Chinese government has long ago come to a clear conclusion about the political incident that happened in late 1980s,” he said.
In Pictures: Anonymous Hong Kong students hide miniatures of vanished Tiananmen crackdown statue around campus https://t.co/Y1YAZ0rmD8 pic.twitter.com/9XJPK11ZeD
— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@hkfp) June 3, 2022
How Hongkongers were silenced after three decades of commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown https://t.co/R9MF1B4x7J pic.twitter.com/B66KYzL0b1
— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@hkfp) June 3, 2022
On Saturday, the US consulate changed its Facebook timeline image to a picture of the now-removed Pillar of Shame monument, and posted a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.https://t.co/FgZ65Vu71X pic.twitter.com/BXKb4U1hzq
— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@hkfp) June 4, 2022
Not just the U.S., of course:
germy shoemangler
germy shoemangler
@germy shoemangler:
wrong thread, sorry
NotMax
Spelling oopsie in headline.
debbie
I’m glad Tiananmen remembrances have continued, despite the government’s best efforts to squash them. The original massacre was a real shock.
NotMax
A bane in Spain could soon be on the wane.
rikyrah
@germy shoemangler:
Good Info
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone
O. Felix Culpa
We were living in Hong Kong at the time, and watched the events play out on live television. It was horrifying, and the outpouring of outrage and grief was equivalent to the assassination of JFK, heightened by the looming handover of Hong Kong to China. We participated in the first commemoration/protest march in HK shortly afterwards, which was huge and deeply moving, especially since Hong Kongers were typically disinclined to get involved in political matters.
Bill
I was in Tacloban Philippines at the time of Tinanamen. No Cable TV and only one local television station that showed such relics as ‘Misfits of Science’ during its 6-8 hours of weekday broadcast time.
NotMax
No matter how you measure it, record breaking.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
germy shoemangler
Baud
@germy shoemangler:
https://images.app.goo.gl/1wHfHDF7G69tWCcG6
OzarkHillbilly
Sean Mills
@seanmills1020
Is this a neighbor of yours, @Stonekettle?
· 18h
When it absolutely, positively, has to get bitten off overnight.
Image
germy shoemangler
Here’s the full CBS interview with the mom who rushed in. She’s a farmworker. She was threatened with arrest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q7olC1LteE
Scout211
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, continues to break new information about what went wrong in Uvalde. Source.
Arredondo was not prepared to run the law enforcement response.
debbie
@germy shoemangler:
Lemme guess. Were his initials G.A.?
germy shoemangler
@debbie:
According to CBS she got a call from someone in law enforcement.
When she was finally hauled into court the judge called her brave and told her she could go ahead and talk to the media
Betty Cracker
I was just reading about that and watched the CBS clip. Whoever threatened Ms. Gomez should be fired, preferably from a cannon into the sun. Just waiting for the next shoe to drop in this coverup.
Carlo Graziani
It’s a great pity that Xi and the people around him have walled themselves off psychologically from understanding that China’s real opportunity for a reunification with Taiwan was to love the living shit out of Hong Kong and it’s messy, unruly, disrespectful democracy, instead of forcing Hong Kong nto submission.
Had the Chinese government had the wisdom to smile benevolently at every act of insubordinate legislation, to steadfastly ignore the riotous Hong Kong press, while happily profiting from taxing the flows of international commerce and finance converging on Hong Kong, over time a generation of Chinese people in Taiwan might have come into being who viewed reunification as an opportunity, rather than the threat that their parents understood it to be. The process would take decades, but to a country with a cultural history spanning millennia, is it really such a big deal to wait a couple of decades a prize such as Taiwan to simply apply for membership in a hypothetical future Chinese Union?
Of course, if the Chinese government were capable of thinking such thoughts, its psychology would be different in many other ways as well, including its total expectation of informational and narrative control and its delicately sensitive intolerance of any criticism whatsoever. Nonetheless, pity that.
kindness
You know I think I comprehend what it would be like living in a China/Russia authoritarian state, but I honestly think I’m fooling myself and can not really understand the submersion of personal freedoms they face every day. We came very close to being in that category. Republicans are openly saying they’ll try it again and again. I pray I never get to find out.
RaflW
Guys like DeSantis look at China with envy. They want that state power to just block protest, surveil political opponents, and dictate the narrow lanes in which capitalist profit-makers can operate and behave.
Republicans have come to really hate the core concepts of America, however poorly they’ve been applied up to now (cf Langston Hughes). And yet far too many in this country fail to grasp how thorough the take over that party is with the decayed and destructive ideology of MAGA.
JPL
@germy shoemangler: just wow
Brachiator
@Carlo Graziani:
Very true. Chinese government officials seem to understand that a great deal of their prosperity is a result of allowing some freedom in Hong Kong and on the mainland, but they are unable to abandon their authoritarian ways.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Very few authoritarians can.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Carlo Graziani:
@Brachiator:
I’ve long thought that the delicate sensitivity to criticism by authoritarians has always made them look weak. They look ridiculous and I’d love to see this presented to them on a personal level; like not taking personal responsibility when it’s clear you fucked up and everybody can see it
JPL
@germy shoemangler: The video is chilling.
RaflW
@NotMax: TBH I think the confluence of this wave of authoritarianism around the world + climate change reaching a rapid acceleration point is both very frightening and kind of not surprising. I tend to believe they’re actually already linked.
Maybe I’m a little out there, but I think at a subconscious (and for some, conscious) level, a couple billion people are tuning into the ways the planet is already actively f*cked and, being humans who struggle between selfishness and altruism, are selecting autocratic power in hopes that it will secure more resources or more protection for their slice of kin & community.
It’s the wrong response, IMO. But quite understandable. I hope that Europe can hold it together to actually cut off RU gas and other carbon energy, and really accelerate their clean-energy push. It could show the world that the right-wing, defensive, retrograde, dig-it-all, burn-it-all path is the wrong one.
But alas I’m pessimistic.
debbie
@germy shoemangler:
Whoever hauled her in needs to be cited, dammit.
sdhays
@Carlo Graziani: I’m not sure that’s true. Reunification has never been a super popular idea in Taiwan. Every day that goes by with Taiwan forging its own identity is a day it slips farther away from China’s orbit. And that slippage has been going on for over a century already.
If China had spent the last 20 years actively reforming itself to be a democracy, who knows? But that was never going to happen.
O. Felix Culpa
@Carlo Graziani:
Good points, but scorpion, frog etc. The concern/tremendous fear leading up to the 1997 handover was that China could not, would not, change its spots (to mix metaphors), and history has proven that true.
Point of fact: the HK [English] press was never “riotous,” at least not during my ten years there. While officially “free,” it was careful to remain within certain bounds to avoid incurring the wrath of the as-yet unofficial Chinese overlords
ETA:
debbie
@O. Felix Culpa:
They also made the error of thinking China would honor the terms of the treaty.
Brachiator
@Baud:
We went through a period where a number of authoritarian regimes peaceably allowed transformation. South Africa, the former Soviet satellite nations, the Soviet Union itself for a time. Perhaps this led to the hope that this could become a new standard model.
RaflW
Speaking of out of control police states, are folks hearing about the Uvalde woman who talked her way out of handcuffs and then ran in and rescued her kids?
Authorities have been threatening her. She’s on parole, and they said they’d ding her if she spoke out (I’ve seen both a ‘breaking parole’ claim and – even more shocking – a threat of ‘obstruction of justice’).
A judge intervened and called her a hero (and reportedly said they will shorten her remaining supervision).
This is the sort of ugly sh*t that cops do all the time. Will it penetrate the fog and make any difference that this is out in the open today? I hope so! I mean, telling your own story truthfully being turned into an ‘obstruction of justice’ threat? Total douchebag corrupting use of power (given more heft due to her vulnerability being ‘on paper’).
YY_Sima Qian
I had written a long post in last year’s (or maybe 2020’s) June 4 Open Thread, when it was already dead. I would have liked to repost it here, but w/ the recent site issues I can’t retrieve it from the archives. Oh well.
I was in elementary school in Nanjing when the tragedy happened. I then went on my annual trip to Beijing in Aug. of 1989 to see my extended family on my father’s side. I remember the atmosphere was subdued & oppressive, w/ soldiers & paramilitary sentries everywhere.
30+ years on, the vast majority of people in China have really decided to move on, including the Beijingers who were alive & aware at the time (such as my uncles’/aunts’/older cousins’ generation). Part of it is the CCP regime insists that everyone move on, by excising the episode from all history (far more thoroughly than the famines of Great Leap Forward or the anarchy of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which are acknowledged of not emphasized or dwelled upon). Part of it was the CCP Regime over the following decade then effectively addressed many of the immediate issues that had caused great discontent among large segments of the urban population (such as rationing of daily necessities, hyperinflation, heavy intrusion by the party apparatus into personal lives, lack of respect & standing for intellectuals, university graduates being assigned work by the state, etc.), which provided energy for the protest movement. Given all of the advancements in the 3+ decades since, the vast majority of people have decided to move on from June 4, just as they moved on from the Great Leap Forward & the Cultural Revolution.
The protest movement never had a chance to overthrow the CCP Regime, unless the regime itself fell into internal disarray (though there was internal disagreement w/in the central leadership early on, which further encouraged the protest movement). It was an entirely urban phenomenon (even then mainly in Beijing, the municipalities & provincial capitals, where universities are concentrated at), at a time when China’s population was ~ 85% rural, & it was a the rural population that had been the primary beneficiaries of the 1st decade of Reform & Opening. The officer & enlisted corps of the People’s Liberation Army, that carried out the bloody crackdown, where overwhelming rural, as well.
I think it is important to keep in mind that even the marching students & intellectuals largely had an instrumentalist view of democracy & freedom (of speech, association & religion), rather than necessarily deeply held beliefs about universal values & democratic self-government. They pushed for democracy because the most prosperous/powerful/advanced countries in the world at the time were all democracies. The real animating force was the same one that motivated the reformers during crumbling late Qing Empire, Sun Yat-sen & his republican revolutionaries, students & intellectuals that marched on May 4, 1919 (the marchers in 1989 considered themselves inheritors of the May 4th spirit), Chang Kai-shek & his Fascist-Leninist Kuomintang Regime, & the Communist revolutionaries – returning China to a position of wealth & power, prominent among nations & invulnerable to the humiliations & predations that it suffered since the 1st Opium War, & redress the perceived wrongs China suffered during that time (including Hong Kong, Macau & Taiwan). In that sense, the early Communist revolutionary leaders (the ones before Mao Zedong & comrades of Mao) had similar instrumentalist view w/ Communism.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Probably true. But they often have the nasty habit of throwing you in prison when you point this out to them.
O. Felix Culpa
@debbie: Hard no. They made no such error, unless you’re speaking of the British. The local residents (1) had no voice in the matter and (2) were under no illusions about China. As many as could afford it got “insurance” policies by getting residency visas or citizenship elsewhere.
trollhattan
Comforting to see the PRC prioritizing the important things, such as erasing their own history to the benefit of those who feel uncomfortable with their own history.
Do not know if impressive is the right word, but the apparent effectiveness of “The Great Firewall of China” seems impressive. Controlling information flow to and from 1.4 billion people sounds utterly impossible in the internet age and yet, they seem to manage it for the most part. Hard not to feel great empathy for the Hong Kong folks who remember their many freedoms now lost.
Xi is only 68 and now that he’s emperor for life, can continue removing rights, imprisoning people for wrong thinking, disappear people for being born the wrong race and religion, for decades. Don’t know what the people did to deserve this.
O. Felix Culpa
@O. Felix Culpa:
My intended ETA got timed out. I intended to add that my ex is a native Chinese speaker, and he too noted that the local Chinese language press was clearly mindful of the shadow government’s potential reaction. Not entirely subservient, but generally cautious.
Carlo Graziani
@O. Felix Culpa: Point taken, although from the point of view of the PRC government much of the HK press were not only riotous, but downright disloyal.
It would take decades. And, implicitly, it would take change, not only of political attitudes in Taiwan, but also in China. So yes, it is a bit of a pipe dream. On the other hand, if one thinks of China as a gardener, and (to culturally misappropriate a metaphor) Hong Kong as a Bonsai tree, there is the old Japanese saying, “You shape the Bonsai, and the Bonsai shapes you…”
debbie
@O. Felix Culpa:
I’m sure you’re right. I remember following along in American newspapers. There was nothing in what I read about citizens leaving or making other arrangements. Sorry.
CaseyL
@RaflW: My thoughts exactly. I have been thinking along these lines for a few years now.
Humans are animals – we don’t like to think of ourselves that way, but we are – and subject to whatever species-conscious/subconscious cues that drive other species.
I do believe humans have a species-wide awareness that we are dooming ourselves, and we (a very generalized “we”) are responding with increased selfishness and violence.
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: Agree completely on “restoration” as the unifying driver of modern Chinese historical movements.. Perhaps that aspect also helps explain the extreme sensitiveness to criticism of the PRC government, which appears to be a genuinely shared feeling, even among expat Chinese. A cultural sense of historical injustice and deficit of national respect, requiring redress, is a characteristic that I’ve noticed, and that I believe it is too facile to blame merely on “authoritarianism”. In fact, perhaps the causality runs the other way: it is the difficulties in the way of nationalist self-criticism that may contribute to driving authoritarianism.
On Tianamen itself, to your point, many political scientists (the references escape me now unfortunately) have noted that popular revolutions only succeed when they capture, subvert, or demoralize part or all of the national security apparatus. In China at that time, there was no possibility whatsoever of this occurring.
Brachiator
@debbie:
There was a fair amount about people taking advantage of their British citizenship to move to the UK. Also, some relocation to Commonwealth nations, especially Canada. There were soon stories about a spike in housing prices in Vancouver caused by former Hong Kong residents buying property there.
sdhays
@Carlo Graziani: The Chinese government is also very ready to threaten expats who speak out. There are enforcers in the expat community.
YY_Sima Qian
I could write tomes about Hong Kong & Taiwan. Part of the tragedy for Hong Kong is that from 1997 to early 2010s the CCP Regime was largely hands off wrt the territory, not out of magnanimity or liberalism, but because Hong Kong was far too valuable economically & it was indeed mindful of maintaining the attractiveness of the “One Country Two System” model for Taiwan. An anti-sedition legislation was stipulated in the Basic Law (HKSAR’s mini-constitution), but every effort in the Aughts to pass such legislation provoked understandable fears & massive demonstrations, & the HKSAR government (& by extension Beijing) backed off every time. In hindsight, whatever the different Hong Kong factions could have reached consensus on in the Aughts would have been far less severe than the current National Security Law written in Beijing.
Likewise on the textbooks. Every attempt to write new textbooks in the Aughts provoked understandable fears & massive demonstrations, & HKSAR government & Beijing backed off every time. Having perused some of the textbooks in Hong Kong before 2019, they are indeed free of anything that could remotely be construed as CCP indoctrination or even promoting Chinese patriotism, but elements of pernicious anti-Mainlander nativism were thinly veiled, too. I know Mainland Chinese immigrants to Hong Kong who then chose to send their children to study in the US or the UK (or even Mainland China), because they are appalled by what their children were learning in HK schools. In hindsight, whatever consensus the different Hong Kong factions could have agreed to in the Aughts would have been much better the new textbooks written to please Beijing.
The Umbrella Movement in 2014 was a real turning point. The territory was to have direct election of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage, as stipulated by the Basic Law. Beijing insisted that candidates be selected by the Legislated Council that is structurally dominated by pro-Establishment factions friendly to Beijing, to ensure that no candidate that Beijing opposed could make the final ballot. The anti-Establishment factions called it a farcical “birdcage democracy”, which was quite apt. However, the anti-Establishment forces decided on a strategy of head on confrontation, all or nothing, apparently hopeful that international sympathy & pressure would force the CCP regime to make concessions (which was naive & delusional), & they ended w/ nothing. In hindsight, HK might have been better served if they grabbed the half loaf eat the time, then worked to reform the Legislative Council to reduce the structural advantage of the pro-Establishment forces, while working to reassure Beijing that anti-Establishment (HK is essentially the cozy kleptocracy of neoliberal wet dreams) did not necessarily mean anti-CCP Regime. Surely that is better than the current situation where Beijing’s hand picked man runs unopposed, & anti-kleptocracy forces have zero means of influencing even bread & butter issues. The protest movement of 2019 followed the same strategy of all or nothing head on confrontation, w/ worse results. As peaceful protests devolved to nativist rioting toward the end, some of the leaders were explicit that they hoped to provoke Beijing to send in the PLA, leading to a bloodbath, apparently believing the West will then intervene & somehow force the CCP regime to back down. Apparently still heeding the lessons of Tiananmen, Beijing did not directly intervene, but instead dropped the hammer after. Now, any remaining scope for freedom of speech & association in the territory is being snuffed out.
As for Taiwan, I think it is a big mistake to attribute the Chinese position entirely to the CCP Regime’s authoritarianism. Sun Yat-sen was radicalized from a reformer to a revolutionary by the humiliating defeat the Qing Empire suffered in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, & the resultant ceding of Taiwan to Japan. No Chinese nationalist would every relinquish the claim. The US had wanted to keep Taiwan’s status as “indeterminant” following WW II, a la the Ryukyu Islands, but Chang Kai-Shek insisted on its return to China. A CCP Regime that accepts de jure independence of Taiwan will be overthrown in short order. A democratic China would be no less hardline on Taiwan, probably more so w/ an eye on the ballot box. The kind of magnanimity Carlo suggests can only come from a particularly enlightened despot in complete control of the nationalist passions of the populace.
YY_Sima Qian
I should clarify that GLF, GPCR & TAM are all still well w/in living memory in China. Should the CCP Regime be perceived to treating those mistakes, or failing to delivery the “Chinese Dream” of power & wealth, large segments of the Chinese population may well decide to revisit those calamitous episodes.
Soprano2
@Carlo Graziani: Thus the efforts here by the Proud Boys, III Percenter’s, and other white supremacist groups to place their members in police forces and the military. I think they really believe that if they start a civil war here, a substantial portion of the military and police would be on their side.
YY_Sima Qian
@O. Felix Culpa: It got to the point where > 1M of HK’s 6M residents were/are foreign passport holders, which really feeds into the CCP regime’s paranoia.
Geminid
It seems almost certain that the CCP will still rule China five years from now. I’m not so sure about another authoritarian regime, the religious dictorship of Iran. Iran’s 85 million people live under a nominal democracy, but the religious establishment controls who qualifies as a candidate and that way suppresses dissent.
There are occasional outbreaks of demonstrations, such one recently in a southwestern city after 39 people died in a building collapse. The city’s mayor and 12 others were arrested on suspician of taking bribes in return for lax building inspections. Besides this local corruption demonstrators expressed their frustration with the authoritarian government that allowed the corruption. Several were killed when the government cracked down.
No Iranian will underestimate the ruthlessness of Mr. Raisi, their new President. Raisi is known as “the hangman” for his role in a wave of executions July-Septmber of 1988, a year before the Tienanman Square massacre. Mr. Raisi’s lack of a legal education did not prevent him from ordering an estimated 5,000 executions, as one of the two most active members of a traveling judicial panel. The regime has never acknowledged these killings to the families or to the world.
Carlo Graziani
@sdhays: To whatever extent that may be the case, I am referring to my own experience with friends and colleagues, whose good faith I have no reason to doubt, particularly after long, engaged, even occasionally heated argument (fueled, then quenched, with beer).
There is no doubt in my mind that this kind of sentiment exists and is widespread. We in the West have to acknowledge it and deal with it. It’s part of the landscape that we would be foolish to ignore. The threat comes from ignoring it, rather than acknowledging it forthrightly, in my view.
ksmiami
@RaflW: I think policing is a corrupt failure in this country and needs to be held to rigid national standards… Small town police are usually just a grift.
trollhattan
@Geminid:
Iran goings on are interesting and they’re of course doubling down on the US as the cause of building collapses, food shortages and the like. I’ll be surprised if anything comes from it but at least it makes the regime uncomfortable.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61690379
debbie
@Brachiator:
Yes, I remember all that, but figured because they didn’t want to be part of China, not that China would cut the time in half!
Another Scott
@sdhays: Never’s a long time, especially for China, but I echo your point.
Taiwan grew in spite of the Communists, and was led by Chiang’s people and compatriots. They had an ideology at least as fervently held as Mao’s people and compatriots.
People who have the will and the ability to make dramatic changes in direction, like Deng, only seem to come along every two-three-more generations. Xi seems determined to be Strongman-For-Life so any significant changes would seem to be no sooner than after he’s gone (he’s 68 – Deng lived to 92).
The people of Taiwan should be studying Ukraine’s resistance very, very closely. Stocking up on drones, anti-ship weapons, air defense, and all the rest. The continued best way to prevent invasion is to let China know that it would be too costly. And to harden their Democracy against infiltration and “Little Green Men” who would try to take over without an obvious invasion.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@debbie:
There were some insightful interviews and stories in California newspapers and on some public radio stations with China scholars who emphasized that the dates agreed upon helped Britain maintain the illusion that there had some choice or decision in what was happening. But ultimately China would do what they perceived to be in their national interest.
Another Scott
@germy shoemangler:
Things like this will keep happening until there are consequences. Cops (and prosecutors) must follow the rules.
I hope that she sues (and wins).
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Brachiator:
Yeah, well, Britain sure folded like a wet noodle. With friends like that….
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian: (I poked around the Wayback Machine and found AL’s Tiananmen thread for 6/4/2021, but there were no comment captured (and only 1 capture of that thread). I can’t find it in Google’s cache, either.)
Your comments here are always appreciated. Here’s hoping they can be found and made available.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@debbie:
Britain had no choice. They are no longer a major nation. BREXIT is a futile fantasy that they can reclaim some of their past glory.
Carlo Graziani
@Another Scott: One thing that I find a little puzzling about the strictly military discussions of future invasions of Taiwan by the PRC is how often they seem to assume that it is only a matter of time before PRC has the military strength to succeed.
But a 100-mile sea crossing combined-arms assault on a heavily-defende coast with zero possibility of surprise, and against likely intererence from the US Navy, would be the most complex and difficult operation of war in history, bar none. It would make OVERLORD look like a game of Risk by comparison, and that operation came close to failing, and would have without essential assistance from Hitler’s idiocy.
So why assume that China just has to wait and accrete enough combat power until it is ready to pull off this military miracle? I certainly would not want to be the People’s Army General Staff officer who signed off on that doomed operations order.
Geminid
@trollhattan: The Iranian regime seems able to keep the lid on popular discountent. Things boiled over a couple years ago and security forces suppressed widespread demonstrations with live fire. The official death toll was 200; outside observer estimated that there were over a thousand killed. Demonstraters tried and executed since then included a well known member of the country’s Olypic judo team.
I do not know much about Iran’s people and their various political views. There is no public polling on this. I understand that is a young country with half the population under age 30.
MisterDancer
@Another Scott: I know PopeHat (and you!) mean well, yet…look, lawsuits are hard enough. It sounds like this lady is already living a tough life. And PH, in his next tweet, explicitly says:
Plus you know — YOU KNOW — the asshats’ll be out in force the moment papers get filed.
You’re right, we need reform. But we also need systems, just like The Right have, to protect and support the people we throw into these situations. In fact, it’s arguable that the lack of post-lawsuit care for “Jane Roe”/Norma McCorvey made it that much easier for Conservative wankers to sell her a bill of goods.
I think it’s worth serious consideration.
Geminid
@Carlo Graziani: If China wants to forcibly “reunite” Taiwan , I think they will wait until they have accumulated enough surface to surface and surface to air missiles to dominate the air and sea around Taiwan. Then they will blockade that country.
The Chinese would also wait until they have constructed a relatively sanctions-proof economy. They are in no hurry.
satby
The Tiananmen Square massacre occurred the day my father died. Events inextricably linked in my family’s rememberance.
James E Powell
@RaflW:
The voters of Florida apparently agree.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
My mother and her last husband were married in early June of 1988. They took a trip to China in May of 1989, and while on their tour bus in Bejing on the way to see (I think) the Terra Cotta army they saw people streaming to Tiananmen Square. It was clear something was happening but they weren’t sure what. On a video they took from the bus you can see lots of people walking toward the square and hear distant speeches over a bullhorn. They returned around June 1st because they wanted to be home for their first anniversary, and then the massacre happened on June 4th. So I have memories of my mother (who died in 2014 at 96) and LeRoy (who died in 1998) inextricably linked to Tiananmen Square.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@satby: So sorry. As I posted above, I have memories of my mother linked to the massacre, but they are happier ones. It’s so sad and weird when your private pain is echoed by the culture because of some terrible event.
RaflW
@James E Powell: Which is why I renewed my passport and am keeping a wary eye on the exits. Things could go downhill very fast after Nov 2024.
YY_Sima Qian
@O. Felix Culpa:
This has certainly been true of HK’s English press, but most certainly not true of the territories’ Chinese language press, that latter of which is what the CCP regime sees as a threat. See Jimmy Lai’s Apply Daily, & the fact that the Falun Gong’s Epoch Times was readily available on its streets. (Aside, Jimmy Lai’s is often portrayed as “pro-democracy” in western press, but I would characterize him more as “anti-Communist”. For one thing, he is a strong Trump supporter. Apple Daily had done some quality investigative reporting into local corruption & kleptocratic abuse, but it is a tabloid & all that implies, & is happy to fan the anti-Mainlander nativist flames.)
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani:
@Another Scott:
I think there is fair greater question of the willingness of the Taiwanese population to fight like the Ukrainians. My interactions w/ friends & colleagues over the past decade+ makes me skeptical. The people have drawn opposite lessons from the Ukraine war. Some draw hope from the experience in the Kiev theater, that irregular light infantry w/ man portable weapons can bleed the PLA after it lands (though the Battle for Donbass may disabuse some of such notions). Others have no interest in seeing everything they’ve built over the past 5 decades go up in flames, in a possibly doomed effort to resist the PLA after it lands.
Neither pro-independence the DPP government nor Taiwan’s population actually want to pay the cost of a “porcupine” strategy a la Israel, Singapore or Finland. The term of national draft has a been reduced to 4 months, which is next to useless. No one dares to propose restoring the length of drafted service to 1 or 2 years, such proposals will be crushed at the ballot box. Taiwan already has plenty of surface to ship & surface to air missile batteries, but these missiles need to be cued by radars, & it is these sensors that are far fewer in number & vulnerable to early destruction.
A truism in Taiwan has been that the best way to keep peace across the Strait & maintain its de facto independence is to make sure Beijing does not have hope in forced reunification & does not lose hope of peaceful reunification. Under the DPP government, underinvestment in the military (other than big ticket weapons purchases that fatten the coffers of US weapons manufacturers), & refusal to continue the modus vivendi established by the previously KMT government & fanning nativist passions in pursuit of electoral gains, is actually doing the opposite.
The problem for the PLA’s planning is the logistical challenge of sustaining forces that land on the island, probably while under fire. However, the geography that is problematic for the PLA is equally problematic for any effort to supply Taiwanese resistance. All of the port facilities are on the west coast of the island, in range of relatively cheap long range rocket artillery from the Mainland. There is no option of transporting heavy equipment by road or rail.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott:
Well, there are very few Chinese nationalists left on Taiwan, not even the nominally “Nationalist” KMT. It is electoral suicide. Other than not wanting to absorbed by a China ruled by the CCP regime, I do not see much that is unifying. The DPP government does great PR, but its actions remind me more of the Gingrich or GWB era GOP, in its lack of respect for norms & precedents in government function & parliamentary process. The pro-Independence factions have deep ties to the revanchist ultraconservative wing of the Japanese LDP (not surprising since many of the DPP’s leaders come from families that had collaborated w/ & benefitted under the Japanese colonial regime, & were thus disadvantaged when the KMT took over at the end of WW II), & has been equally solicitous of the modern GOP.
I find it tragic (I’m using this word a lot) that the understandable fear of absorption by the CCP (I would not want to be ruled by the CCP regime if I am in their place & have a choice) has driven many Taiwanese & Hong Kongers to renounce their “Chineseness”. The CCP regime has labored for decades to ensure that it is equated w/ China, & that it is the sole arbiter & representative of Chinese patriotism/nationalism. Hong Kong & Taiwan had a chance to establish competing visions of Chinese patriotism that are not tied to the CCP, but they instead ceded the field. Doing so also evaporated any possible sympathy or even empathy their causes might have received among Mainland Chinese. What is doubly galling to Mainlanders is that the seemingly strident Taiwanese “nationalism” among the pro-Independence hardliners only ever manifest in relation to Mainland China (as nativism), & is never found in relation to any other external actors that impinge on Taiwanese interests. A truly developed Taiwanese nationalist identity would have garnered more respect across the Strait.