Why does it say nothing about the 1989 protests on Tiananmen Square, Beijing?
In this article on baidu, there is a gap between 1988 and 1999, why is there nothing about some kind of protest that everyone keeps telling me about?
Edit: Thank you for responding, you have taught me a great deal about the usage and necessity of propaganda, counter-propaganda and censorship in a Marxist-Leninist state like China. Although some relied upon lies and insults as a means of trying to win an argunent, I got actual contentful theoretical education out of this, thanks.
This search results page is tampered. You use an uncommon search query (1989政治风波 = 1989 Political Turmoil, a strong euphemism, instead of "unrest" or "demonstration", " protest") to get specific results, probably for exactly this reason: plausible denialbility.
If you click on the first result, the only thing said about the protests is one small sentence at the very end (that again uses euphemisms and is even just downplaying the event by just not talking about it that long), like it just happened casually on the side. To quote directly in chinese, since I am appareantly a 'stupid westerner, not understanding the chinese language and posts articles about numbers':
It might not be mentioned because, although there were protests in the square, all deaths were in streets near the square instead of in the square itself.
Can't be verified:
[1] Vancouver Sun, article written in a google doc, authenthiticity can't be proven, source of source in bottom is a link that doest not work.
Contradicts the Prolewiki article:
[13] CBS News,
Quote: "But there's no question many people were killed by the army that night around Tiananmen Square, and on the way to it — mostly in the western part of Beijing. Maybe, for some, comfort can be taken in the fact that the government denies that, too."
We could see burning vehicles on the Square and we tried to approach discreetly, but were told the soldiers would certainly shoot."
Quote from ProleWiki article: "Around 5:00 am on June 4, the 3,000 remaining protestors peacefully left the square. No one died in the square during or after the protests and most deaths were caused by the foreign-backed faction of students."
You see? The sources are very bad, their contents also twisted around, like in [13]; the source was used to "proof" that "[n]o one died in the square [...]" and "[...] deaths were caused by the foreign-backed faction [...]". If you would use this kind of sourcing in any scientific work, everyone would laugh at you.
Don't let yourself be blinded by the 'truth' that sounds the most comforting
It's probably censored because it's a politically sensitive topic. From my reading, the article is meant to promote tourism and pride in national monuments, not to discuss history in detail. Mentioning those events is seen as encouraging social unrest.
All current actually existing socialism is in a defensive stance. This is needed because of the history of bourgeois liberal democracies seeking to destabilize and collapse socialist states by any means necessary. Socialist states that didn't do a good enough job of defending themselves are no longer with us largely because of such actions. This is precisely why government censorship exists in China, to help maintain the social order and ensure stability of the socialist state. Stability is especially valued in China for historical reasons. Other AES countries like Vietnam also censor things like hate speech or misinformation to some extent, including jail time for the worst offenders.
For Tiananmen Square specifically, there's a huge misinformation campaign from Western countries about the events of the protest. If you go up to a random Westerner, show them the iconic photo of the man in front of the tank, and ask them what happened to the man, they will likely tell you that the man was run over. This is, of course, not what happened, and there's video evidence to this effect. But the misinformation in the West is hegemonic and entrenched, and if it got around in the PRC, it would take a lot of time and effort to debunk it and not everyone would believe you anyway. So, for the Chinese government, they prevent people from bringing it up more than absolutely necessary by censorship. It's not the ideal solution but it will have to do for now.
If that is enough to squick you out about MLism you should do some introspection about why that is. If you're truly committed to revolutionary politics you may find yourself needing to do much worse than censorship in the future. It is necessary for revolutionary movements to strike a balance between achieving their goals and avoiding the worst excesses of revolutions. As we know from history, this can be quite a difficult balance to strike, especially if the people have had a boot on their neck for a long time and are full of righteous anger. We need people like you in our movements to rein us in, but not so much that the revolution fails and all of it was for nothing.
Info on TinSquare isn't censored, you can find it in the Chinese web, they don't hide anything about it (because there is nothing much to hide!). But as bobs_guns says, if the info is already available, does it need to be on every mention of TS, especially for a touristy site?
Since when do encyclopedias promote tourism? Those are photographs taken by tourists. Also, why are politically sensitive topics censored? I do not understand this, they are not censored in other communist parties, groups.
This makes me lose faith in Marxism-Leninism by quite a bit, governments that cover up their "mistakes" and can't admit them, do not govern in the interest of the people, only in the state's.
They’re not “covering up mistakes;” they’re stopping Western disinformation on the event (such as that it was a “massacre” of “peaceful” “anti-government” protestors)
Other comrades can provide you links to our many threads on this subject.
I am practicing democratic centralism here lol. But appareantly, criticism, that is based on facts, is not wanted here. Just "unity in debate, unity in action" hahah