It’s okay to be long-winded. One thing with HRW, is that it was essentially founded to be an anti-Communist tool of propaganda, not an impartial judge of national character. Criticism of HRW is frequent for its US-bias, even if it also critiques the US or Western countries, it does so with far more kindness than it does for non-Western countries.
As for the PRC and Tian’anmen, they absolutely do acknowlwdge it. They call the event the “June 4th Incident.” They disagree with the debunked UK diplomat cable that alleged 10,000 people killed in total, and a massacre on the square, on the basis of the UK diplomat Alan Donald admiting to have made up the figure from various sources and that he fled the scene well-before. All reputable sources report a relatively consistent story, no deaths (or up to 3ish by some reports) on the square, around 300-500 deaths of PLA soldiers and rioters combined. I recommend checking out the links on this document for more.
This is what I mean by the West taking a kernal of truth, and distorting the quality and quantity of the events. To this day, BBC reports the 10,000 figure as though it’s accurate, while Alan Donald himself has reduced his own estimates to 2000-3000, a number much higher than other estimates but much lower than his initial, and leaked cables back up the CPC’s claim of no deaths on the square. The west calls the denial of the debunked aspects censorship of the entire event, when pretty much everyone in China is familiar.
You’re correct, every government has skeletons in their closet. What’s important is having the media literacy to look at all sides, and not taking Western Sources about their enemies too seriously, as its a massive propaganda regime.
As a side-note, “tankie” is a pejorative for Marxist, but pretty much no Marxist takes it seriously, just like “commie” or “pinko.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to collect some links for me, those gave me a lot more to think about! I had missed the history section on the HRW Wikipedia page talking about its founding to watch the USSR specifically and slowly expanding to include more regions and whatnot. I’ll have to take a look at that page of their criticisms more closely, thank you for the link! The criticisms section in the HRC page was much more limited, I didn’t realize there was a dedicated page
Thats super interesting regarding them acknowledging the tianamen square massacre, if that’s true that totally changes my perception of that part of China’s history. If nothing else, I didn’t realize how close in time that was to the death of Mao, being about 10-15 years after he died, and that the deaths didn’t happen in the square. I think the argument for it being a significantly lower death toll are interesting and fairly compelling, I’ll keep that idea in the back of my mind as I learn more in the future, thank you for the sources! Do you happen to know any reputable, relatively impartial sources where I can learn more about how the event is talked about in China, and the governments acknowledgement of it? If not that’s okay but I wanted to ask :)
Wait, so does tankie not even really include maoists? I thought it was maoists marxists, stallinists (is that a thing?) Etc.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with me, I think these kinds of conversations are exhausting but I really appreciate them. O think it’s really important to be able to talk to people who’s perspective you don’t share and learn why they see things differently.
As for “Maoists,” Mao himself was a Marxist-Leninist. His contributions to Marxism-Leninism are called “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.” Maoists are a subsection of Marxists after Mao that believe certain individual characteristics of the Chinese Revolution are universal, rather than individual, ie they see Maoism as a higher stage of Marxism surpassing Marxism-Leninism. They get called “tankies” just as much, even if they reject most Socialist states as “valid.” “Stalinism” isn’t really a thing either, Stalin took the writings of Marx and Lenin and synthesized it into Marxism-Leninism, but didn’t really create any new theory. Those calling people “Stalinists” are generally trying to fearmonger around the name of Stalin, even if Marx, Engels, and Lenin are the broad majority of Marxism-Leninism, and Stalin more the first person after Lenin to really collect how Marxism and Leninism had changed and developed over time.
It’s okay to be long-winded. One thing with HRW, is that it was essentially founded to be an anti-Communist tool of propaganda, not an impartial judge of national character. Criticism of HRW is frequent for its US-bias, even if it also critiques the US or Western countries, it does so with far more kindness than it does for non-Western countries.
As for the PRC and Tian’anmen, they absolutely do acknowlwdge it. They call the event the “June 4th Incident.” They disagree with the debunked UK diplomat cable that alleged 10,000 people killed in total, and a massacre on the square, on the basis of the UK diplomat Alan Donald admiting to have made up the figure from various sources and that he fled the scene well-before. All reputable sources report a relatively consistent story, no deaths (or up to 3ish by some reports) on the square, around 300-500 deaths of PLA soldiers and rioters combined. I recommend checking out the links on this document for more.
This is what I mean by the West taking a kernal of truth, and distorting the quality and quantity of the events. To this day, BBC reports the 10,000 figure as though it’s accurate, while Alan Donald himself has reduced his own estimates to 2000-3000, a number much higher than other estimates but much lower than his initial, and leaked cables back up the CPC’s claim of no deaths on the square. The west calls the denial of the debunked aspects censorship of the entire event, when pretty much everyone in China is familiar.
You’re correct, every government has skeletons in their closet. What’s important is having the media literacy to look at all sides, and not taking Western Sources about their enemies too seriously, as its a massive propaganda regime.
As a side-note, “tankie” is a pejorative for Marxist, but pretty much no Marxist takes it seriously, just like “commie” or “pinko.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to collect some links for me, those gave me a lot more to think about! I had missed the history section on the HRW Wikipedia page talking about its founding to watch the USSR specifically and slowly expanding to include more regions and whatnot. I’ll have to take a look at that page of their criticisms more closely, thank you for the link! The criticisms section in the HRC page was much more limited, I didn’t realize there was a dedicated page
Thats super interesting regarding them acknowledging the tianamen square massacre, if that’s true that totally changes my perception of that part of China’s history. If nothing else, I didn’t realize how close in time that was to the death of Mao, being about 10-15 years after he died, and that the deaths didn’t happen in the square. I think the argument for it being a significantly lower death toll are interesting and fairly compelling, I’ll keep that idea in the back of my mind as I learn more in the future, thank you for the sources! Do you happen to know any reputable, relatively impartial sources where I can learn more about how the event is talked about in China, and the governments acknowledgement of it? If not that’s okay but I wanted to ask :)
Wait, so does tankie not even really include maoists? I thought it was maoists marxists, stallinists (is that a thing?) Etc.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with me, I think these kinds of conversations are exhausting but I really appreciate them. O think it’s really important to be able to talk to people who’s perspective you don’t share and learn why they see things differently.
No problem!
Regarding “unbiased sources,” you’ll find that there’s really no such thing in general. Bias is like perspective, everyone has it. Here’s a ProleWiki page section going over state media directly speaking about the “June 4th Incident” as it’s called in China. ProleWiki is a Marxist-Leninist Wikipedia, so definitely biased, but also has sources backing it up for most claims.
As for “Maoists,” Mao himself was a Marxist-Leninist. His contributions to Marxism-Leninism are called “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.” Maoists are a subsection of Marxists after Mao that believe certain individual characteristics of the Chinese Revolution are universal, rather than individual, ie they see Maoism as a higher stage of Marxism surpassing Marxism-Leninism. They get called “tankies” just as much, even if they reject most Socialist states as “valid.” “Stalinism” isn’t really a thing either, Stalin took the writings of Marx and Lenin and synthesized it into Marxism-Leninism, but didn’t really create any new theory. Those calling people “Stalinists” are generally trying to fearmonger around the name of Stalin, even if Marx, Engels, and Lenin are the broad majority of Marxism-Leninism, and Stalin more the first person after Lenin to really collect how Marxism and Leninism had changed and developed over time.