June 4th: "Just Another Day"

James Fallows is blogging about the anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre as it's being experienced in China.

In his first post, he discusses walking by the square on the eve of the anniversary:

There are more representatives in all categories -- soldiers, police, obvious plainclothesmen -- than I recall seeing even during the Tibet violence in early 2008 or through the Olympic games. Also many people whom you would normally classify as fruit vendors, tourists from the Chinese provinces, youngish white collar workers male and female, and skateboarder-looking characters wearing cargo shorts and with fauxhawk haircuts, were last night walking up and down the sidewalks with their eyes constantly on visitors and drifting up next to people who were holding conversations.

The way to avoid their attention is keep moving briskly along the sidewalk rather than stopping as if you think there is something particular to look at in the square today. The way to draw it is to stop and look around, to pay attention to the security forces themselves, or to have a camera in your hand. If the camera comes out, it may be pointed at one of the scenic highlights in the center of the square.

In his second post, he gives updates from various sources, including his wife (below). Fallows also notes that in other parts of Beijing and China, everything was "perfectly normal" and it was "just another day."

Lots of groups were obviously deputized young men who stood around watching, staring, following people like me at least 3 on 1 at any given moment. There were no women in this capacity. There was a clear absence of the usual "oblivious" quality of Chinese crowd movement, where people bump into you, brush against you, or cut in front of you if you happen to be in the path of where they're going. Everyone milling about was acutely aware of everyone else in his space. They seemed to have assigned space. Some deputies also wore group-colored shirts, all wore "badges" with the Chinese flag surrounded in gold, Many looked like the kids who volunteered at the Olympics. Clearly nationalistic. All young. I wondered if they were paid for the day.

I would guess about 85% of people on the square were there officially. You could tell that because the security lines were basically unpopulated, while all the "deputies" just walked around the screeners without being checked. There were very few tourists, foreign or otherwise. There were mostly uniformed and non-uniformed police. Some foreigners were taking pictures, seemingly unmolested. Any footage and photos will be dull-looking; the shots would look "normal". It was just the feeling of intense orchestration and deliberate crowd-building that gave it away. And also a distinct sense of high-tension, which carried around the front of the Forbidden City, but evaporated just around the corners.

I found her comment about the young, nationalistic volunteers pretty interesting in light of some statistics I read in the paper today. In today's Express (the Washington Post's free paper) that because discussion of the 1989 events is "virtually off-limits" in China, the 200 million "post-1980" kids are most apolitical. Apparently 75% of Chinese college students hope to join the Communist Party. Of those, 56% think it would "boost their chances of finding a good job." In any case, it turns out that many young Chinese no idea what happened 20 years ago.

Slate's "Explainer" is about what the official government line is on Tiananmen Square.

This week marks the 20^th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Western media characterize the incident as a brutal government crackdown on peaceful protesters. What does the Chinese government say about it?

Very little. Neither the 1989 protests nor the ensuing massacre is included in Chinese textbooks, and many students today have never heard of these events. For the most part, the government avoids discussing the issue at all. The government does acknowledge that the People's Liberation Army intervened after seven weeks of demonstrations and that people were killed. But the official line is that, rather than crushing a peaceful protest, the military simply defended itself—and the country—against violent counterrevolutionary elements. ("Counterrevolutionary" is used in China in much the same way as "anti-American" in the United States.)