[Music]
as the chinese communist party
celebrates 100 years
there are things they don't want to talk
about
like the tiananmen square massacre
[Music]
do
welcome to china uncensored i'm chris
chappell on july 1st
the chinese communist party will be
turning 100
and they're throwing themselves the
birthday party of the century
you know what they say ain't no party
like a communist party
because the communist party insinuates
itself into every part of your life
subverting society until there's no
escape it's a catchy song
the chinese communist party is big on
anniversaries celebrating the ones they
want you to remember
and arresting people ahead of the ones
they want you to forget
and this 100th anniversary celebration
is a theme party
the theme is without the communist party
there would be no new china
it's the same theme as other parties
this year they're celebrating that theme
with everything from patriotic films to
mass weddings
and the message to follow the party
forever
how romantic the chinese communist party
is also using this year's celebrations
to further elevate its own mythology
using some pretty religious language
in party literature and state media
former revolutionary bases
are labeled holy sites and the almost
obligatory visits to such locations
by the rank and file are meant to
baptize
members in the communist faith
of course you can't baptize people in
the communist faith
without sweeping a few things under the
rug thornier subjects
infighting in purges in the upper
echelon and
ruthless mass political campaigns dating
back to the party's early days
are almost never touched on you mean the
communist party isn't telling the truth
about history
i'm shocked it's happening in chinese
state-run media as well
for example here's a poster series of
key events
during the party's 100 year path to
glory
they're doing one poster for each year
since 1921.
like in 1987 the poster is about the
13th
national congress in 1988 it's about the
establishment of the high non-special
economic zone
and in 1990 it's about the opening of
the shanghai stock exchange
well that's odd the posters go from 1988
straight to 1990
there's no poster for 1989.
i guess nothing important happened in
china in 1989
you know after seeing all this
excitement we want to get in on the
festivities too so here on china
uncensored
we're going to do a special series to
celebrate
100 years of the chinese communist party
but we're going to cover the things that
the chinese communist party
might want to skip we're calling it
100 years of things that never happened
more after the break welcome back
first up on 100 years of things that
never happened
the 1989 tiananmen square massacre
or as many young mainland chinese people
call it
what's that the chinese communist party
simply refers to the massacre as
the june 4th incident that is when they
are forced to mention
it at all the party much prefers making
people forget the whole thing ever
happened
which has led to what some call
generation amnesia
the official party line is that student
protests in 1989
were a counter-revolutionary riot
you see violent students attacked the
poor
heavily armed soldiers who had to shoot
the students
as well as innocent bystanders to defend
themselves
the tiananmen square massacre is a huge
turning point
in modern chinese history there may well
be a parallel universe where the
crackdown never happened
and china is now a liberal democracy and
only
queen mallory has seen it yes
sliders i said we were going to talk
about things people have totally
forgotten
the massacre was the chinese communist
party's final response to
seven weeks of protests led by students
demanding political reform less
corruption
freedom of speech in the press only
towards the end of the protest
did people start talking about democracy
the students weren't trying to overthrow
the communist party
they believed the communist party could
reform itself
turns out the answer was no the student
protest at tmn square started after
huiao bang died on april 15
1989 who was one of the only outspoken
liberal reformers in the communist party
he had been purged from the party by
chinese leader deng xiaoping after dung
blamed who for student protests
in 1986 at the time people were like
who got purged that's right who got
purged
hundreds of thousands of students showed
up in tiananmen square for huiao bang's
funeral
that morphed into a series of protests
in marches
but it all could have died down again if
the party hadn't issued an editorial in
the people's daily
on april 26th titled the necessity for a
clear stand
against turmoil it described the protest
as a
well-planned plot to overturn communist
rule
this editorial gave new life to the
student protest
and sparked protests across the country
in support of the students
the students saw themselves as patriotic
they were protesting for the good of the
country
and now workers intellectuals and
ordinary citizens started to join in
tiananmen square witnesses remember this
time as having an air of celebration
with feelings of joy and hope people
paraded through the streets
some even brought their kids to see this
historic event
on may 13th the students started a
hunger strike
these were some of the reasons the
students gave for the strike
widespread illegal business dealings by
corrupt officials
the dominance of abuse of power the
corruption of bureaucrats
the fleeing of a large number of good
people to other countries
and the deterioration of law and order
sounds kind of familiar one of the
quirks of history is
why we have so many photos and videos of
the tiananmen protests
soviet leader mikhail gorbachev was
visiting china at the time
it was the first time soviet and chinese
leaders had met
since the sino-soviet split in the 1960s
and the chinese communist party had
allowed in lots of foreign journalists
to cover the meeting it turns out
foreign journalists were more interested
in covering a million chinese people
marching on tiananmen square
but while all this hope and change was
happening in the square
the party leadership especially
paramount leader deng xiaoping
decided to crack down on the protests
and declare martial law
general secretary jiaozu yang was
against martial law
he was forced to resign and purged from
the party
zhao then famously went to tiananmen
square and apologized to the students
begging them to leave after his speech
on the square
zhao would spend the rest of his life
under house arrest
zhao's secretary bao tong was imprisoned
for the protests
he says that deng xiaoping was already
planning to get rid of zhao
and the protests were just a good excuse
dung replaced zhao with shanghai party
leader
jiang zemin who would spend the next 20
years
amassing power through his own
crackdowns on innocent citizens
this is basically the prequel to general
hostilities everyone's favorite soap
opera about communist party power
struggles
but jiaozi young wasn't the only person
to stand against martial law
a pla general who commanded one of the
most elite units
refused to deploy his soldiers against
the protesters
he was also arrested and imprisoned
martial law didn't go exactly as the
party leadership had planned
as the first pla soldiers tried to enter
beijing on may 19th
beijing's citizens actually convinced
them to turn
back and leave meanwhile protests
continue to spread to other cities
they continued for another two weeks
before the party sent in troops again
on the night of june 3rd to june 4th
this time there was no turning back
the soldiers drove the students out of
tiananmen square
even as they left the students were
still singing the communist
international
and the chinese national anthem when the
soldiers
opened fire on the unarmed civilians
most of them were killed on the
surrounding streets outside the square
here's what one bbc reporter saw the
young man in front of me fell dead
i fell over him two others were killed
yards away
two more people lay wounded on the
ground near me
we still don't know how many people died
in the massacre
estimates are in the thousands a
recently declassified british diplomatic
cable
puts the number at ten thousand but the
legacy of tiananmen square wasn't just
the massacre
the real legacy was what happened
afterwards
more after the break
welcome back you might be wondering why
i haven't talked about this guy yet
well tank man actually faced down those
tanks on june 5th
the day after the soldiers killed people
in the streets
which if you think about it makes it
even more ballsy than you previously
thought
also more ballsy when you see how many
tanks this guy was actually facing down
one of the photojournalists who took
photos of tankman had to hide his film
in the toilet
to keep it from getting taken by chinese
police
that's because the suppression of any
information about the tiananmen square
massacre was already starting
the communist party spent the next 18
months running a mass political campaign
designed to scare the crap out of the
chinese people and make sure this
never happened again over 4 million
chinese communist party members
were investigated for involvement in the
protests
chinese state run media showed video
after video of police
capturing counter-revolutionaries in
raids
some of the students involved in the
protests escaped others were arrested
and sentenced
people were told the best thing to do
was to forget
to the point where many were even afraid
to admit they had family members who had
been
killed in the massacre the chinese
communist party had a new bargain for
the chinese people
shut up about politics and will let you
make money
and most people took that bargain the
party also started a new patriotic
education campaign
that used nationalism to erase the
memory of any wrongdoing by the party
as chinese artist and former tianmen
soldier chen guang
says china's political education forces
you to forget
what happened in the past forget the bad
things that the party did
and only remember the good things a few
years ago we interviewed tiananmen's
survivor fang zhang
he lost both of his legs after he was
run over by a
tank on june 4th fong says the party is
waging a memory war this has been one of
the most difficult problems in china
under the chinese communist party's rule
this type of memory war
the chinese communist party has
continuously committed crimes against
the chinese people during different
periods of history
over and over again from when it first
started to rule to the present day
almost 70 years now but why is it still
successful
the biggest reason is that through
propaganda
brainwashing and thought control they've
made people
unaware of what happened in the past
according to fang jung
the only way to fight back is to
remember
which explains why the communist party
is so against anyone
who won't forget the tiananmen massacre
like the tiananmen mothers
whose children were killed or the people
of hong kong
for decades hong kong was the only place
in china where people could remember the
tiananmen square massacre
every year they held a vigil but now
authorities warned that people could be
sentenced to five years in prison
for doing that so as the years go by
the chinese communist party is getting
more and more successful at treating the
tiananmen square massacre
as a thing that never happened one among
many things that never happened let us
know what other things you'd like us to
talk about in this new series
great leap forward cultural revolution
leave your ideas below
and now it's time for me to answer a
question from a fan who supports china
uncensored
on the crowdfunding website patreon
bruce johnson
asked chris with taiwan beginning to
take center stage with the ccp's
increasing
aggression is there any chance the us
will get serious
before a conflict begins i realize there
would be serious repercussions
however if the u.s is serious about
defending the island
getting started now with a new security
agreement including u.s bases
seems like the best bet rather than
reacting
after the fighting begins
good question bruce it seems the u.s has
already begun to take steps to get
series about taiwan though it's still in
the early stages
last august the u.s sent the secretary
of health and human services to taiwan
angering china and the next month
the u.s sent another high-ranking
diplomat
also angering china this year in april
the u.s sent another delegation to
taiwan further angering
china the problem with all these visits
though is that
too many idiots in the media frame this
as
angering china rather than supporting
our democratic ally
and that makes politicians afraid to
anger china
so progress has been slower than it
could be
the us needs to start stationing troops
in taiwan
doing military training with taiwan and
having consistent
high-level strategic talks with taiwan
this
might anger china in the short term but
actually acts as a deterrent
to a chinese invasion since the better
prepared the us and taiwan are for war
the less of a chance that war will
actually happen
hopefully the current administration in
both countries can see that
thanks for your question bruce and thank
you for watching this episode of china
uncensored
i'm chris chappell see you next time
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you