Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn't
Brian BeckerJune 4, 2021 3,57213 minutes read
Liberation News
Liberation News is republishing the following article originally posted in
2014 to answer the lies spread by the U.S. government and its loyal
corporate media outlets about China on the occasion of the 32nd anniversary
of the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square. While the mythology around this
incident has always been promoted as part of the U.S. ruling class's
hostility to the Chinese revolution led by the Communist Party, the
distortion now takes on renewed significance as the United States has
declared "great power competition" primarily with China to be the defining
feature of its military and foreign policy. We hope this article will equip
progressive people with the information needed to resist the demonization
campaign targeting China that is a necessary precursor to deadly
confrontation.
Twenty-five years ago today, every U.S. media outlet, along with then
President Bush and the U.S. Congress were whipping up a full scale frenzied
hysteria and attack against the Chinese government for what was described as
the cold-blooded massacre of many thousands of non-violent "pro-democracy"
students who had occupied Tiananmen Square for seven weeks.
The hysteria generated about the Tiananmen Square "massacre" was based on a
fictitious narrative about what actually happened when the Chinese
government finally cleared the square of protestors on June 4, 1989.
The demonization of China was highly effective. Nearly all sectors of U.S.
society, including most of the "left," accepted the imperialist presentation
of what happened.
At the time the Chinese government's official account of the events was
immediately dismissed out of hand as false propaganda. China reported that
about 300 people had died in clashes on June 4 and that many of the dead
were soldiers of the Peoples Liberation Army. China insisted that there was
no massacre of students in Tiananmen Square and in fact the soldiers cleared
Tiananmen Square of demonstrators without any shooting.i
The Chinese government also asserted that unarmed soldiers who had entered
Tiananmen Square in the two days prior to June 4 were set on fire and
lynched with their corpses hung from buses. Other soldiers were incinerated
when army vehicles were torched with soldiers unable to evacuate and many
others were badly beaten by violent mob attacks.
These accounts were true and well documented. It would not be difficult to
imagine how violently the Pentagon and U.S. law enforcement agencies would
have reacted if the Occupy movement, for instance, had similarly set
soldiers and police on fire, taken their weapons and lynched them when the
government was attempting to clear them from public spaces.
In an article on June 5, 1989, the Washington Post described how
anti-government fighters had been organized into formations of 100-150
people. They were armed with Molotov cocktails and iron clubs, to meet the
PLA who were still unarmed in the days prior to June 4.
What happened in China, what took the lives of government opponents and of
soldiers on June 4, was not a massacre of peaceful students but a battle
between PLA soldiers and armed detachments from the so-called pro-democracy
movement.
On one avenue in western Beijing, demonstrators torched an entire military
convoy of more than 100 trucks and armored vehicles. Aerial pictures of
conflagration and columns of smoke have powerfully bolstered the [Chinese]
government's arguments that the troops were victims, not executioners. Other
scenes show soldiers' corpses and demonstrators stripping automatic rifles
off unresisting soldiers," admitted the Washington Post in a story that was
favorable to anti-government opposition on June 12, 1989.ii
The Wall Street Journal, the leading voice of anti-communism, served as a
vociferous cheerleader for the "pro-democracy" movement. Yet, their coverage
right after June 4 acknowledged that many "radicalized protesters, some now
armed with guns and vehicles commandeered in clashes with the military" were
preparing for larger armed struggles. The Wall Street Journal report on the
events of June 4 portrays a vivid picture:
"As columns of tanks and tens of thousands soldiers approached Tiananmen
many troops were set on by angry mobs . [D]ozens of soldiers were pulled
from trucks, severely beaten and left for dead. At an intersection west of
the square, the body of a young soldier, who had beaten to death, was
stripped naked and hung from the side of a bus. Another soldier's corpse was
strung at an intersection east of the square."iii
The massacre that wasn't
In the days immediately after June 4, 1989, the New York Times headlines,
articles and editorials used the figure that "thousands" of peaceful
activists had been massacred when the army sent tanks and soldiers into the
Square. The number that the Times was using as an estimate of dead was
2,600. That figure was used as the go-to number of student activists who
were mowed down in Tiananmen. Almost every U.S. media outlet reported "many
thousands" killed. Many media outlets said as many 8,000 had been
slaughtered.
Tim Russert, NBC's Washington Bureau Chief, appearing later on Meet the
Press said "tens of thousands" died in Tiananmen Square.iv
The fictionalized version of the "massacre" was later corrected in some very
small measure by Western reporters who had participated in the fabrications
and who were keen to touch up the record so that they could say they made
"corrections." But by then it was too late and they knew that too. Public
consciousness had been shaped. The false narrative became the dominant
narrative. They had successfully massacred the facts to fit the political
needs of the U.S. government.
"Most of the hundreds of foreign journalists that night, including me, were
in other parts of the city or were removed from the square so that they
could not witness the final chapter of the student story. Those who tried to
remain close filed dramatic accounts that, in some cases, buttressed the
myth of a student massacre," wrote Jay Mathews, the Washington Post's first
Bureau Chief in Beijing, in a 1998 article in the Columbia Journalism
Review.
Mathews' article, which includes his own admissions to using the terminology
of the Tiananmen Square massacre, came nine years after the fact and he
acknowledged that corrections later had little impact. "The facts of
Tiananmen have been known for a long time. When Clinton visited the square
this June, both The Washington Post and The New York Times explained that no
one died there [in Tiananmen Square] during the 1989 crackdown. But these
were short explanations at the end of long articles. I doubt that they did
much to kill the myth."v
At the time all of the reports about the massacre of the students said
basically the same thing and thus it seemed that they must be true. But
these reports were not based on eyewitness testimony.
What really happened
For seven weeks leading up to June 4, the Chinese government was
extraordinarily restrained in not confronting those who paralyzed the center
of China's central capital area. The Prime Minister met directly with
protest leaders and the meeting was broadcast on national television. This
did not defuse the situation but rather emboldened the protest leaders who
knew that they had the full backing of the United States.
The protest leaders erected a huge statue that resembled the United States'
Statue of Liberty in the middle of Tiananmen Square. They were signaling to
the entire world that their political sympathies were with the capitalist
countries and the United States in particular. They proclaimed that they
would continue the protests until the government was ousted.
With no end in sight the Chinese leadership decided to end the protests by
clearing Tiananmen Square. Troops came into the Square without weapons on
June 2 and many soldiers were beaten, some were killed and army vehicles
were torched.
On June 4, the PLA re-entered the Square with weapons. According to the U.S.
media accounts of the time that is when machine gun toting PLA soldiers
mowed down peaceful student protests in a massacre of thousands.
China said that reports of the "massacre" in Tiananmen Square were a
fabrication created both by Western media and by the protest leaders who
used a willing Western media as a platform for an international propaganda
campaign in their interests.
On June 12, 1989, eight days after the confrontation, the New York Times
published an "exhaustive" but in fact fully fabricated eyewitness report of
the Tiananmen Massacre by a student, Wen Wei Po. It was full of detailed
accounts of brutality, mass murder, and heroic street battles. It recounted
PLA machine gunners on the roof of Revolutionary Museum overlooking the
Square and students being mowed down in the Square. This report was picked
up by media throughout the U.S.vi
Although treated as gospel and irrefutable proof that China was lying, the
June 12 "eyewitness" report by Wen Wei Po was so over the top and would so
likely discredit the New York Times in China that the Times correspondent in
Beijing, Nicholas Kristof, who had served as a mouthpiece for the
protestors, took exception to the main points in the article.
Kristof wrote in a June 13, 1989 article,
"The question of where the shootings occurred has significance because of
the Government's claim that no one was shot on Tiananmen Square. State
television has even shown film of students marching peacefully away from the
square shortly after dawn as proof that they were not slaughtered. .
The central scene in the [eyewitness] article is of troops beating and
machine-gunning unarmed students clustered around the Monument to the
People's Heroes in the middle of Tiananmen Square. Several other witnesses,
both Chinese and foreign, say this did not happen. .
There is also no evidence of machine-gun emplacements on the roof of the
history museum that were reported in the Wen Wei Po article. This reporter
was directly north of the museum and saw no machine guns there. Other
reporters and witnesses in the vicinity also failed to see them. .
"The central theme of the Wen Wei Po article was that troops subsequently
beat and machine-gunned students in the area around the monument and that a
line of armored vehicles cut off their retreat. But the witnesses say that
armored vehicles did not surround the monument - they stayed at the north
end of the square - and that troops did not attack students clustered around
the monument. Several other foreign journalists were near the monument that
night as well and none are known to have reported that students were
attacked around the monument."vii
The Chinese government's account acknowledges that street fighting and armed
clashes occurred in nearby neighborhoods. They say that approximately three
hundred died that night including many soldiers who died from gunfire,
Molotov cocktails and beatings. But they have insisted that there was no
massacre.
Kristof too says that there were clashes on several streets but refutes the
"eyewitness" report about a massacre of students in Tiananmen Square: "the
students and a pop singer, Hou Dejian, were negotiating with the troops and
decided to leave at dawn, between 5 A.M. and 6 A.M. The students all filed
out together. Chinese television has shown scenes of the students leaving
and of the apparently empty square as troops moved in as the students left."
Attempted counter-revolution in China
In fact, the U.S. government was actively involved in promoting the
"pro-democracy" protests through an extensive, well-funded, internationally
coordinated propaganda machine that pumped out rumors, half-truths and lies
from the moment the protests started in mid-April 1989.
The goal of the U.S. government was to carry out regime change in China and
overthrow the Communist Party of China which had been the ruling party since
the 1949 revolution. Since many activists in today's progressive movement
were not alive or were young children at the time of the Tiananmen incident
in 1989, the best recent example of how such an imperialist
destabilization/regime change operation works is revealed in the recent
overthrow of the Ukrainian government. Peaceful protests in the downtown
square receive international backing, financing and media support from the
United States and Western powers; they eventually come under the leadership
of armed groups who are hailed as freedom fighters by the Wall Street
Journal, FOX News and other media; and finally the government targeted for
overthrow by the CIA is fully demonized if it uses police or military
forces.
In the case of the "pro-democracy" protests in China in 1989 the U.S.
government was attempting to create a civil war. The Voice of America
increased its Chinese language broadcasts to 11 hours each day and targeted
the broadcast "directly to about 2,000 satellite dishes in China operated
mostly by the Peoples Liberation Army."viii
The Voice of America broadcasts to PLA units were filled with reports that
some PLA units were firing on others and different units were loyal to the
protestors and others with the government.
The Voice of America and U.S. media outlets tried to create confusion and
panic among government supporters. Just prior to June 4 they reported that
China's Prime Minister Li Peng had been shot and that Deng Xiaoping was near
death.
Most in the U.S. government and in the media expected the Chinese government
to be toppled by pro-Western political forces as was starting to happening
with the overthrow of socialist governments throughout Eastern and Central
Europe at the time (1988-1991) following the introduction of pro-capitalist
reforms by Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in 1991.
In China, the "pro-democracy" protest movement was led by privileged,
well-connected students from elite universities who were explicitly calling
for the replacement of socialism with capitalism. The leaders were
particularly connected to the United States. Of course, thousands of other
students who participated in the protests were in the Square because they
had grievances against the government.
But the imperialist-connected leadership of the movement had an explicit
plan to topple the government. Chai Ling, who was recognized as the top
leader of the students, gave an interview to Western reporters on the eve of
June 4 in which she acknowledged that the goal of the leadership was to lead
the population in a struggle to topple the Communist Party of China, which
she explained would only be possible if they could successfully provoke the
government into violently attacking the demonstrations. That interview was
aired in the film the "Gate of Heavenly Peace." Chai Ling also explained why
they couldn't tell the rank and file student protestors about the leaders'
real plans.
"The pursuit of wealth is part of the impetus for democracy," explained
another top student leader Wang Dan, in an interview with the Washington
Post in 1993, on the fourth anniversary of the incident. Wang Dan was in all
the U.S. media before and after the Tiananmen incident. He was famous for
explaining why the elitist student leaders didn't want Chinese workers
joining their movement. He stated "the movement is not ready for worker
participation because democracy must first be absorbed by the students and
intellectuals before they can spread it to others."ix
Twenty-five years later - U.S. still seeks regime change and
counter-revolution in China
The action by the Chinese government to disperse the so-called pro-democracy
movement in 1989 was met with bitter frustration within the United States
political establishment.
The U.S. imposed economic sanctions on China at first, but their impact was
minimal and both the Washington political establishment and the Wall Street
banks realized that U.S. corporations and banks would be the big losers in
the 1990's if they tried to completely isolate China when China was further
opening its vast domestic labor and commodities market to the direct
investment from Western corporations. The biggest banks and corporations put
their own profit margins first and the Washington politicians took their cue
from the billionaire class on this question.
But the issue of counter-revolution in China will rear its head again. The
economic reforms that were inaugurated after the death of Mao opened the
country to foreign investment. This development strategy was designed to
rapidly overcome the legacy of poverty and under-development by the import
of foreign technology. In exchange the Western corporations received mega
profits. The post-Mao leadership in the Communist Party calculated that the
strategy would benefit China by virtue of a rapid technology transfer from
the imperialist world to China. And indeed China has made great economic
strides. But in addition to economic development there has also developed a
larger capitalist class inside of China and a significant portion of that
class and their children are being wooed by all types of institutions
financed by the U.S. government, U.S. financial institutions and U.S.
academic centers.
The Communist Party of China is also divided into pro-U.S. and pro-socialist
factions and tendencies.
Today, the United States government is applying ever greater military
pressure on China. It is accelerating the struggle against China's rise by
cementing new military and strategic alliances with other Asian countries.
It is also hoping that with enough pressure some in the Chinese leadership
who favor abandoning North Korea will get the upper hand.
If counter-revolution were to succeed in China the consequences would be
catastrophic for the Chinese people and for China. China would in all
likelihood splinter as a nation as happened to the Soviet Union when the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union was toppled. The same fate befell the
former Yugoslavia. Counter-revolution and dismemberment would hurtle China
backwards. It would put the brakes on China's spectacular peaceful rise out
of under-development. For decades there has been a serious discussion within
the U.S. foreign policy establishment about the dismemberment of China which
would weaken China as a nation and allow the United States and Western
powers to seize its most lucrative parts. This is precisely the scenario
that cast China into its century of humiliation when Western capitalist
powers dominated the country.x
The Chinese Revolution has gone through many stages, victories, retreats and
setbacks. Its contradictions are innumerable. But still it stands. In the
confrontation between world imperialism and the Peoples Republic of China,
progressive people should know where they stand - it is not on the
sidelines.