241 people dead - the official toll - is tragic, but to simply call it the CPC murdering 218 of their citizens (28 dead were cops and soldiers) as if in cold blood is naïve as hell. This was an attempted colour revolution.
Wasn't the primary complaint being issued an objection to municipal farmland being broken up and privatized? This was a leftist reaction to Dengism and a rejection of the "modernization" efforts that were sweeping the continent in the waning days of the Cold War.
Yes, a lot of the western media campaign and agitprop was fueled by anti-coms hoping to topple the CCP. But the revolt was fundamentally Maoist, as I understand it.
Glib observations like yours deny the reality
Tienanmen signified a real failure of the Chinese state to implement the Mass Line. The fact that it came to killing illustrated the degree of social breakdown. The goal of a socialist state should ultimately be to rule by broad popular consensus, not to hold dissidents at gunpoint - particularly if they're capital city university students and factionalized party loyalists, people over whom the party is supposed to have the most direct influence.
Recognizing the incident as overblown and wildly mischaracterized outside China's borders is very different from huffing "Uh, this was good aktuly, because the dissidents were crushed!" copium.
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Wasn't the primary complaint being issued an objection to municipal farmland being broken up and privatized? This was a leftist reaction to Dengism and a rejection of the "modernization" efforts that were sweeping the continent in the waning days of the Cold War.
Yes, a lot of the western media campaign and agitprop was fueled by anti-coms hoping to topple the CCP. But the revolt was fundamentally Maoist, as I understand it.
Tienanmen signified a real failure of the Chinese state to implement the Mass Line. The fact that it came to killing illustrated the degree of social breakdown. The goal of a socialist state should ultimately be to rule by broad popular consensus, not to hold dissidents at gunpoint - particularly if they're capital city university students and factionalized party loyalists, people over whom the party is supposed to have the most direct influence.
Recognizing the incident as overblown and wildly mischaracterized outside China's borders is very different from huffing "Uh, this was good aktuly, because the dissidents were crushed!" copium.