Remember June 4, Shi Shusi asked the 1.5 million
readers of his popular microblog last year. Moments later, his postings were
erased. A note from the microblog operator said they were "inappropriate
publicity."
This year, a discouraged Shi hasn't posted anything about the
anniversary of the 1989 crackdown that crushed pro-democracy protests at a cost
of hundreds of lives.
"Major media treat it as if it never happened," said Shi.
"Fewer and fewer young people get to know this issue. There is no
opportunity to discuss it nowadays."
Communist leaders have spent 25 years making sure of that. Far from
easing off as China went through three changes of ruling party leadership and a
revolution in social media, a relentless campaign aimed at erasing public
memory of the most tumultuous event of the past three decades has been steadily
updated and tightened.
1989 is hardly the only taboo for the ruling party. Tibet, Taiwan, the
Falun Gong spiritual movement — all are subject to limits on what newspapers,
bloggers and others are allowed to say. But even among the most explosive
topics, 1989 stands out. Almost any mention is prohibited.
"June 4th is especially sensitive not only because of potential
criticism for the government but because people can use it as a jumping-off
point to bring people together," said Jason Q. Ng, a researcher at the
University of Toronto's Citizen Lab who follows Chinese efforts to censor
Internet content.
"That is even more terrifying to them," he said.
After the crackdown ordered by then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping,
communist leaders tried briefly to convince a skeptical Chinese public that
violence against unarmed protesters was necessary to prevent a national
disaster.
Leaders tried to evoke fear of a return to the chaos of the 1966-76
Cultural Revolution, when radicals ravaged the country. State TV showed rowdy
pro-democracy protesters and restrained soldiers. Spokespeople rejected reports
of unarmed protesters being killed as anti-Chinese propaganda.
"People just didn't buy that," said Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a
historian at the University of California, Irvine, who studies Chinese student
protest movements. "They had to stop telling that story and say, 'Let's
not talk about this at all.'"
The upheaval cut short a trend in the late 1980s toward the ruling party
allowing state-controlled media more freedom.
Then-party leader Zhao Ziyang had told regulators to ease press controls,
which he said would "make things better." Newspapers responded by
reporting on public frustration at corruption and social controls.
After the crackdown, Deng fired Zhao and replaced him with Jiang Zemin.
He presided over a new strategy — "correct guidance of public
opinion." It set the tone for pervasive controls over the next three
decades as readers shifted from newspapers to websites to smartphones.
The Tiananmen crackdown "is absolutely crucial to understanding the
way press censorship works today," said David Bandurski, editor of the
China Media Project at Hong Kong University. "The notion was that you have
to control public opinion through media control to maintain social and
political stability."
Commentators who hoped the rise of satellite TV, the Internet and social
media would loosen the party's monopoly on power were disappointed. As millions
of Chinese went online and acquired smartphones, Beijing spent heavily to
develop high-tech filters.
The size and cost of official censorship efforts is secret but China is
believed to operate the world's most extensive system of monitoring and
filters.
Each year ahead of June 4, mobile phone users engage in a cat-and-mouse
competition with telecom carriers as they try to find new code words to evoke
the anniversary in messages — such as calling the date May 35th — while censors
try to detect and block them.
Censors added "Shanghai Composite Index" to the list of banned
terms on June 4, 2012, after the country's stock market benchmark opened that
day at 2,346.89 points — which could be read as the 23rd anniversary of June 4,
1989 — and ended down 64.89 points, which also looked like the date.
Private sector operators of blog, instant messaging and other social
media services are required to employ teams of censors at their own expense.
"The primary mechanism is fear," said Bandurski. "They
know if they don't comply, they lose access to the market."
On Tuesday, Beijing announced a crackdown aimed at popular instant
messaging services used by some journalists and activists to distribute news
reports and comments. The government complained such services are misused by
"hostile forces at home and abroad."
Google Inc. closed its mainland China search engine in 2009, saying it
no longer wanted to cooperate with censorship after hacking attacks aimed at
stealing the company's operating code and breaking into email accounts were
traced to China.
China is hardly the only government to try to stamp out volatile
memories. In the 1980s, South Korea's then-military rulers forbade discussion
of the 1980 killing of pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of
Gwangju.
The Communist Party also has tried to blot out memories of a 1959-61
famine historians believe killed as many as 50 million Chinese.
The party has kept at it despite rising numbers of Chinese who live or
travel abroad, where information about 1989 and iconic images, such as the
photo of a protester standing in front of a column of tanks, are freely
available.
"Fat Years," a 2009 novel by Hong Kong author Koonchung Chan,
depicts a China whose rulers cause the whole population to forget a month when
a devastating upheaval and crackdown occurred. The thinly veiled metaphor for
1989 was a bestseller in Chinese-language markets abroad and copies circulated
widely in China. But no mainland edition was published.
Despite the scale of the task, the government has succeeded at stifling
public discussion. If younger Chinese know about the crackdown, it is only
through hearsay. Some parents say they avoid telling their children so they are
not burdened with the knowledge.
Even among students who might be able to investigate the events, many
seem not to care. Raised in an education system drenched in nationalistic
propaganda and pride in two decades of strong economic growth, they see 1989 as
a distant event and have trouble identifying with the protesters.
"Many people are not willing to spend time reflecting on this
event," said Lu Qiuxuan, a university student in Beijing.
The party gives no sign of relenting on June 4. After he became party
leader in 2012, President Xi Jinping made clear his lack of interest in easing
information controls by ordering journalists to undergo Marxist training. He is
due to stay in power for a decade
Joe
McDonald AP
No comments:
Post a Comment