Tag: China

Tiananmen Square Massacre

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Black and white photo of Chinese next to their bicycles after being crushed by tanks at Tiananmen Square.

Image of the Tiananmen Square Massacre from the New York Times

The New York Times has an interesting detail I was not aware of:

…top army commanders were summoned to headquarters to pledge their support for the use of military force to quash the protests.

One refused.

In a stunning rebuke to his superiors, Maj. Gen. Xu Qinxian, leader of the mighty 38th Group Army, said the protests were a political problem and should be settled through negotiations, not force, according to new accounts of his actions from researchers who interviewed him.

“I’d rather be beheaded than be a criminal in the eyes of history,” he told Yang Jisheng, a historian.

i-1

How America Should Respond To Chinese Cyberspying

From Technology Review:

There’s still room for escalation. In the indictment they talk about the SOEs [state-owned enterprises] getting this stolen data but didn’t name them. But it’s pretty easy to figure out. These are massive, multibillion dollar companies in China. The next step could be to charge those SOEs. If you want to make an impact you go after the recipient of the information.

We Will Never Be Brothers

A poem by a young Ukrainian woman about the "fraternity" of Ukraine & Russia.

This is the best of the two translations I've seen:

We will never be brothers
Neither countrymen, nor blood brothers.
You don’t have the freedom breath –
We can’t be even stepbrothers.
You have called yourselves “elder brothers” –
We would like to be younger brothers, but not yours.
There’re so many of you, but you all are faceless.
You are huge, but we are great.
You press… you trudge,
You will choke on your envy.
You don’t know what freedom means,
You all are encased in chains from childhood up.
Silence is golden in your home,
And we burn Molotov cocktails,
Yes, there’s warm blood in our hearts,
What sort of blind “relatives” are you for us?
We all have fearless eyes,
We are dangerous without any weapons.
We grew up and became courageous
We all are at the shooters’ gunpoint.
We were forced to our knees by the hangmen –
But we revolted and corrected everything.
The rats are hiding and praying for nothing –
They will wash themselves with their blood.
You have new instructions –
And there’re revolt lights here.
You have your Tsar, but we have Democracy.
We will never be brothers.

"What is this doing on a blog mostly about Taiwan?" you might ask…

China Attacks Vietnam’s Ships, Steals Vietnam’s Resources: Taiwan Hardest Hit

Last week, China began constructing an oil rig within Vietnamese waters to steal crude from the third world nation. Vietnam responded by sending ships to the area, which were promptly attacked by Chinese vessels:

Chinese ships have been ramming into and firing water cannons at Vietnamese vessels trying to stop Beijing from putting an oil rig in the South China Sea, according to officials and video footage Wednesday, in a dangerous escalation of tensions over waters considered a global flashpoint.

Just today, Vietnamese mistakenly took out their frustration on Taiwanese factories:

Thousands of Vietnamese set fire to foreign factories and rampaged in industrial zones in the south of the country in an angry reaction to Chinese oil drilling in a part of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam, officials said on Wednesday.

The brunt of Tuesday's violence, one of the worst breakdowns in Sino-Vietnamese relations since the neighbours fought a brief border war in 1979, appears to have been borne by Taiwanese firms in the zones in Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces that were mistaken for Chinese-owned companies.

[…]

Gates were smashed and rioters set 15 factories on fire…

China cannot expect Vietnamese to respect Chinese property rights while the Chinese blithely violate theirs.

But it's a shame that this perfectly-understandable anger was taken out on the Taiwanese, though. Because (as readers of this blog are no doubt aware): Taiwanese are not Chinese.

In vain, Taiwanese companies themselves belatedly scrambled to communicate this elementary fact:

Some Taiwanese firms had spray-painted messages on the road and across their gates saying "We Support Vietnam" in an effort to distinguish themselves from Chinese enterprises.

Perhaps the current government of Taiwan might have alleviated the situation if had spent less time pretending to be China, and concentrated its efforts on sending the message that Taiwan is a completely different country altogether.

Without such efforts, Taiwan will always be unjustly blamed for the crimes of the Chinese. And the Taiwanese government will be forced to pay to evacuate its citizens whenever tempers erupt over cases of China's villainy.

As Aesop might've said:

Those who impersonate international outlaws are often mistaken for international outlaws.

UPDATE: You speak the truth, sir!

“We have to establish a distinct identity [from China],” Mr. [Antonio] Chiang said. “Or not only will this happen in Vietnam, but other countries, too.”

UPDATE (May 18/2014): Others see Taiwan's One China policy as a contributing factor.

China To Have Largest Christian Population By 2030

Change is afoot:

…Easter Sunday thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.

But the Communist Party's totalitarian impulses are never far from view:

"They want the pastor to preach in a Communist way. They want to train people to practice in a Communist way," said the house-church preacher, who said state churches often shunned potentially subversive sections of the Bible. The Old Testament book in which the exiled Daniel refuses to obey orders to worship the king rather than his own god is seen as "very dangerous", the preacher added. [empasis added]

UPDATE (Apr 22 / 2014): A Christian refugee from China predicts more religious persecution in the land of his birth. Safe bet there.

UPDATE (Apr 28 / 2014): Chinese government demolishes church after promising not to. We've seen what Chinese assurances have been worth in the past.

Chinese Plotting To Steal Arctic Resources

"All your resources are belong to us." Deutsche Welle has the story on the Communist thieves of Zhongnanhai:

Five countries are considered “Arctic states” – Canada, the US, Russia, Norway and Denmark (along with Greenland and the Faeroe Islands). Finland, Sweden and Iceland are also members of the Arctic Council which deals with the future development of the North Pole region. China, Japan, South Korea and the European Union are trying to achieve permanent observer status.

[…]

"Countries closer to the Arctic, such as Iceland, Russia, Canada, and a few other European countries may tend to wish the Arctic were private or that they had priority to develop it," Cui Hongjian, head of the European department of the China Institute for International Studies, told reporters before Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Europe. "But China insists that the Arctic belongs to everyone just like the moon."

Small wonder China finds itself hated by all its neighbors.

Hat tip: Instapundit