An awful lot has changed since Nixon met Mao. But one thing remains the same. Chinese people, under the leadership of the CCP, are being oppressed…a lot are slaughtered. Right now, whilst this is being typed on a computer largely manufactured in China (life as we enjoy it as usual), the horrors of the Holocaust are being repeated…the difference is, we know it is going on!

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The First Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. (2)

Those are principles which the US has never been shy about espousing the virtues of to others. Wars have been waged in their honour. Dictators deposed. Communism opposed (indeed, Chinese communist ideology is the antithesis of this ethical code). Richard Nixon had forged a career challenging communism. Why then, did he meet the man responsible for more deaths than WWI and WWII combined? The priority was geostrategic, for both parties. A case of “my enemies enemy is my friend”. The enemy being the USSR.

The passage of time has rendered his reasoning insignificant. What has happened since is of huge significance…at least for those who care about the right to be human.

After the rise and subsequent fall of Hitler’s Fascist regime, Communism became the next foe. The Korean war of 1950-1953. Vietnam war 1955-1975

John F. Kennedy – US President, 1961-1963:

“Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam.” (3)

The threat feared most was to the supremacy of America. The Cold War’s Cuban Missile Crisis almost brought the world to a nuclear end. Which, had it happened, would have made every decision ever made a questionable one. The purpose of this piece is to propose that world leaders have gotten the basics of their jobs wrong…they are getting away with their imperfect decision making because we don’t know enough about what is going on. Those who do know enough, simply don’t care enough.

International politics is a complex and tricky subject. The positions that leading politicians are placed in is unenviable (picture a plate juggler at a circus…walking a tightrope…a lion at one end and a tiger at the other). Alliances are forged, and frequently forsaken. The truth is, what binds nations together has never been about you or I as people. Nor the greater global society in terms of what it means to be human. It has always been about peace and economics (political philosophy hasn’t played the role it should). True, we all benefit from peace. Economics, however, and we as consumers (maintaining economies), is what it really comes down to. Purchases lead to profits. Profits (taxation) lead to political stability and military proliferation (the ability to maintain peace). Political stability allows a nation to move forward without the constraint of inner turmoil. Politicians use the press to ensure that the people who vote them into power (if that is what really happens in a democracy), are informed, just enough, in just the right way, to remain subservient to this agenda. When you are a Super-Power, this all becomes increasingly important.

Although racial segregation was only flushed out of the US in the 60s, South Africa was marginalised by the international community for their archaic approach to what it meant to be human. In 1968, the UN proposed ending all cultural, educational and sporting connections based on a philosophy. The USA was a major influencer. The Olympic Games of Moscow 1980 saw the USA boycott due to Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan (a country they eventually invaded themselves). Human rights abuses in Iraq, Latin America, Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan etc have all been condemned and confronted. Or have they?

June 4th, 1989. Tiananmen Square became the focal point of international scrutiny in the same year a wall dividing East and West Germany crumbled due to public pressure and persistence for freedom. The massacre (mere incident is the term used today) took place under the watchful eyes of the Western world. Oppression in China was caught on camera for the first time, and couldn’t be ignored. People, the general population, knew what was going on and voiced an opinion.

Dr Chan Hing-Lin – Professor of Economics, Hong Kong:
(Transmission 6-10 interviewee)

“…they were not allowed to export the US high technologies because they fear that they use that technology to develop their military power. But these kind of sanctions becomes less and less significant as China enter into the WTO. Also, many international companies, multinational companies, want to invest in China and use China as a manufacturing basis for their goods selling in the West.”

Sanctions were ustilised as a method to express a growing concern that the CCP was not living up to the expectations of its United Nations partners. An organisation of which it was a founding member in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust (Correction – The country known as Taiwan was a founding member. Their contribution was ripped up when the West favoured The People’s Republic of China over the Republic of China – told you it was complicated). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the foundation upon which this global organisation was forged – significantly contributed to by China’s P.C Chang – or was he from Taiwan?!

A decade after the 1989 massacre came a peaceful vigil, held by practitioners of Falun Gong, outside the Communist Party compound of Zhongnanhai in Beijing. The desire for freedom from oppression was once again being expressed by the people of the world’s oldest and largest civilisation. 13 years later and their silent protest has not been heard. China (PRC) remains an integral part of the United Nations, despite continuously opposing the forum’s ideology (most recently with regards to Syria). Yet China is on the rise. Its economy is booming. The West watches in alarm as their power grows without signs of slowing, whilst its internal policies are unanimously deplored, but only debated with a whimper.

Jonathan Mirsky (Transmission 6-10 interviewee), Journalist & China Historian, describes this phenomenon as “China Magic”. When did the magician first roll up sleeves to deceive a willingly beguiled audience (as the juggler walked the rope)?

40 years ago, the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, met the dictator of China, Mao Zedong. The clandestine talks (code name: Polo One) were organised by Henry Kissinger under the radar of key allies, such as Britain (who subsequently objected). Staunchly anti-communist, the year before his election, Nixon wrote in the magazine Foreign Affairs, “There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.”

After decades of ‘engagement’ with China, a new quote could read: “There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in tyranny.” It would have been true in the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s, 80′s, and since the 90′s the only thing that has changed is there are an extra 300,000,000 (approximately the population of the US) living in such conditions.

The above statement may seem extreme…false even. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Commercialisation is an illusion of content (the magician on stage for Act Two).

Virtually no Westerners had entered China during the 50′s, and a few carefully chaperoned journalists were shown around in the 60s. Prior to Nixon’s trip, the US table tennis team toured the country by virtue of a chance encounter between a top American player and his Chinese counterparts. They were greeted by signs such as “People of the world unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs!” (guess they forgot to take that one down). The Chinese team then toured the US, bringing an end to the trade embargo on Chinese goods in the States (which had lasted 21 years). This all sounds very friendly and what the world required. A coming together of formerly hostile nations. Under Deng Xiaoping, China was demonstrating (try searching that on www.google.cn) a genuine desire to change.

“Ping-pong” diplomacy became the catchphrase. A term that Mao Zedong is reported to have loved. Perhaps he forgot this quote of his:

“Regard a ping pong ball as the head of your capitalist enemy. Hit it with your socialist bat, and you have won the point for the fatherland.”

The frost (if you haven’t watched the film Frost/Nixon, do so) between the fatherland and the land of the free was thawing. The 70 million dead Chinese citizens were forgotten. China joined the United Nations in 1973 whilst Nixon was still at the helm. Jimmy Carter (Nixon’s successor after Ford) bestowed the honour of Most Favoured Nation {special} on China. Anti-Soviet crusader, Ronald Reagan, deepened ties by allowing military sales to Beijing. It took several thousand new deaths for the US to reconsider the blossoming relationship. George H W Bush (former Chief of the US Liaison Office in the People’s Republic of China) was hit with a double whammy. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw the USSR become less of a threat to China, and the Tiananmen Square incident saw the movement for human rights take centre stage. So much so that the CCP saw this as a direct attempt by the US to bring down their communist rule.

With America being decades head in terms of technological, societal and economic superiority, an opportunity arose to make money from Deng’s capitalistic reforms of the 90s. Nixon was brought down by Watergate. President Bill Clinton came to power in the wake of Chinagate (an alleged effort by the People’s Republic of China to influence the domestic policies of the United States, before and during the Clinton administration, involving fundraising practices).

Al Gore was his Vice President. Could that be why China got off so incredibly lightly in An Inconvenient Truth (despite building two power stations…per week).

In the year 2000, President Clinton granted the PRC with PNTR (Permanent Normal Trade Relations) {extra special}. Both economies were booming. Happy days. Except, of course, for the practitioners of Falun Gong who were being systematically eradicated. In that year, Falun Gong was mentioned 80 times in the US Department of State report on human rights in China. The year before (when the persecution officially began), the group was mentioned 97 times. Fast forward to the latest report, that of 2011, and regardless of the indisputable fact there is a Genocide taking place, Falun Gong was mentioned a mere 10 times in the 126 page review. Conversely, China’s share of the US trade deficit in non-oil goods, for the same period of time, has risen from 26% to 83%. Could there be a correlation? Gore likes his graphs…..take a look at this one:

On the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (the right to hold them being given under the premise of improved human rights and press freedom), then President, George W Bush, said “America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents and human rights advocates and religious activists…” A day later he was attending the opening ceremony. Not exactly firmly opposing. This is what “ping-pong” diplomacy really is. A game of quotes that appease a passively compassionate public that principles do indeed still play a part in politics.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/2514873/Beijing-Olympics-George-W-Bush-attacks-China-on-human-rights-ahead-of-Games.html

Note the above link. Bush attacks. More of an underarm serve than a smash!

How have things faired under current US leadership?

The Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9083333/Barack-Obama-tells-Xi-Jinping-China-must-improve-its-human-rights-record.html

“US President Barack Obama told Chinese leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping on Tuesday that Beijing must play by the same trade rules as other major world powers, and vowed to keep pressing China to clean up its human rights record.”

Xi Jinping must be having nightmares about the kind of “pressure” he could be facing in the near future!

Nixon’s visit to China was heralded as “the week that changed the world”. The world has changed. There is a supposed (I say supposed because it is debatable – the money is still all here, just in different places) global recession. With American companies so reliant on cheap manufacture in China to reap massive profits and keep prices low enough to sustain continued consumption, the dependence on China remaining in the grip of an oppressive regime (who are willing and able to build two power stations a week to facilitate the factories at the expense of mother earth – the fatherland wears the trousers) has never been so high.

The Honourable Albert Ho – Lawyer and legislator, Hong Kong
(Transmission 6-10 interviewee)

“Even the most powerful county, such as the USA, would have to think twice or thrice, before she could impose sanctions on China, not to mention intervention.”

So economic sanctions are a no go to enforce the kind of change that President Barack Obama is so forcefully for. What about intervention then?

The Pentagon concluded that although there is “some ambiguity over the conditions under which China’s [no-first-use] policy would or would not apply…there has been no indication that national leaders are willing to attach such nuances and caveats to China’s ‘no first use’ doctrine” (5) With the People’s Liberation Army being substantially larger than that of the “world’s police” (and equally equipped), there is no chance of military force being brought to the table. (6) No-body wants that anyway.

Consider also the new space race. Despite the Obama administration looking to scale back expenditure on NASA (particularly afflicting the Mars missions), can they really relinquish control of space? China, again, may be decades behind, but they went from fission-to-fusion in the arms race faster than any other nation. (7) They have the resources and the desire to reign supreme, not only in this world, but others.

Dean Cheng – research fellow at the Heritage Foundation (a conservative public policy think tank):

“We don’t know enough about the Chinese space policy system and the very heavy military element that permeates the Chinese space program.” (8)

Think Ronald Raegan’s Star Wars (thinking about George Lucas’ is much more entertaining) and the financial burden such an undertaking would have on the already flailing US economy. Despite repeated calls for the Yuan to be more reasonably valued, to ease imbalances between the economies of China and the US, the Chinese Communist Party currently owns 26% percent of all foreign-held U.S. Treasury securities. A debt that is too large a figure to bother writing down. Fortunately, somebody else did…here. The CCP could quite simply bankrupt the USA. Realistically, that wouldn’t happen. The relationship is symbiotic.

Dr Chan Hing-Lin – Professor of Economics, Hong Kong:
(Transmission 6-10 interviewee)

“…people start to worry if they sell those bonds, then the currency of the US dollar will drop if they sell out all the $US they have. And in order to keep the $US high, then the US Government has to keep up the interest rates. When they have to raise the interest rates the economy will get into trouble. So people in the US worry that one day China will sell on a massive amount of the US bonds…But I think China would not do that because they want to keep the interest rates low, in order the US consumer will buy the goods they export to US.”

Hilary Clinton – United States Secretary of State:
(remember that title when the State Department’s human rights profiles are discussed)

“How do you deal toughly with your banker?”

Her husband formally separated the MFN status from human rights. (9)

So. These are the paramaters by which ping-pong diplomacy is played out. Peace (the military aspect) and economics (your way of life, which sustains the government). It works out well for both the US and China…why change?

Dr Chan Hing-Lin:

“I think they are dependent because the US have moved out a lot of the productions to China. I heard about WalMart – which is one of the most significant supermarkets in the US – 10% of the export from China to the US were ordered by the WalMart…”

More than 70% of WalMart products are made in China.

It should come as no surprise to those who have read this far, that if you were to browse the 26 page U.S Department of State notes on China, this is the only reference to Falun Gong:

“The government also severely restricts the activities of groups it designates as “evil cults,” including several Christian groups and the Falun Gong spiritual movement.”

Ethan Gutmann – Investigative Journalist:
(Transmission 6-10 primary interviewee)

“If you were to ask yourself “what is the number one issue in China, for the last 6 or 7, 8 years?” Was it the Olympics? No. The economy? Not really. Taiwan? No. It’s Falun Gong!”

So why the only reference? Why a reduction of mentions in reports on human rights abuses in China? Why is Genocide in arguably the world’s Super-Power not front page news on a daily basis? The answer is shockingly simple. You might, just might, out of conscience, buy less crap if you knew the truth! The crap not merely being products, but the pontifications of politicians.

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Should philosophy dictate political foreign policy? It meant something, domestically at least, to the Founding Fathers of the American constitution. It meant something during the establishment of the United Nations. The absence of an ethical base has to be more complicated. It cannot be this obvious. There must be more going on that only those of higher levels of consciousness can comprehend. The surface reality is unconscionable.

Whose responsibility is it to champion the people? The United Nations? Most certainly so! But the UN is comprised of global leaders for their respective nations. So the burden of responsibility must rest on the shoulders of those who are elected (well that isn’t the case for communist China of course). Yet those who are elected to govern their countries seem incapable of making decisions guided by morality (fundamental ethical principles). Then, perhaps, it is up to those who put them in power to begin with. That is you!

Dr Charles Lee – survivor:
(Transmission 6-10 interviewee)

“…in America, the principle in this country is freedom of religion, freedom of, you know, press. But if the US people, the US capitalists, help those people, the communist regime in China, they are selling these principles…”

The world could be a different. It really could be a better place. What if manufacturing returned to the nations that consumed the products produced? No more unemployment. Far less pollution from unnecessary transportation. Sure, sacrifices would have to be made. We would all pay a lot more for everything – what price is currently being paid in ethical currency? The deficit in that case would be beyond computation. What if wars were not waged on lies (which cost billions that could be used to fully realise a sustainable way of living) about WMDs (Want More Diesel)? What if……..that is another blog!

*T610 does not vote. Never has done and will continue to not vote until governments place principles at the pinnacle of political decision making.*

±The State Department reports are repetitive in nature, both in each addition and from one year to the next. The figures sited are not considered a statistical analysis, but representative.±

This article is one of the best examples one could find about Falun Gong. It has everything to be expected:

• Significant date un-recognised – released 12 years to the day from when Falun Gong was officially banned in China and the Genocide began. The worst case of human rights abuses since the Holocaust (and taking place in arguably the world’s most powerful nation).
• Factual inaccuracy – there are absolutely no “breathing exercises” (unless, of course, the mere act of breathing is considered exercise) in Falun Gong, which sets it apart from other forms of Qi Gong. As other commenters have noted, previous articles are equally fictitious.
• Outdated information – the initiative of writing on currency was abandoned years ago when it was pointed out to practitioners of Falun Gong that defacing money was a criminal act. Making it the focal point of a story in the present, to the extent of using the phrase “…lately it has turned to…” is also entirely inaccurate. It is equally possible that a few practitioners do still do this, but since there is no organisational structure, it is imprecise to describe any actions as being collective. T610 does not have a definitive understanding of this particular method of counter-propaganda (let us not forget that this is exactly what it is), so looks forward to being provided evidence beyond the simple statement that Beyondbrics has discovered its re-emergence.
• Derogatory remarks – that the Chinese woman on the end of the phone was sleepy is completely irrelevant. Unless, the report continues to commend her for volunteering to be available 24hrs a day to help circumvent the deaths of innocent people.
• Ignorance – the postulation that utilising 1rmb notes will not reach the rich and powerful as suggestive that the initiative was not well thought through (writing on 1rmb coins would be considerably more difficult), ignores the fact that the downfall of almost every oppressive regime has been by the hands of the meek, and not the overtly mighty. There are more poor people in China than rich. If your objective is to inform the masses, then employing the means to which are available to them makes perfect sense.
• No context – considering few people in the West know anything about Falun Gong (apart from the plethora poor reporting) or the persecution, the average reader will learn only what is stated within the article. The linked article (significantly released on the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the 610 Office) contains all of the above negligence – save for a brief mention of the abuses (ignoring the organ harvesting). Would the entire article not make greater sense if the reader were to be informed that the practitioners of Falun Gong are struggling for their lives in the world’s most brutal and unopposed dictatorship (100million dead Chinese over the past 6 decades can testify to that)?

T610 has amassed dozens of equally poor reporting (newspaper articles, radio shows, TV programs) from around the world since 1999. Over the course of the next 12 months, these articles will be deconstructed and exposed so that the World Wide Web can contain some real information about the persecution in China.

Is the journalist to be blamed? Considering the pool of information available for research is about as dry as a Gobi desert watering hole, the answer is perhaps “no”. Now consider that, being based in Beijing, research would have been conducted from within an internet bubble of tightly controlled blockades, and the word-on-the-street would be tainted by unabated state propaganda, the answer becomes even more obviously “no”. However, the linked article contains dialogue from an interview with Falun Gong’s unofficial spokesman. A better source could not be found! It really does not take a monumental amount of effort to properly research even the most complex of stories before putting pen to paper. Considering the journalist has been the “Beijing bureau chief for the FT and has been a correspondent covering China since 2003″, the piece can easily be described as Western propaganda. Prove that statement to be wrong. On a subject matter as grave – do please pardon the pun – as Genocide, T610 would rather have its knowledge base categorically proven incorrect, than correct.

It has become clear over the past complete Chinese zodiac cycle, that there is a media cartel in operation (just look at the Murdoch empire and its dealings within Asia and the West), to stifle genuine disclosure of the situation in China. The directive is dictated by political initiatives, which in turn, are dictated by economics. Fitting that this article was published by the Financial Times. Shame that morality is not the primary starting point.

If you want to know the truth about what has been happening in China, the freely available film Transmission 6-10 is a good place to start (Zek Halu – above – being present in the documentary) for the tip-of-the-iceberg. This is the biggest story of the 21st century. One would expect it to be treated as such by those who forge a career in the industry of informing a global population.

Overall the piece is entirely pointless. Sometimes it is better to say nothing, than to state the wrong thing.

June 5th 1989. The dust had settled on Tiananmen Square. What had caused it had not gone unnoticed, yet, eventually, it served to cover up the foundations of governance in Mainland China. Once more, tyrannical dictatorship had won the battle, and utilising all the mechanisms of state power, the war was being won too.

Foreign press representatives were banned from the country, to maintain at least a modicum of reputation in the eyes of the world. The discerning observer would, of course, note that the necessity of this move merely exacerbates the problem – political thinking under the CCP is extremely insular.

On the 9th of June, Deng Xiaoping made his thoughts on the events public for the first time. He stated that the true objective of the protesters was to “…establish a totally Western-dependent bourgeois republic…” and “…the entire imperialist Western world plans to make all socialist countries discard the socialist road and then bring them under the monopoly of international capital and onto the capitalist road.” There is some truth to this second analysis.

He went on to recognise the martyrdom of the People’s Liberation Army soldiers who had lost their lives in the struggle to maintain social order on behalf of their leadership. These sentiments were echoed throughout state-controlled media publications – once rogue reporters had been dealt with. Two news anchors who reported the event for the 7:00 pm show on June 4th for China Central Television were fired because they showed their sad emotions. Within a year, 150 films were banned; 8% of publishing companies, 12% of newspapers and 13% of social science periodicals were shut down. 32 million contraband books and 2.4 million video and audio cassettes were seized. In the internet era, similar censorship protocols are in place as you read this. In January 2006, Google removed information from their their Google.cn site on topics such as Taiwan independence, Tibet, Falun Gong, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Transmission 6-10 interviewee Matt Whitticase, of Free Tibet Campaign had this to say:

“French Tourism ministry, in a pamphlet, advised French businessmen and French hoteliers never to mention the ‘Three T Words’: Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen, because they didn’t want to offend Chinese people. This is a direct attack on our democratic principles and norms that we’ve built up over hundreds of years. And the view that we have to literally bow down in front of China and accept its anti-democratic processes is an extremely worrying one for the future of democratic societies in the west.”

Google did the right thing. Eventually. In January of 2010, they rescinded their co-operation with the CCP by moving their headquarters to Hong Kong. Freeing themselves from Party control.

The democracy movement of 1989 did not just occur in Beijing. It spread throughout the country. The West’s focus was Tiananmen Square, simply because that was where the journalists were stationed. What happened elsewhere escaped the global general population’s attention. Protests. Riots. Killings. It really was a threat to Communist Party rule. So much of a threat that Western observers foresaw the collapse of the Party as being imminent.

In the wake of the atrocities, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank suspended loans to China (now the West is actually in financial debt to the Chinese government). Foreign Direct Investment ceased. An arms trade embargo was put in place (which was objected to by the then leaders of Germany and France – Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac) by the United States and European Union. In response, the Chinese government increased its defence spending from 8.6% in 1986 to 15.5% in 1990. They did, to their credit, also invest in non-lethal forms of crowd control.

In the interests of maintaining peaceful relations with China, many Asian nations remained silent on the massacre. Most notably, India went as far as curtailing broadcasts on the subject so as to appease the CCP – Matt Whitticase was right! Not surprisingly, North Korea, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany supported Deng Xiaoping’s campaign to crush freedom.

The campaign also sought to eradicate sympathisers within the party itself. A lack of unity was exposed in the buildup to the use of military action. General Secretary, at the time, Zhao Ziyang (instrumental in the development of economic reforms) opposed the use of force. His stance was countered by Li Peng’s intention to flex the muscles. Zhao Ziyang was placed under house arrest, and remained there until his death in January of 2005. His crime? Compassion!

The economic reforms did lead to economic growth. The prosperity of China on the global scene meant the government regained the support of the people. The support of the people is heavily manipulated. 300 million citizens of China still live in poverty. They don’t count though, as they dwell in rural areas and are easily kept in check. The demographics that are the most important to control are the workers – they are happy, thanks to massive Western reliance on manufacturing – and the intellectuals. Artists come and go….just ask Wei Wei!

Jumping to the present day and then looking backwards. The current leader of the CCP is Hu Jintao. Hu deployed 1,700 armed police to Lhasa (capital of Tibet) as unrest in the region grew as the 30th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, drew nearer. When riots did occur, the armed police suppressed the subjugated Tibetans with brutal force. This occurred merely months before the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Unsurprisingly, Hu Jintao immediately gave his support to central government for their use of force on June 4th.

Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang Zemin. As mentioned in Part 1, Jiang was not shy of acting the dictator before his time either. It was Jiang Zemin who banned Falun Gong and initiated the worst of human rights abuses in known history. That an equally maniacal political figure should take his place is just evidence that the CCP intend to see the persecution of Falun Gong through to the end. It has been almost 12 years since the banning of the spiritual group on July 20th 1999. They have not given up their struggle for freedom, and the difference between Falun Gong and the protestors of 1989 is that they are dispersed in great numbers around the world, are organised, have financial means, and, can make use of technology that didn’t exists 22 years ago.

The computer that this is being written on was manufactured in China. The one you are reading this on was probably also manufactured there. Go ahead and look at almost anything these days and you will find at least a component that was manufactured in China. We in the West cannot live without the efforts of the Chinese workers – who are horrendously underpaid. We have a lot to give thanks for. We can also thank our governments for taking advantage of a dictatorship that cares not for its own people. But wait….what does that make us? Yes. It makes us all party to genocide. It is as simple as that. We elect our governments. They make decisions on our behalf. They trade massively with China despite knowing how the CCP treats its people. Oh. On second thoughts. You probably have absolutely no idea what is really going on in China. There is a simple reason for that. No-body has told you. Who would you expect to hear information from? Your media. Well…your media is hiding something from you. Perhaps, as is the case in any dictatorship, they are afraid that if you know too much, you may have an opinion on matters that is in stark contrast to the ruling elite. Sounds like we might also be living in a form of dictatorship. Control. Manipulation. Censorship. Coercion. It all exists just as much in the West as it does in China……which is why in Part 1, T610 points out that the West is just more subtle in how it ‘handles’ us.

Political liberalisation in other communist countries around the world was affected by the massacre – the first televised incident of its kind. Communist nations felt a greater sense of destabilisation, and in China, that meant re-structuring the party itself to ensure that dissent within the ranks would not hinder future monopoly of power. Prior to the protests, the President held a symbolic role. To prevent the authoritarian Moaist dictatorship, true power was spread between the Premier, the General Secretary and the President. Paramount power has been enjoyed by both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. It has also been wielded to the full extent of Maoist dictatorship.

Rather than face investigation (with 30,000 communist officers deployed to carry it out), several ambassadors took the opportunity to claim political asylum in their host nations. Four million people were investigated over their roles in the protests. One million government officials were scrutinised.

The focus of the investigation was not, as what one would expect, to discover who had ordered the killings or done the actual killing. It was to discern who had gotten in the way of the utilisation of the full armoury of tyranny. Those responsible never faced administrative or criminal sanctions. The United Nations requested that the State conduct a full and impartial investigation (they said the same thing about Organ Harvesting). Did it not occur to the UN that it was the State themselves, and no period of time lapse would make a difference, who had carried out the massacre – and from their perspective, rightly so. The United Nations was established after WWII to safeguard human rights. As an organisation, they have actually not achieved that…..China is not an exception in this regard.

Time has passed since 1989. A lot of it. In 2006 American broadcasters interviewed four enrolled students at the Peking University and showed them a picture of Tank Man. None of the four knew what the photo was about. The mechanisms of control work well.

Tiananmen Square is Massive (440,000m² – that is 63 UK football fields). It is the largest city square in the world. 1 million people had taken to the streets during the uprising of ’89. In Hong Kong, 1.6 million people (from a population of just 6million) echoed the sentiments of their Mainland counterparts in revulsion at the behaviour of their soon to be rulers. Since the hand-over of control from Britain to China, Hong Kong remains the one place where vigils are annually held. Mainland China has all but forgotten the incident – or rather, they have been trained to. Under Operation Yellowbird, some dissidents found refuge in HK. The people of Hong Kong long feared CCP rule, which led to many families moving overseas to the US, Canada and Australia prior to 1997.

Wherever Chinese people live in the world outside of the Mainland, the sacrifices their countrymen and women made have not been forgotten. The 20th anniversary of the Massacre was commemorated by them. In China, measures were taken to ensure that no such commemoration could exist. The internet was heavily censored and foreign journalists were denied entry to the square…just in case. Dissidents who resided in Beijing were forced to stay at home, or told to leave the city.

Political change is no-longer in the minds of the Chinese people. The country ‘feels’ more free. It ‘feels’ to be a greater part of the global community (the Beijing Games of 2008 helped with that). Those who can seriously rock the boat, rather than tread water along side it, ‘feel’ more prosperous. China has changed, in their eyes. T610 thinks otherwise, and believes that the West has played a major part in ensuring that. But that’s another blog!

Incidentally. Got to www.wikipedia.org and type in Tienanmen Square Massacre. Make note of the page title you are directed to!

The simple answer is an emphatic “no”!

The reasons are a lot more complex.

Echoing the release of Transmission 6-10 missing fragments T610: 4-24/25, this blog will be published in 2 parts. The first being an outline of the events leading up to and encompassing June 4th 1989; the second a dissection of their ramifications.

Part One – The Mechanisms of the Movement

The students of 1989 could not have imagined that their own government would open fire on what was a peaceful demonstration – though large in number. The duration of seven weeks (from the death of former CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang, which sparked the pro-democracy movement) is probably more telling than the numbers involved. For a dictatorial government to lose control of its own capital city centre, for such a length of time, showed surprising restraint. Or, did it show surprising amounts of consideration for the best course of action. Your own opinion would depend on your thoughts of whether a dictatorship can be a form of government that represents the people or not. It is the opinion of T610 that a dictatorship serves only itself.

In the late 1970′s President Carter of the USA entered into ‘normalising‘ negotiations with China, in an attempt to bring the largest Asian nation into a more global setting. This would be the first direct political tethering of China and the West. A union that would one day lead to a symbiotic relationship.

China was opening up. The people were being rewarded with greater freedoms and exposure to the rest of the world – which left them yearning for more. This brought with it a dilemma for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as economic evolution had the potential for internal revolution.

Deng Xiaoping (CCP leader in the year of 1989) had lived and studied in the West. His political thoughts led to the development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics – a capitalist/market economy system, with centralized control and a one-party state. Deng was a close comrade of Mao Zedong (founder of the CCP), and although was not selected to be Mao’s successor, his vision of the future ensured a political career at the highest levels of leadership. As a key ally to Mao, Deng was a part of the brutal campaigns which almost destroyed China between the 1950s and 1960s (the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution).

The context here is that violence and power cannot be separated. In Mainland China, this persists in the present.

Hu Yaobang (a protege of Deng Xiaoping) died on the 15th of April 1989. He had been purged from the CCP in 1987 for his role in inciting the December 1986 student demonstrations. Seen as a cult hero in the eyes of reformists, his sudden death united the students once more. Mass mournings soon led to pleas to have his good name restored; which transformed into calls for greater freedoms and, eventually, a movement for democracy.

On the eve of Hu Yaobang’s funeral, 100,000 students marched on to Tiananmen Square before it could be closed. The dissatisfaction of this youthful and energetic demographic was a direct result of failed economic reforms. Inflation was up to 18.5% in 1988. Intellectuals – so despised by Mao Zedong – were heralded as being a guiding force for the future of China. To aid this, the number of universities expanded, along with student enrolment. From 1977 to 1988, the number of universities rose from 400 to 1,975. The student population of the same years grew from 625,319 to 2,065,923. Yet job opportunities became increasingly sparse, especially in the face of a growing culture of nepotism. Traditional labours and blue collar work were back in vogue. White collar trainees would have to stain their shirts red, for their opinions to be heard.

The context of the events of June 4th 1989 are more compelling than the events themselves. Which is not to make light of the thousands (the exact number unknown and widely debated – an anonymous Chinese Red Cross official has gone on record claiming 5,000 deaths and 30,000 wounded) who died, but rather to point out that the ’89 movement was not an isolated incident….not by a long shot. The Chinese population have always had a tendency to gather together and oppose their leadership or invading forces – going back to the 1898-1901 Boxer Rebellion against overseas imperialist influence…..and going back way beyond that to times of feudal rule and the era of Warlords.

The students were too young to recall the horrors of previous decades of violent suppression. They were emboldened by at least a sense of liberalisation, and, perhaps, had been exposed to the Democracy Wall protests of 1978-1979. They were certainly exposed to ideas of Democracy that were brought back by Chinese nationals visiting the US. But it wasn’t just the students.

This is something that is little known in the West. The general population of Beijing – manipulated by State-run media to the contrary – were sympathetic to the protestors. General workers also joined the movement. This was a massive gathering of a great many people from a wide range of backgrounds. They were leaderless in terms of a single voice, and directionless in terms of a single objective, but they were certainly a threat to ‘social stability’ in the eyes of the ruling elite.

The threat wasn’t just from the outside. It was inside the Party itself. There was a lack of cohesion amongst CCP government officials on what was the best course of action to deal with the unrest. There was descent amongst military leaders to the point where armies were hand chosen to move in to secure the city.

War.

It wasn’t a massacre. It was a war in the middle of China’s capital. Encouraged to be non-violent by those with microphones – which they were until the last moments – the students fought back. After weeks of encampment, (including hunger-strikes) Martial Law was declared on the 20th of May. Troops were moving in to the city. The students set up barricades to block their progress. Tanks were met with fire bombs. Soldiers were pulled from their armoured vehicles and beaten to death. There was nothing peaceful about the demonstrations once the leadership of the CCP had decided that brutality was the only way to end the uprising – no surprises there.

Unsurprisingly, however, was the swiftness with which Tiananmen Square itself was cleared. The military had been ordered not to open fire, but given a deadline of 6am on June 4th to clear the square. In a typically Oriental dedication to the task at hand, the square was cleared by 5:40am. Orders being peripheral to results.

The CCP claim that no-one died in the Square itself. What they continue to deny is that the killing of largely unarmed people took place on the surrounding streets. Western correspondents have confirmed both of these assertions – yet both remain contestable.

The Sino-Soviet summit was taking place in May of ’89. Reporters from all over the world had turned up in Beijing to cover the events. Russian reformist Mikhail Gorbachev was in town. You couldn’t write a better script to set up such a colossal event that had global and long-lasting ramifications. Had Western press not been there, this blog would barely exist. We simply wouldn’t have known half of what really happened. In the days of the Great Leap forward it was only when bodies – some of which had been cannibalised – floated into Hong Kong harbour from across the border with China, that the rest of the world realised something terrible was happening to the world’s oldest civilisation.

Camping in tents, singing songs, building statues (The Goddess of Democracy). That is what the students were up to when the tanks rolled in. One man stood in front of them. Bags of shopping in his hands. He climbed to the turret of the machine which had tried to manoeuvre around him. Apparently he spoke to the soldiers inside. What happened to him is unknown. Most compelling was a speech to the President’s Club in 1999 by Bruce Herschensohn (former deputy special assistant to President Richard Nixon) reporting that “Tank Man” was executed 14 days later. The unknown rebel was named as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century by Time Magazine – you’d think we would know more about him if he were alive.

Control.

In politics it is always about control. The West is no different. The task is just set about in a wholly more subtle manner. We would all be on the streets brandishing pitch forks – ok…iPads these days, with very menacing apps – in the name of justice if we knew half the truth of what is really going on around us on ‘our behalf’.

It goes way beyond the constraints of a blog to fully divulge all that took place in Beijing that year. What should be noted is that the protests, and eventual riots, were not limited to the Capital City. Former CCP leader Jiang Zemin was literally ‘blooded’ by the events of 1989. In 1999 he started a new campaign of terror. Elevated by virtue (poor choice of word) of his crushing attitude towards the student sympathising press of Shanghai (the city for which he was Party Secretary), and the quelling of unrest on his own streets, Jiang Zemin’s hard-line stance towards opposition won him many admirers and supporters.

Transmission 6-10 interviewee Chen Yonglin was amongst the students in 1989. He later became a CCP Member and employee of the State. His empathy for peaceful change in China would never escape his mind though. When his time came to decide what was more important to him, a career or his fellow man, he sided with humanity and returned his philosophies to be in line with his student days of freedom fighting – fighting in a cognitive manner.

The students didn’t throw the first brick. Nor did they throw the last. Rather, the bricks they left behind – much like the Democracy Wall – were wrapped in messages of hope for future generations to draw inspiration and strength from. Embedded in the very paving of Tiananmen Square, they have been trodden over by millions since June the 4th of 1989. The next population of people to take their cause to the public were Falun Gong practitioners. They too have been quashed.

For their part, the Chinese government felt they were losing control of the people. One way to deal with it – a tried and tested method – is to get rid of the people who you think are not controllable. Intellectuals. Artists. The Bourgeois. Religious. Spiritual. Student. It doesn’t really matter who you are if you are not ‘in line’.

Student leaders from 1989 either died in protest, were executed or sentenced to long prison terms – some managed to escape. Members of the CCP who were sympathetic to their cause were ousted. Workers who joined the protest were ‘disappeared’. The events were swept under the carpet for historians to one day discover and dissect.

Dissection is the focus of Part 2.

T610: 4-25 Tianjin, June 4th and Zhongnanhai pt2

April 25th 1999. 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners peacefully appeal in Zhongnanhai, the central government compound in Beijing. Many thousands more are reported to have tried to travel there, but were stopped. What happened in Tianjin to trigger these events, and just what were the consequences, in the wake of the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre?

The Jasmine Revolution.

A name at the forefront of media coverage in 2011. Tunisian uprisings ousting their President. Egyptian uprisings with the same effect. Increasing unrest in Jordan, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen. And now our eyes turn to Libya.

Yet something equally significant is taking place. In the wake of a series of mass protests in 2010, The Jasmine Revolution is currently unfolding in China, inspired by what happened in Tunisia. Only last week, it was reported that “hundreds of police maintained heavy security at several busy commercial sites in China’s capital…for the fifth week of planned ‘Jasmine’ rallies against the government.” The article went on to say that large areas of the arranged protests sites have been cordoned off, with heavy police presence.

However, the protests purposefully differ from the open rallies seen in the Middle East. The SCMP reported that people are urged to meet at designated sites to“gather near fast-food restaurants, take a stroll, or eat at the restaurants”. Another SCMP article reported the organisers saying that this stage of ‘strolling’ could take “a few weeks, a couple of months, a year or even longer”; the second stage would include “holding a jasmine flower and [using] mobile phones or music players to play [the folk song] Such a Beautiful Jasmine”. Organisers declared the third stage as “when the street-walking revolution is irreversible”; it would involve people criticising the government openly and without fear.” “It was almost the embodiment of the ancient Taoist philosophical concept of wu wei, best translated as”active non-action”.

The first anonymous call to action on the 19th February appeared on Boxun, a US-based website run by overseas dissidents, and later on Twitter. It urged for the protests to begin on the 20th, and continue every week thereafter, which they have. Both websites are blocked in China, so “the only Chinese who will get the message will… be those who use proxies to circumvent the government’s fire walls.” Both sites were subsequently attacked, forcing fresh protests to be organised via sites like Facebook.

The Chinese regime were quick to react. “China deployed a SWAT team, attack dogs and scores of plainclothes security agents in central Beijing,” reported the WSJ at one site, while AFP reported up to 100 leading lawyers and activists missing since the protests began. Given our knowledge of how the regime treats these people, this is a serious concern. AP found that searches for “jasmine” were blocked on China’s largest Twitter-like microblog, and status updates with the word on popular Chinese social networking site Renren.com were met with an error message and a warning to refrain from postings with “political, sensitive … or other inappropriate content.” The foreign media reporting on the ground were also targeted directly, including beatings and detention.

Critical minds are suggesting a double-edged sword. One web article, reported in The Epoch Times, highlighted concern that, stricken by the possibility of revolution, these organised protests were faked by the regime to bring leading dissidents and activists out into the open, so that they can be identified and silenced, mirroring Mao’s ‘Hundred Flowers Campaign‘ in the 1950′s.

However, a core member of the Jasmine Revolution group, speaking in email interview with The Epoch Times, highlighted that the heavy-handed reaction by the regime is actually favouring the protests. “For example, an open letter the organizers sent to China’s youth on March 5 resulted in blockades of university campuses by security forces across the country. “This unusual treatment almost certainly antagonizes the young energies and triggers their curiosity to explore the cause…””.

“I will be back next Sunday, and the Sunday after that,” said one beaming youth, clearly within earshot of police officers. “We have to make our voices heard.”

One conclusion that can be drawn from The Jasmine Revolution in China is that, regardless of who ignited it, the people who are turning out to demonstrate represent a real desire for the dictatorial regime to be removed. Many people that Transmission 6-10 has interacted with see that the only real change in China has to come from within. Transmission 6-10 frequently highlights Western apathy towards China’s abuse of it’s people, so this stance towards ‘change from within’ can largely be agreed with. Will this revolution bring change to China? Even in light of the massive upheavals happening in the Middle East, only by keeping informed of these unfolding events will we ever know.

One of the demonstration meeting places is outside KFC in Shenyang city, Liaoning province. Transmission 6-10 concludes this blog with the sobering reminder of the story of Mr. Shi Hongbo, a Falun Gong practitioner who died from torture on the 28th February 2011. His 75 year-old mother said, “Shi’s death reaffirms Liaoning province’s reputation as one of the deadliest regions of China for Falun Gong practitioners. Beneath the veneer of Dalian’s growing metropolis, Shi endured torture the horrors of which are nearly impossible for many of us to fully comprehend.”

There is a very real need for change.

So, what were the reasons for the meeting of these two world leaders? The discussion of the meaning of peace, human rights and freedom of press? If you followed the western media, the impression given was that Obama was outspoken about human rights in China; highlighting that “there are areas where we disagree”. But how far did those discussions delve into the deep and widespread problems in China? Did Hu really go to the US to talk about these issues? It seemed that the visit was more about building stronger ties, and this means one thing: $45 Billion worth of export trade deals. So we can be pretty certain Liu will remain in prison.

To contrast, at the beginning of Hu’s visit, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher expressed on CNN: “…the trouble is we’ve been dealing with these people [CCP] as if they’re Englishmen, or Belgians… when in reality, this is a gangster regime that murders they’re own people… there’s no freedom of speech, freedom of press, there’s no freedom of assembly…what you have is the ongoing repression of religion. People like the Falun Gong, who are people who believe in nothing more than a yoga, a meditation, are being thrown into prison by the thousands, and there’s all sorts of evidence to suggest they are being beaten to death in order to steal their organs and sell their organs. It doesn’t get more ghoulish than this, but that also doesn’t touch bases with the suppression of the Tibetan people, and the Uighars, and many other groups in China…the Chinese government is a gangster government…and it should be treated as an adversary, as an anti-democratic adversary.”

So why is there such a disparity in how Rohrabacher would expect the West to deal with a regime like this, and how it actually interacts with it? In addition, if you have watched Transmission 6-10, you will understand just how bad the situation in China really is; in summary, mass Genocide. Would Obama have entertained Adolf Hitler with a view to “building stronger ties”? Perhaps a strong statement for those who are yet to watch Transmission 6-10, but for the lives of those whom have been lost, and the families which have been destroyed in truly horrific circumstances, the stance that human rights in China is a side ‘issue’ that requires resolving is an insult at a best.

One argument is that only through strengthening ties with China can it possibly lead to a change in the regime. To stoke the flames of this debate, let’s agree with this stance. A massive move to build a relationship was to award Beijing with the 2008 Olympic Games, done on the pretext of two very specific promises from the CCP; that they would improve human rights and freedom of press. An incredible promise from the CCP, and an equally incredible achievement from the West for inspiring this change. The IOC recognised it as an opportunity to give an honour to China in return for positive change. Yet, these promises were not kept, and the 2008 Olympics began to parallel the ‘Genocide Games of 1936‘. When it became painfully clear that these promises were empty (literally painful for many millions of Chinese people who suffered a pre-Olympic crackdown to silence them) , the IOC turned around and stated that the Olympics had nothing to do with politics (as if the right to be a human being was a political issue).

“…it was an enormous public relations scam…and they got away with the imprisonment of people who were attacking the Chinese record on human rights inside China. Men like Hu Jia, who went to jail for saying “hey wait a minute, what kind of a country is this which is putting on the Olympics in the way that it is, but at the same time it oppresses its own people.” But the fact is, to a great degree, with most people, the Chinese got away with.” Jonathan Mirsky, Transmission 6-10 Source.

But, critics to this standpoint would highlight that during his visit to the US, Hu Jintao himself expressed that the country “faces many challenges in social and economic development. A lot still needs to be done in China on human rights.” In the past, Hu Jintao himself has also promised “[China] will continue to make government affairs public, enhance information distribution, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of foreign news organizations and reporters, and facilitate foreign media coverage in China….” So was this another monumental gesture by the regime in recognising that change is needed, or another example that the West is failing to learn from it’s past mistakes? Fresh reports are emerging that the blind human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng and his wife, who have worked against forced abortion and the one child policy, have been severely beaten by Chinese police. This is does not bode well.

The answer becomes even more apparent when we learn that Hu’s speech about human rights was censored by Mainland Chinese State (government controlled) media . In short, they did not want Chinese people to be aware Hu had raised human rights. Does the CCP want real change, or simply portray this desire for change in order to appease critics? However, this may not be the most important question here. Regardless of whether the CCP wants to change, which evidently it does not, does the West really want the CCP to change, or simply to profit from the business opportunities with it? Aren’t both appeasing critics with hypocrisy?

According to a survey in June 2009, the U.S. Treasury owed China $757 billion in long-term debt. According to Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton said of this fact, “how do you deal toughly with your banker”?

The paradox deepens.

In January 2011, Chinese Vice-Premier Li Keqiang visited the UK on a trade mission (mirroring a similar visit to China in November 2010 by the British government with an entourage of leading UK business representatives), securing deals worth over £2.6 Billion. He met with Foreign Secretary William Hague, banqueting at The Royal Courts of Justice. Hague said, “it was a great pleasure to have welcomed Vice-Premier Li Keqiang to the UK…I see this visit as another important step in cementing the UK and China as “Partners for Growth” and continuing to build our trade and investment relationship.” Yet, The Guardian reported William Hague revealing that in the very same month, “China… penetrated the Foreign Office’s internal communications in the most audacious example yet of the growing threat posed by state-sponsored cyber-attacks…” Is this building “partners for growth?” One individuals response to these cyber-attacks highlighted that the UK is probably doing exactly the same to China. Probable yes, but rather than beginning to answer this paradox, this only strengthens the question, “what is really going on?”

Vice-Premier Li also visited Germany as part of his trade visit in Europe, where he sealed $11.3 Billion worth of trade deals. A few weeks later, German federal prosecutors say they have indicted a man for allegedly spying on the Falun Gong movement, in Germany, on behalf of China’s intelligence service. This man is almost certainly part of the 6-10 Office system. “Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a part of the 6-10 Office system, majorly in propaganda role, as a propaganda machine overseas.” Chen Yonglin, Transmission 6-10 Source.

Increasingly we are seeing that the further the West delves into it’s ‘engagement’ with the CCP, the sharper the double-edged sword becomes. With trade and investment, the West also has to deal with the glaring fact that the CCP is still, at heart, a dictatorship, and will continue to use all of the tools of one. The partnerships and relationships it seeks with the West are not friendly, and as these windows of evidence suggest, are actually contrary to the “promotion of peace”. Transmission 6-10 believes that only by drawing together many seemingly disparate pieces of information, can one truly open a window into what is really going on in the West’s ‘relationship’ with China.

Transmission 6-10 also predicts that as the West’s ‘relationship’ with China grows stronger, so will evidence of the paradox it creates, so long as information remains obtainable. Given the track record of Western media, it is only by connecting the dots can anyone gain a truer picture of what is really going on in the world.

It isn’t the stance of the T6-10 team that there is an easy solution to all of this, but governments have a responsibility to upholding the most basic moral principles of humanity. The unpalatable truth is that we are all, in part, to blame. We all like to be able buy a plethora of ‘made in China’ products at affordable prices, and we all want our economies to prosper. The CCP provides these ‘opportunities’, but at great cost, both to ourselves and in reality, to the Chinese people.

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Transmission 6-10 Phase 2

Today, reports are coming in of a man setting himself on fire in Saudi Arabia, sparking protests. This is one of a series of self-immolations in North Africa and the Middle East that appear to have been triggered by a man who set alight to himself in mid-December 2010 in Tunisia.

Reports on the Tunisian man vary, depending on the source. Most agree, however, that 26 year-old Mohamed Bouazizi committed the act as a desperate cry against poverty. Mohamed died from the burns he suffered. This act sparked angry protests against the Tunisian government, who many felt ruled with an iron fist, and resulted in the ousting of the President.

“Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shrivelling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning flesh… I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think.” The Making of a Quagmire, David Halberstam.

David was witnessing first-hand the self-immolation of a monk in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1963. The monk was reported to be protesting against discrimination of his belief. Self-immolation is also well documented in Afghanistan, where women are reported to commit the act in protest and to escape from oppression in their marriage.

Each case of self-immolation is individual. It is distinct and driven by a deeply emotional plea, risking ones own life and inflicting serious pain upon oneself.

January 23rd 2001, 10 years ago today. Five people set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese State media reported the four women and one man were Falun Gong practitioners. They appeared to be protesting against the escalating persecution of their belief, like the monk in Saigon.

At a recent screening of Transmission 6-10 at Kingston University, when learning about this incident, one of the audience members expressed how he felt deep sympathy towards those who self-immolated that day, and how they must have been desperate.

But at the time, Chinese public opinion turned heavily against Falun Gong. There were public statements of denouncement and petitions against the practice. Inside the prisons, the torture became more severe and the number of deaths escalated. This self-immolation had brought increased hatred towards Falun Gong.

Something separated the Tiananmen self-immolation from those in North Africa, Afghanistan or Vietnam. Investigations in 2001 began to reveal that footage of the incident showed something more sinister had happened. It looked like a staged hoax, instigated by the Chinese regime to further the propaganda campaign against Falun Gong. Further, rather than being martyred for their sacrifice, as would be the case of many self-immolations, Falun Gong stated almost immediately afterwards that the five people were not practitioners. It was something that went against their deepest beliefs.

Up until that point inside China, the public had already been bombarded on a daily basis with negative propaganda against Falun Gong; “dangerous” “brainwashed” “evil cult.” Many knew it was propaganda, as this was not something new. According to our interviewee Ethan Gutmann, despite this media campaign, the Chinese public really weren’t supporting the crackdown on Falun Gong. The self-immolation changed that.

Beyond China’s borders, some Western media followed the regime’s version of events, while others dissected the evidence to conclude it was a hoax.

“I have never seen policemen patrolling on Tiananmen Square carrying fire extinguishers. How come they all showed up today? The location of the incident is at least 20 minutes round-trip from the nearest building — the People’s Great Hall. If they were to have dashed over there to get the equipment, it would have been too late.” This eye-witness testimony came from a European journalist, interviewed by Danny Schechter. Holes were starting to show in the story.

Xinhua News Agency (one of the Chinese regime’s State media) had been the first to report on the incident, and were the only ones allowed to interview those who self-immolated. In response to a journalistic investigation by Philip P. Pan, which revealed many questions about the validity of the evidence, Xinhua began to change the story.

Ms Liu Bairong, was one of two previously unmentioned practitioners during initial reports on the incident. No footage existed to suggest she was in Tiananmen Square that day, but a week later she appeared on China Central Television claiming she had gone to the square with the intention of self-immolating, but couldn’t do it when she saw the others burning. It is possible that she changed her mind, but the would someone who was willing to sacrifice their life in the name of what they ‘believe’, within a single week turn against those beliefs.

Whatever their intentions, they were not in keeping with previous Falun Gong public demonstrations in opposition to the persecution. Their actions led to ramifications they could not have envisaged. The lives that were lost and destroyed on that day, and during the subsequent years, are a tragedy.

Regardless of what conclusion you draw from the events that day, one thing can be certain. This self-immolation created an incredible barrier of distrust towards Falun Gong practitioners, who were seeking public support to stop the persecution they were facing. A decade on, that necessity for support has only increased with the increasing severity of the persecution.