Chinese app binned by Beijing after asking what day it is on anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre Popular Chinese shopping app Xiaohongshu has seen its software banished from app stores and its social media accounts crimped, a few hours after issuing a controversial post on June 4th that asked, “Tell me loudly, what is the date today?” One answer to that question is that June 4th is the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen …
At this point, the Chinese government is not making much sense. Everybody, inside the country and out, knows that the government murdered a bunch of protestors and they know when that happened. Everybody knows that the government's actions are designed to minimize something, and the Streisand effect is strong with this one. I have to wonder exactly why they consider it so important to hide the event when it's far too late to deny its existence. I shouldn't advise dictatorships on propaganda, but at this point it makes more sense for them to just embrace the evil or at least lie about some details rather than trying to lie about the whole thing. The rest of their propaganda, both internal and external, is at least a bit more disguised. It's a weird decision for this to be the only thing about which they take the North Korea route.
I don't think it is the only thing they are touchy about. Taiwan is another hot topic.
I think we can find an explanation in the recent relaxation of the policy on the number of children. It used to be one only, then it was relaxed to two children, and now they've relaxed it to three. Why relax to three? Surely at this point they could just allow any number of children, right? There are very few people who want more than three anyway.
But the reason they don't want to allow any number of children, or they don't want people to talk about Tiananmen, is that it would mean accepting losing control. Admitting a mistake. Having egg on their face. And that is not their way. They think it would make them look weak.
But the reason they don't want to allow any number of children, or they don't want people to talk about Tiananmen, is that it would mean accepting losing control. Admitting a mistake. Having egg on their face. And that is not their way. They think it would make them look weak.
The thing is, Chairman Mao thought that more kids would be good; so under his wise and benevolent control the population of the country doubled from 500million to a billion in 25 years, and somebody then sat down with a calculator and spotted that rate of growth would lead to ~2 billion by 2000, ~4 billion by 2025, and ~8 billion by 2050.
This presents certain rather obvious problems with food, housing etc so they then panicked and went from one extreme to the other with population control and have managed to keep the population down to 1.3 billion at the expense of China sitting on the worlds biggest demographic time bomb as the older people die off, which they can currently hear ticking.
This presents certain rather obvious problems with food, housing etc so they then panicked and went from one extreme to the other with population control and have managed to keep the population down to 1.3 billion at the expense of China sitting on the worlds biggest demographic time bomb as the older people die off, which they can currently hear ticking.
No, the time bomb is due to older people not dying off. That single child has to look after 2 parents, and 4 grand parents, i.e. a working population supporting a much larger retired population, with all the healthcare costs that brings.
"Everybody, inside the country and out, knows that the government murdered a bunch of protestors and they know when that happened"
Actually they don't. I play World Of Tanks Blitz and when people were saying Wargaming were being insensitive promoting the Chinese premium tanks on the day, many of the Chinese players genuinely had no idea what everyone was on about. Some even said they heard it was when thousands of protesters attacked the military. Now of course some of these were bots and mouth pieces, but I feel many were genuinely confused.
Indeed, I think people really underestimate just how effective propaganda and brainwashing are, especially when sustained over a long period of time. Even in countries with a relatively free press and decent education systems, most people are entirely oblivious to huge amounts of important events and recent history. This is even more the case for events that happened before their own lifetimes or outside their own locale. And I've always been amazed that even with easy access to things like encyclopedias, libraries and of course now the internet, most people make no effort whatsoever to actually go and look things up if they do hear about something they don't know much about.
Throw in 30 years of blocking and oppression on top of that, and it's very easy to ensure that most people will have no idea about some events. It's not in history books or schools. No-one talks about it openly. No-one can look it up without much more effort than would normally be required for all the other things they don't bother looking up anyway.
It's easy to say "everyone knows", but it's dangerous to assume that everyone actually does know the same things you do. Most people don't actually know as much as you might think, especially when it comes to major events that it's easy to assume are common knowledge. The Chinese government, along with most other dicators, and plenty of supposedly more ethical governments for that matter, don't go to such great lengths to control information just for fun. They do it because it really does work.
Don't you just love it when people do things without knowing what they're doing because you tried as hard as you could to suppress the knowledge?
The notion that that this sort of antics is just educating the new generations that something horrible did in fact happen on that date is pretty golden.
The vast majority of under 30's (probably under 40's to be honest) in China have no idea about the Tianamen Square Massacre, because the Communist Party has been very good at quashing all reference to it (within China). So now you have the actions of some old men who still fear the event, giving all of the younger generations a reason to go searching to find out what happened on that date to upset the "great leaders".
We can only hope that a few Chinese people get their eyes finally opened by this event...
Mr Foot meet Mr Shotgun...
In some not-so democratic countries, the "Mr Foot meet Mr Shotgun..." moment may carry a different meaning: Now that you are aware of the shotgun, tread softly, because that shotgun will remain pointed at your feet and the feet of anybody else who steps out of line.
Respect through fear. It's not nice, but it works.
I imagine this from the point of view of the marketing department. They are likely young men and women, full of enthusiasm in a company that has a lot of impact.
They brainstorm something for June 4th and set it in motion, and all of a sudden Beijing come crashing around them, bringing all their efforts to naught.
I'm betting they are all thinking "but why ?".
And now they're going to find out, one way or the other.
So Beijing is basically educating it's people on the exact thing it wants to suppress.
I don't (thank goodness), but any day of the week I would live in the United States instead of Russia or China. There are many bad things about modern western powers, but I could go to the central park right now and start putting up posters that say "Joe Biden is a dick and he eats your babies". I might get a telling off, I might get some individuals who want to pick a fight with me, but I will not be put in prison or assassinated.
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