China censors news of the last martyr of Tiananmen Square

[jdonaldball]

This news is being censored all over China. The free world should pay more attention:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/international/asia/18zhao.html

[DrWeird]

1. Is the last martyr in a flag draped coffin?

nt

[jdonaldball]

2. No, He will not have a state funeral, and this is the problem

[DrWeird]

3. Well then they should be able to show it on TV.

I mean, as long as he's not in a flag draped coffin, that's a violation of freedom of the press.

[jdonaldball]

4. Yeah, well, China has no freedom of the press!

[DrWeird]

5. oy vey

[David__77]

6. My dissenting (unpopular) view on Zhao Ziyang and Tienanmen.

Zhao Ziyang, former premier and CPC general secretary, is who you are refering to as a "martyr." Far from being a martyr, he was an opportunist who did not really care about the student movement on the late 1980s except insofar as he viewed it as a potential weapon in his political power struggle with Premier Li Peng and the "Shanghai faction" symbolized by former President Jiang Zemin.

There was no unified "student movement" in 1989. There were Maoist supporters of the "gang of four," Gorbachev-like "socialist reformers," and outright supporters of wholesale Westernization, and, mostly, and less ideological mass that had righteous grievances against official corruption and increasing class polarization under the "reform and opening" policies of the current era. What happened in early June 1989 involved the Chinese state on the one side, and the pro-Westernization forces on the other, who wanted China to follow Russia down the Gorbachev-Yeltsin path to ignimony. I have little doubt that if the Westernization forces had won out, China would be in truly dire straights today.

Deng Xiaoping's right-wing policies have created great miseries and exacerbated economic polarization, creating divisions among the people. But the Zhao Ziyang/Bao Tong CPC faction had no problem with these policies. This was a simple bureaucratic power struggle over what form marketization would occur--with or without a fig leaf of "democracy." Deng split with Zhao over this question. But to say Zhao was a "martyr" is quite a stretch.

As for me, I am much more interested in human rights violations here, in the world's sole superpower. For China, I wish the best in peace in development.