4 juni 1989 till i dag: Kan Kina förändras? | NTD NYHETER

Can China change through a trade deal? That's the gamble on the table right now as the U.S. government negotiates with Beijing and world markets are watching closely. Talks of China rebalancing, reforming or even opening up its economy once again making headlines. We opened up China. China agreed to open itself up to American business to go in. These demands echo the calls made by Chinese students in 1989. They held mass protests calling for further reform and opening up in China but their hopes were crushed, their lives lost under the Chinese Communist Party's brutal clampdown. So now the question is, is the Chinese regime ready to change this time? As the army units approached the center of the city they were firing into side streets killing and injuring scores of incomprehending and unarmed men women and children. The troops have been firing indiscriminately but still there are thousands of people on the streets who will not move back. The bicycle rickshaws scooped up the injured others were shunted onto bikes and peddled to hospital. The battle is underway but it's being fought in the broad boulevards beyond Tiananmen Square where civilians are confronting the troops advancing on this position and falling under heavy gunfire from the people's army. Casualties were arriving every few seconds on bikes, rickshaws, park benches carried in. In 20 minutes 40 seriously injured were brought for emergency surgery two were already dead. The students were incredibly brave they were fighting live ammunition with rocks and stone. The crackdown is going to take many more hours if not days before it is complete before we will know how many people have died. How do you feel right now? I feel right now I'm very angry. That was western media reporting on the Tiananmen Square massacre where countless perished on the night of June 3rd and into June 4th in 1989. Before we get to that let's turn back the clock to understand why the Chinese students demonstrated and what the Chinese regime did to suppress this democratic movement. We begin with April 15th that's the date of former CCP head Hu Yaobang died. Now he was very well loved he was known as a pro-reform leader that's both economic and also some political reform and because he was so well loved on April 17th to 18th you had tens of thousands of students who showed up organically in Tiananmen Square that's at the heart of Beijing's capital and they were there to mourn and pay respects for Hu's passing but also to show their dissatisfaction against the regime because Hu represented to them anti-corruption and also political reform so it begins to spread into almost a protest and it grows you have 35 universities in Beijing where students are protesting and also other major universities across the country where people are joining in so this movement is growing by this point you have you know countless people across the country joining in so on April 26th you have an op-ed that's published in the People's Daily that's a state-run newspaper and it's calling the student movement as a form of political turmoil now that's important because during the cultural revolution anyone deemed a threat to public security was thus said to need to be purged and so that's when you're starting to see pressure on this student movement this democratic movement that's happening inside China now in response you had 200,000 students come out and protest this editorial and the regime's narrative of what's happening so as April becomes May you have millions of people joining in it's no longer just students you have CCP officials themselves joining in justice judges and also some soldiers that are joining in so at this point on May 13th you have students in Tiananmen who are now doing a hunger strike to try and get the regime to talk to them and open up some dialogue and you have some people supporting them where they're like oh we really support this movement we're going to give them food and water to help them out so this is putting a lot of social pressure on the regime so on May 18th you have then leader Li Peng meeting with the student leaders but they're dissatisfied with what the regime is doing so they refuse to leave so on May 19th is when you had then CCP head Zhao Ziyao meeting because he was sympathetic with them and then the regime declares martial law where troops are ordered into Beijing now following Zhao's purge he gets purged from the party you had Deng Xiaoping who was the head of the Chinese military he becomes the most powerful person within the Chinese Communist Party so he's now effectively calling the shots because he controls the military he now orders the military the tanks and the soldiers to open fire on the night of June 3rd so this is to fire on any students and also protesters who are on their way and that marks the beginning of the massacre many were killed this night it continues the massacre continues where many more are killed even some Beijing residents who are inside their homes they get hit or killed by stray bullets now the true death toll to this day is still unknown some are saying it's in the hundreds some say even up to 10,000 we still don't know that true number now as the massacre continues on June 5th the regime calls for a nationwide campaign to arrest the student leaders or demonstrators and some of them were actually sentenced to the death penalty all for calling for democracy others are still in jail to this very day 36 years later so that's what was launched on June 5th these Chinese students fought for democracy and freedom they believed that the Chinese regime would listen to them and bring about changes but they were met with 36 years later half their demands shifted over time Feng Zhen is a Chinese activist and lifelong athlete on June 4th 1989 Feng was among the students cruelly overrun by army tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests after he pushed a young female student to safety a tank crushed both his legs leading to a double amputation Feng currently serves as the president of the looking back 36 years have passed most of those demands haven't really changed much looking at the current situation in China if a large-scale student movement were to happen again today I believe the demands wouldn't be very different from what we had back then this shows that the Chinese Communist Party's dictatorial and authoritarian model of rule hasn't changed in 36 years so our basic demands for freedom democracy human rights and rule of law are still what people in China long for today within six months of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 President George H.W. Bush secretly sent envoys to China twice to keep the door open with Beijing he believed this approach but he might not have realized it also helped China get through the crisis without real consequences fast forward a few decades China capitalized on globalization joining the World Trade Organization becoming the world's factory and booming into the world's second largest economy western countries got more and more dependent on China for everything from supply chains to consumer markets that dependency turned into a big security concern during the COVID-19 pandemic when China stockpiled crucial medical gear like masks and ventilators for itself after that many western countries started trying to de-risk meaning they wanted to rely less on China now with President Trump back in the White House he's hitting China with steep tariffs to counter unfair trade and pressure China to open up its markets right now there's a but can they hammer out a lasting deal in the next 90 days that remains an open question I think western politicians are of course driven by their own interests they tend to apply their own logic to interpret the CCP regime and its system but that logic doesn't really work because China under the CCP isn't a normal society in the way the west defines it it's not a standard society anymore after so many years of authoritarian rule China's strategy toward the west is also deceptive hide my strength bide my time in order to secure deals it simply lies whether those agreements will be honored later is another matter the communist party has always operated this way without any ethical boundaries nor does it feel any moral pressure they don't care about keeping promises and so what if they don't keep them nothing happens so if the west continues to engage with the CCP using western logic it will always be at a disadvantage it will lose just now feng noted the regime strategy called hide and abide deceiving the west to achieve its adding that if the u.s continues to engage the ccp using western logic it will lose here to help us understand american policy towards china over the years is longtime china expert the honorable stephen yates he served as deputy national security advisor to vice president dick cheney he witnessed firsthand the shift from engaging with china in the hopes of liberalizing the country to what that engagement policy has cost america steve thank you so much for joining us now we're hearing calls from this administration for china to reform rebalance its economy even open up its economy now if past is prologue and given the events that went down on june 4th 1989 how likely is china to change this time around roughly from 1989 to 1991 when you look at china and russia as book ends the soviet union dissolving and there was this notion that somehow the west free markets west the culture and civilization had somewhat quote-unquote won and that china like many others was going to seek to emulate in some way shape or form adapt to at least accommodate the dominance of western civilization and what we have learned for the better part of 40 years is that changes within china when it comes to political system have been very very minor and even on the economic system they haven't really adapted to our way of thinking or operating they have taken advantage of those things and steve as phone noted above the chinese communist party doesn't operate as a normal society it's not the way the west understands has the u.s learned that lesson are we seeing that play out in the way this administration is dealing with china as in holding it accountable well i think it's adjusting in the following way for a lot of my life we in engaged with an idea that basically people all over the world are innately the same and you know they might be prisoners of a bad system but if you find a way to reform or open that system then those same people just like us and our friends and neighbors abroad they would just seek a better life for their family the better opportunity for their children more stability and opportunity generally for their society all those things are were deemed as universal goals and aspirations but what we're learning is that our influence from the outside might be more marginal than we anticipated and so i think what the trump administration is adapting to is really looking at how do we set the international system in a way that aligns with what we need to do bilaterally with china that contains malign influences and leaves it to the chinese people and those that lead them to sort out what their internals are that might be a brutal direction to adjust and it's sad on a human level in a certain sense but we have to be honest that over the last generation we have not moved the needle on some structural human rights issues the way that had been promised and the way that our national interests and values should dictate steve yates thank you so much for those insights thank you next let's hear from today's youth on china's so-called opening up and about their attitudes towards the chinese regime entities flora hua brings us details what do you think china as a market do you think china should open up more yeah i have done business in china before and like yeah um yeah i mean you you hope that you know the workers producing the products that you might be buying are are paid a decent wage and have decent conditions and that um their environmental controls that are um helpful but for global commons and our air and water um and yeah you don't always get the sense that that's uh that's happening in china the chinese communist party has long profited off the u.s trade surplus and i think this time the u.s should take a much tougher stance toward china to transfer internal pressure and unrest i believe the ccp will likely try to appear more conciliatory to the u.s government because if exports really come to a halt and chinese people start losing jobs they may rise up to protest and that's something the ccp doesn't want to see just now we heard from today's youth about opinions on the chinese regime joining us now to dig deeper is joshua phillip senior investigative reporter with the epic times who's covered chinese communist party subversion for years josh thank you so much for joining us to share insight now to begin what ultimately is the fundamental difference when it comes to western governments and something like the chinese communist party what do u.s officials need to know to understand how to approach the ccp you know there's this whole slogan in china there'd be no new china without the ccp absolutely not true most of the asian world i mean look at south korea came up without the needing without needing communism i would actually say it's the opposite there would be no there would be no new china without the usa because all the wealth of china the entire economic boom it came mainly through u.s investment the ccp does not reflect does not really respect free markets the chinese communist party engages in some of the most abusive trade policies of anywhere in the world in fact trump even acknowledged this uh saying that they're the worst abuser they've identified that's why he had 145 tariffs on it and so the you know the whole idea that by engaging with the chinese communist party that somehow it's going to magically change we've been trying that for decades and it has not worked what we've actually found is the opposite if you open up a channel for the ccp they will not change but they will try to change you so should the u.s just not deal with it or how should u.s officials approach this i wonder sometimes if we've lost our minds thinking the ccp is going to change when we're when again experience has shown repeatedly no it does not even internally the ccp regards us as its number one enemy its own doctrine says they cannot coexist in this same world as the united states every action they take diplomatically and globally is to undermine the united states they say this behind closed doors they say it in the open they say it in their military doctrine and somehow we still think they don't really mean what they say but then actions i'd say speak louder than words and every one of those also is to undermine the united states why do we open the door for this we know they're doing it all right josh as always thank you so much for your insights a pleasure thank you coming up a young chinese billionaire almost lost it all over a tent-shaped ice cream why did this simple dessert trigger such fear in the chinese regime stay with us to print out welcome back now the story of a young chinese celebrity that almost lost it all after accidentally getting a little too close to the chinese regime's red line this young man's name is li jiaqi he's a chinese social media personality known for his watch and shop live stream to get a sense of worth of products via live stream in a single day but two years ago his career went from a raging success to a nightmare all because he promoted an ice cream dessert that looks like a miniature tank the problematic ice cream bar appeared on his live stream one day before the anniversary of the june 4th Tiananmen massacre the date is considered a deeply sensitive red line by the chinese regime after showcasing the tank-shaped ice cream treat li jiaqi stopped live streaming for more than three months speculation roared at the time with social media posts questioning whether li's live streams were cut off by chinese internet regulators around the same time chinese authorities also issued regulations for live streamers warning them to not touch on topics considered sensitive by the chinese regime and saying that violators would face consequences like having their accounts banned or even criminal punishment the sensitive topic li may have ventured too close to the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre many westerners learned of the for decades information about it has been censored across china keywords like june 4th tank man and the Tiananmen massacre are scrubbed from the chinese web because of it much of china's younger generations likely jiaqi and his fans are completely unaware of the chinese regime's massacre and some of those young people say they'd rather remain unaware and to be honest if i wasn't studying abroad and i'm just living in china uh not knowing them wouldn't bother me and now even i know them and i realized that i couldn't have learned about these back in china it still doesn't really bother me for decades the chinese communist party has enforced strict information censorship and brainwashing education on the chinese people but in a surprising turn the apparent shutdown of his live streams over a mere dessert sparked curiosity among many young chinese they began asking questions why are tanks banned what really happened on june 4th 1989 a tank-shaped ice cream rattled china's communist leadership so much so the regime poured hundreds of millions of dollars into censoring the internet trying hard to block public access to free information but here's the question why would a regime that relies on economic growth to hold power pour so much into controlling online information the ccp hides and distorts its own history to cover up its crimes everyone knows only criminals fear exposure so the regime uses the state mechanisms to impose a high pressure policy of collective amnesia on the younger generation as a result society in general has almost no awareness of the tiananmen square massacre the topic of june 4th is essentially non-existent it's a sensitive word censored on internet and now we have ntd's laura hua with us she's been talking with young chinese people over the past couple of days laura what was your main takeaway yes i felt hope that many young chinese people are still fighting for democracy and freedom until today and there's one story i want to share with you where a smart young man told me that this is his duty that's before going to protest that sounds very inspiring let's go and listen to that now the chinese communist party as you know as what you just described is tightening its control over its own people and surprising its own people and then well in the meanwhile on the international stage china said oh we welcome western countries to do trade with china and you know welcome foreign investment foreign companies to come in china to do business so how do you see this phenomenon like what i experienced in china the chinese communist party always regard united states as an evil state and as a rival and right now i think the people of united states should wake up to say what the lies that ccp has made to the war because the ccp has just promised war that they will change the human right condition and to make the world accept ccp to trade with the west war but ccp has never changed its human right suppression to its own people and the trade with the west war is just a tool of the ccp to seize but to seize power so making money to just infiltrate like what i said to infiltrate the west war and to just subvert the west state like united states government so i believe it's a 100 hypocrisy how does the younger generation in china view the history they've inherited and their access to an open internet we must not forget history if we do future generations will have no idea what this evil regime has done the contrast between not knowing and later learning the truth was shocking for me that's why now that i'm in a land of freedom i feel the need to support those fighting for democracy 36 years later the events of that fateful day june 4th 1989 are still impacting us to this day as the u.s once again figures out next steps with china thank you for joining us for this special edition of china and focus on ntd i'm tiffany meyer