In 1989, blowback was swift; alienation today is ‘systematic, progressive, long-term.’

China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists sparked a seminal crisis in Beijing’s relationship with the West. On the massacre’s 35th anniversary, China’s leaders face familiar international blowback over their conduct.

Instead of gunfire, today’s sources of discomfort about China are a mix of its aggressive industrial policy and militarization toward neighbors, plus a national-security agenda from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that has curtailed personal freedoms at home and shaped affairs abroad.

  • DMBFFFEnglish
    5•7 months ago

    Presumably,

    Mao self-identified as a Communist (or something like it) and is today defended by such.

    Deng self-identified as a Communist (or something like it) and is today defended by such (at least by many Chinese).

    Palestinians, Gazans, and Jews were victims of the Crusaders.

    • @[email protected]English
      -6•7 months ago

      And the Nazis called themselves national socialists. Doesn’t mean their economic policies had anything to do with socialism (quite to the contrary).

      Advertisment labels are not what to judge these things on, but concrete policies. And those were state capitalist in China and the reason for the protests and massacre. And they continue to this day.

      • DMBFFFEnglish
        2•7 months ago

        good point.

        though I think they were a little bit more socialist in the earlier years.

        ​

        I don’t like any of them.

        ​

        might as well throw this in:

        wp:Albanian–Chinese split

        By the early 1970s, however, Albanian disagreements with certain aspects of Chinese policy deepened as the visit of Nixon to China along with the Chinese announcement of the “Three Worlds Theory” produced strong apprehension in Albania’s leadership under Enver Hoxha. Hoxha saw in these events an emerging Chinese alliance with American imperialism and abandonment of proletarian internationalism.

        ​

        The might have been the reasons, or some of the significant reasons, for the protest but I don’t think Mao would have tolerated them more than did Deng.