Very good comment, similar to what I too have experienced.
Perhaps a better comparison to US history is the Kent State shootings, a protest in 1970 in which 4 people died at an anti-war protest. While awful, you would be hard pressed in 2009 to find an American hanging too much significance on the event; it was an isolated incident in a period of intense social change.
The situation, I think, is similar in China, whose own social upheaval is occurring at a far greater rate. It is difficult to think of any precedent, in fact, in which a country of such size and diversity has managed such a wrenching transition without a lot more bloodshed than that.
It's because of this, actually, that my position on the government there has softened, too. Chinese society sits on a powderkeg the likes of which it is difficult for westerners to understand. The govt's actions might seem heavy-handed, but their stewardship of the change process has undeniably been impressive, even exemplary.
And if you don't think the US Govt would temporarily pull the plug on a few websites in order to abate what they considered a genuine chance of widespread civil unrest, think again.
The govt's actions might seem heavy-handed, but their stewardship of the change process has undeniably been impressive, even exemplary.
I actually think the Chinese government did the right thing in Tiananmen. They had the fortitude to do what Louis the XVI and Czar Nicholas the II should have done, but did not. Americans forget that most revolutions have had horrible results. And in China in particular, the worst time periods have been times of internal chaos ( the Taiping Rebellion and the Cultural revolution). Order and security are prerequisites of liberty. The Chinese government put down the mob (a mob that did have weapons, btw), and helped ensure that the past twenty years have been the best twenty years in China in a long time.
What came to my mind (apart from the "smallpox seeding" and buffalo-killing that took down many indians) is the brutal put-down of Colorado mining strikers in the 1800s. All countries can point to such moments, I think (recent anniversary of French Communards comes to mind). The struggle towards freedom is never palatable to caring people.
Perhaps a better comparison to US history is the Kent State shootings, a protest in 1970 in which 4 people died at an anti-war protest. While awful, you would be hard pressed in 2009 to find an American hanging too much significance on the event; it was an isolated incident in a period of intense social change.
The situation, I think, is similar in China, whose own social upheaval is occurring at a far greater rate. It is difficult to think of any precedent, in fact, in which a country of such size and diversity has managed such a wrenching transition without a lot more bloodshed than that.
It's because of this, actually, that my position on the government there has softened, too. Chinese society sits on a powderkeg the likes of which it is difficult for westerners to understand. The govt's actions might seem heavy-handed, but their stewardship of the change process has undeniably been impressive, even exemplary.
And if you don't think the US Govt would temporarily pull the plug on a few websites in order to abate what they considered a genuine chance of widespread civil unrest, think again.