about the omission of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre from some BBC coverage of China’s Deng Xiaoping centenary celebrations, I had the same thought yesterday, reading an article headlined China celebrates Deng centenary.
The article does mention Tiananmen Square:
[Mr. Hu] praised Deng’s determination to maintain a tight grip on the country despite what he referred to as “political upheavals”.The BBC’s Francis Markus in Beijing says the argument used during the time of the Tiananmen protests and which is repeated often by Chinese leaders now is that the need for stability is paramount in such a vast country.
But, as you can see, only in a half-hearted way, spouting the Chinese government line, describing what is popularly known as The Tiananmen Square Massacre as the “Tiananmen protests” – with no dates, no background, no details, no mention of who was in charge at the time.
Curious. And yet another area of unbiased, impartial telly-tax funded news coverage worth our scrutiny.
The Tiananmen Square massacre took place in 1989, not 1997.
I heard a piece on Deng on the BBCWS (last Sunday’s 1200 UTC “Newshour”, if memory serves) in which one of the commentators referred to the “so-called Deng Xiaoping theory”. The interesting thing is that they had one of their laudatory pieces about Ernesto Guevara earlier in the program. Could you imagine them referring to him as a “so-called revolutionary”?
Thank you for the correction Ted – I’ve put the correct year in the article – I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I typed 1997!.
The article says up front ‘He was also the man who ultimately authorised troops to fire on democracy demonstrators in Beijing in 1989.’??
Andrew:
I think 1997 was the year of Deng’s death.
And you really should point out in the article that it was edited. You don’t want people claiming you’re engaging in stealth edits. 🙂
Ted, given that it was a typo (of sorts) rather than a major cock-up, I think that acknowledging it fully and honestly in a comment will suffice!
In total contrast, note, to the BBC approach of fully-cloaked stealth-editing – fix the errors and don’t even acknowledge that anything’s changed, let alone admitting what it was that changed.
THFC – assuming that line was there all along, you must admit it’s somewhat insipid as an acknowledgment of Deng’s role in the Tiananmen Massacre – Deng was *the* man – the buck stopped with him. As it is, the line you mention doesn’t make the link to Tiananmen explicit – shooting at democracy demonstrators isn’t quite the same as describing a wholesale rout of a mass demonstration with tanks and soldiers.
The story is incomplete. It lacks the all-important “Bush was ultimately responsible for the massacre” meme.
Sure the mention was pretty tepid, but the article as a whole doesn’t dwell in depth on any single issue. I found it interesting as a snapsot of what’s happening in China at the moment and as an inspiration for further reading on Deng’s rule, which as I’m sure you’ll appreciate encompassed a hell of a lot more than Tiananmen Square (horrific though it was).
There’s always a danger in Western media coverage of non Western affairs of focussing on single, highly visible incidents at the expense of the bigger picture and in that context I thought the report and supporting links were pretty good.