Chinese Democracy Movement - History

History

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The origin of the Chinese movement started in 1978, when the brief liberalization known as Beijing Spring occurred after the Cultural Revolution. The founding document of the movement is considered to be the manifesto Fifth Modernization by Wei Jingsheng, who was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for authoring the document. In it, Wei argued that political liberalization and the empowering of the laboring masses was essential for modernization, that the Communist Party was controlled by reactionaries, and that the people must struggle to overthrow the reactionaries via a long and possibly bloody fight.

Throughout the 1980s, these ideas increased in popularity among college educated Chinese. In response to the growing corruption, the economic dislocation, and the sense that reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were leaving China behind, the Tienanmen Square protests erupted in 1989. These protests were put down by government troops on June 4, 1989. In response, a number of pro-democracy organizations were formed by overseas Chinese student activists, and there was considerable sympathy for the movement among Westerners, who formed the China Support Network (CAN).

While the CSN was initially a go-to organization for U.S. mainstream news media (MSM) to cite, CSN and MSM parted company in a dispute over the casualty count from the June 4 massacre. MSM originally reported 3,000 dead. On June 22, 1989, Agence France Press referred to "the Chinese army's assault on the demonstrators in and around Beijing's Tienanmen Square, an operation in which U.S. intelligence sources estimated 3,000 people were killed. That casualty count, originally reported as above, was subsequently changed by the news media. CAN reported that it was the interest of China's propaganda minister to reduce the casualty count by an order of magnitude, resulting in later reports that "hundreds" were killed at Tienanmen Square. In November, 1989 CSN editor James W. Hawkins MD wrote, "It appears as if Mr. Yuan Mu has gotten his way and when we read reports on the AP wire we are told exactly what Mr. Mu wants us to read."

The rift between CSN and MSM plays into the history of the movement. The principle of estoppel was violated by the MSM, which changed its story. Meanwhile, the CSN held its estimate steady at 3,000, not violating estoppel and maintaining the credibility of consistency. In January, 2005 upon the death of ousted Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang, CSN raised its estimate to 3,001 dead in the Tiananmen crackdown. CSN proceeded to be critical of the MSM, and MSM proceeded to minimize, downplay, ignore, or underreport movement news and China's human rights abuse.Template:PROV-statement