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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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It's OK guys, America isn't provoking a war or anything like that.
Just tell, has a war EVER started because America was sending troops and building military bases where they shouldn't?
There were protests, undeniable. Initially there were peaceful protests from people who had reservations about Deng's policies, that the CPC openly engaged with. Li Peng met with these protestors in April. However, the CIA saw the opportunity to forment an uprising and so pushed several student "leaders" into more aggressive actions. "Leaders" who expressed motivations such as wanting China to be controlled by the West.
Even western sources at the time, including ones such as the NYT and Reuters, said that there wasn't much happening. In the Square itself, there were no casulities. In the entirety of Beijing there were casulties among the PLA, police, and protestors alike. PLA soldiers were unarmed until they were attacked by protestors.
In the square itself the tank (which was leaving the square, not entering) stopped for the infamous tank man, who then...walked away unharmed. Do you think that would happen in many other countries? Considering we see US police charging full speed through protestors, I certainly don't.
Your are poorly mistaken. There are plenty of gorey pictures and videos of lots of dead and dying protesters in Tiennemen Square from that day. Thousands were killed according to many witnesses.
Out of curiosity, are you referring to that black and white photo of the "bodies" that gets passed around a lot? The one that is actually just a bunch of bicycles?
If you need an eyewitness account from a non-Chinese source, by all means: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html Some beatings, which obviously criticism could be levied at, by otherwise unarmed riot police, but not much more than that.
I've seen more photos somewhere, but #12 shows a students brains and a Chinese army helmet. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/g36621881/tiananmen-square-massacre-photos/
There definitely was violence on both sides, even the official counts put the casulties around 200 last I checked. Which were sadly probably preventable had the PLA been equipped with nonlethal control measures rather than...nothing.
I do credit your link as it surprisingly shows the violence both ways, a lot of modern sources like to paint it as being very one-sided. One thing I did notice even in the Esquire article you linked, they explicitly never mention Tiananmen in any of the pictures showing violence. Because, like in the account I linked, there was no violence in Tiananmen Square. Now if you said "Hey, there were outbreaks of violence around Beijing on June 4th" yes, that would be true. Even the CPC official accounts don't deny that.