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The Massacre at Tiananmen Square · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's your pals, Josh and Chuck, and we
0:03
Speaker 1: wanted to record an intro to this episode because, um,
0:06
Speaker 1: when we first recorded it and got it ready to
0:09
Speaker 1: publish and edit, um, things were a lot different in
0:12
Speaker 1: America because that was like a week ago. Yeah, exactly,
0:16
Speaker 1: And I think the events of the past week or
0:20
Speaker 1: two have taught us that something like this podcast episode
0:23
Speaker 1: is more relevant than ever and it just kind of
0:25
Speaker 1: worked out that way. Yeah, And we also wanted to
0:28
Speaker 1: say that we grieved the death of George Floyd and
0:32
Speaker 1: everybody who's ever died unfairly at the hands of the police,
0:35
Speaker 1: and we stand with Black Lives Matter and anyone who's
0:38
Speaker 1: fighting for justice in the United States. Absolutely. So when
0:42
Speaker 1: you hear this episode on Tienamen Square and think, well,
0:45
Speaker 1: that could never happen much less in the United States,
0:48
Speaker 1: be careful because that's the kind of dangerous thinking that
0:51
Speaker 1: you can get us all in trouble. And on with
0:54
Speaker 1: the show. Welcome to Stuff. You should know a production
0:59
Speaker 1: of I heart ratings as how stuff works. Hey, and
1:07
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles
1:10
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryan over there. Uh, and it's just the
1:13
Speaker 1: two of us, Chuck and I decided we can make
1:16
Speaker 1: it if we try just the two of us. Chuckers
1:20
Speaker 1: and I. How long did you plan that, buddy? It
1:25
Speaker 1: just came pouring right out of my brain through my
1:28
Speaker 1: mouth and just lay indo with a thud on the desk. Yeah,
1:33
Speaker 1: r I p to the great Bill Withers. Oh. I
1:37
Speaker 1: was thinking more, um Austin Powers. M hmm, yeah, alright,
1:45
Speaker 1: what Austin Powers? He died a long time ago, right,
1:50
Speaker 1: You got me there for a second, Yes, you did.
1:53
Speaker 1: Mike Myers had passed. I thought Mike Myers had passed,
1:55
Speaker 1: and then I was like, wait to Dr Evil died?
1:57
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, Dr Evil's not real. It was
2:00
Speaker 1: really confusing for a second there. Man. So I last
2:06
Speaker 1: night did one of the things that I loved doing
2:09
Speaker 1: as part of our work, Chuck, which is watched a
2:11
Speaker 1: really great documentary, paid for it, but you love that
2:16
Speaker 1: great There's a really good documentary by Frontline PBS show
2:22
Speaker 1: about tank Man, which you probably girl. Tank Man totally
2:27
Speaker 1: different kind of thing. This is not Lori Petty. This
2:31
Speaker 1: is an unknown person who no one, as far as
2:34
Speaker 1: anyone knows, knows their name. But even if you're familiar
2:38
Speaker 1: with tank Man, just the name. You've probably if you
2:42
Speaker 1: live outside of China, seen this picture. It's a picture
2:45
Speaker 1: of just as a lone man um wearing a white
2:49
Speaker 1: kind of dress shirt and black pants, holding a couple
2:52
Speaker 1: of shopping bags to the side, staring down a column
2:56
Speaker 1: of heavy tanks that he has stopped single handedly just
3:00
Speaker 1: by standing in front of him. Yeah. I mean it's
3:03
Speaker 1: one of those uh, indelible images that if you were
3:07
Speaker 1: you know, it still resonates obviously, but if you were, um,
3:10
Speaker 1: you know, cognizant of the news in nine then you
3:15
Speaker 1: could not escape this image or forget it. Yeah, And
3:18
Speaker 1: I mean what you were close to around eighteen or so,
3:22
Speaker 1: so I'm sure this really had a big impact on you.
3:24
Speaker 1: And it was going on right yeah, I mean just
3:27
Speaker 1: just had graduated high school, so like this must have
3:31
Speaker 1: really kind of raised the hackles on the back of
3:33
Speaker 1: your neck and gotten you pretty worked up like the
3:35
Speaker 1: rest of the world, I would guess. Yeah, I remember
3:37
Speaker 1: it being kind of one of the first big political
3:40
Speaker 1: events that uh got my head out of my butt. Yeah,
3:45
Speaker 1: it did that for a lot of people too. I mean,
3:47
Speaker 1: like what happened that that day or those days like
3:50
Speaker 1: think June three and fourth of nine, the communist regime
3:56
Speaker 1: that had a iron grip on the country and still
4:00
Speaker 1: does today, maybe even more so today, Um almost fell.
4:04
Speaker 1: It was almost toppled by popular uprising, and to stamp
4:09
Speaker 1: it out, the government went to the most extreme measures possible,
4:12
Speaker 1: which was commanding the army to murder citizens. Unarmed, peacefully
4:19
Speaker 1: protesting citizens were gunned down in the streets like like
4:24
Speaker 1: like they were enemy combatants, basically in the in the
4:28
Speaker 1: their own city in Beijing, And it was just a
4:30
Speaker 1: horrific thing that managed to kind of trickle out and
4:33
Speaker 1: definitely captured the world's attention, pulled the world's head out
4:36
Speaker 1: of its butt, as you would say. Yeah, so you know,
4:40
Speaker 1: to tell the story, we need to go back in
4:43
Speaker 1: time a little bit. And big thanks to our pal
4:46
Speaker 1: Dave Ruse for helping us out with this one. This
4:48
Speaker 1: is very good. In fact, it was on a different
4:52
Speaker 1: laptop and I kind of forgot it was sitting in
4:54
Speaker 1: my folder when I it has been there for like
4:56
Speaker 1: a month or so, right, yeah, it's been there a while,
4:59
Speaker 1: And then I saw it. I was like, oh wait
5:00
Speaker 1: a minute, we got tenement square on the burner. So yeah,
5:04
Speaker 1: they did a great job. And we have to travel
5:05
Speaker 1: back in time to uh, previous to nineteen nine, when
5:11
Speaker 1: the sort of feeling among students in China was that,
5:16
Speaker 1: you know what, this communism isn't working out so great,
5:20
Speaker 1: and we want to start making a little bit of noise.
5:23
Speaker 1: And we're not saying to topple our government or anything
5:26
Speaker 1: like that, but we're saying, um, let's get the corruption
5:29
Speaker 1: in check, and let's maybe um get some free speech
5:33
Speaker 1: going on and see some free press and free expression.
5:36
Speaker 1: And they thought they could get there. Uh, they thought
5:40
Speaker 1: they could get there, which is what makes this really
5:42
Speaker 1: really sad, among many other things. Yeah, and then even
5:46
Speaker 1: sider than that to me is they almost got there,
5:49
Speaker 1: you know, like this was I mean, this was close.
5:52
Speaker 1: This is like a hair's breadth away. Where they brought
5:55
Speaker 1: this so so much to the government store step and
5:58
Speaker 1: laid this at their feet that the government had to
6:01
Speaker 1: at least consider, if not openly to one another, at
6:05
Speaker 1: least you know, to themselves, like do we just bow
6:08
Speaker 1: to the will of the people and just say, okay,
6:10
Speaker 1: we're gonna do things differently. Like it was a big,
6:13
Speaker 1: big deal. It was a big deal, and um, I
6:17
Speaker 1: guess preemptively, we should say we're going to do our
6:20
Speaker 1: best with with some of the pronunciations of the names. Uh,
6:25
Speaker 1: they are tough and well as usual, we'll do our
6:28
Speaker 1: best and probably failed and stop short of being perfect.
6:31
Speaker 1: I think we we learned our lesson on the underground city.
6:34
Speaker 1: At least, we're not going to pronounce X like X right. Right.
6:39
Speaker 1: So the students had a little bit of wind in
6:41
Speaker 1: their sales because their college students, and that's what college
6:45
Speaker 1: students are like, that's why we love them. And they
6:48
Speaker 1: thought they had um an Ally who was a pro
6:52
Speaker 1: reform leader and pretty high up in the Communist party
6:55
Speaker 1: and hugh yao bang sounds are about right, okay. Uh.
7:00
Speaker 1: He was forced out of power in eighty seven, though,
7:02
Speaker 1: and when he died in April April fifteenth, nineteen nine,
7:07
Speaker 1: the memorializing in the morning of his death is what
7:12
Speaker 1: really kind of kick started this whole process that led
7:15
Speaker 1: up to June three. Yeah, and in the late eighties,
7:18
Speaker 1: what you call the president of China was named Dan
7:22
Speaker 1: Jao Ping, and he was he had been in charge
7:25
Speaker 1: for a while. But in addition to the president in
7:28
Speaker 1: a communist country, you also have the leaders of the
7:30
Speaker 1: Communist Party. They're not exactly like lateral, but they're pretty
7:34
Speaker 1: high up. You have like a prime minister, you have
7:36
Speaker 1: the leader of the party, the general secretary. Then you
7:38
Speaker 1: also have the president of the country, and Um Dang
7:41
Speaker 1: was the President of China at the time. But there
7:46
Speaker 1: within the party and within the leadership of the country,
7:50
Speaker 1: including Hugh and he was kind of the face of
7:52
Speaker 1: this movement, there was this idea that, Okay, the Maoist
7:56
Speaker 1: Revolution happened. Mao was great, but we we can't run
8:01
Speaker 1: a country just living by these kind of lofty principles
8:05
Speaker 1: that Mao espoused. We need to kind of get a
8:08
Speaker 1: little more loose gripped here, at least economically um And
8:13
Speaker 1: there was a whole contingent, led again by Hugh that
8:17
Speaker 1: that basically said, maybe we should kind of ease up
8:20
Speaker 1: on the government planning a little bit and let a
8:23
Speaker 1: little bit of free market go and see what happens.
8:25
Speaker 1: We really think that, like there's gonna be a lot
8:27
Speaker 1: less starvation, a lot less poverty if we just led
8:31
Speaker 1: a little bit of this stuff into there. So there
8:33
Speaker 1: was this kind of progressive movement. But then when Hugh
8:36
Speaker 1: when this when these protests kind of started in. They
8:40
Speaker 1: basically showed Hugh the door, like you were saying he was.
8:43
Speaker 1: He was removed from office because he had kind of
8:47
Speaker 1: demonstrated that that level of like loosening of the grip
8:52
Speaker 1: on the people would lead to things like protests and demonstrations.
8:56
Speaker 1: But it was too late. They had opened the door
8:58
Speaker 1: now and then, like you said, when he died, that
9:01
Speaker 1: was that was kind of the the lip match that
9:04
Speaker 1: got thrown onto this powder keg. And I take it
9:08
Speaker 1: you're on a first name basis now because it's easier
9:10
Speaker 1: to pronounce Hugh. Hugh was actually his last name. In China,
9:13
Speaker 1: they say last name first. Yes. So I'm doing I'm
9:17
Speaker 1: having my um my dumpling and eating it too. Oh man,
9:21
Speaker 1: that's the best way to have a dumpling. So uh
9:25
Speaker 1: and I learned something new today too, thanks Chuck. That's
9:28
Speaker 1: basically why I wake up in the morning. Uh So,
9:34
Speaker 1: what happened is uh, you know, he died on ape.
9:37
Speaker 1: Bunch of students, like thousands of students got together in
9:41
Speaker 1: Tianamen Square to mourn his passing. And Tianamen Square, we
9:46
Speaker 1: should say, is it's an enormous place. It's the largest
9:49
Speaker 1: public space in the world. Right in the middle of Beijing. Uh,
9:53
Speaker 1: it is just it's the town center, unlike any town
9:57
Speaker 1: center in the world. Yeah, there's like no trees any where.
10:00
Speaker 1: It's just flat and then edged by enormous public buildings.
10:04
Speaker 1: It makes you feel very small. Yeah, and it's also
10:08
Speaker 1: a perfect place to get like thousands and thousands and
10:11
Speaker 1: thousands of people together. And this is what happened during
10:14
Speaker 1: the funeral celebration in Tianamen Square. And it didn't go
10:18
Speaker 1: on for too long before students started to sort of
10:22
Speaker 1: use this as an opportunity to not only mourn someone
10:24
Speaker 1: that they believed was going to champion their cause, but
10:29
Speaker 1: they said, we can use this now and let's just
10:32
Speaker 1: let's just camp out un let's hold some speeches, and
10:35
Speaker 1: let's sort of start giving our demands for a political reform,
10:40
Speaker 1: like throwing peace signs and just basically peaceful protests that
10:44
Speaker 1: you would imagine students from. And most of them came
10:48
Speaker 1: from Beijing University, which from what I understand, is the
10:51
Speaker 1: the premier elite university in the entire country. So these
10:56
Speaker 1: were like the children of the elites, as it were.
11:00
Speaker 1: There's definitely a measure of tolerance of this going on
11:04
Speaker 1: whereas had it been you know, just a popular uprising
11:08
Speaker 1: or popular protests from the start, they probably would have
11:11
Speaker 1: been treated a lot more roughly, and it certainly would
11:14
Speaker 1: not have been allowed to have go on as long
11:16
Speaker 1: as it had. Yeah, and you know, it's interesting you
11:19
Speaker 1: mentioned the um the sort of split and ideologies within
11:24
Speaker 1: the party, which is really interesting to think about now. Um,
11:28
Speaker 1: but they were split about what to do about these demonstrations. Um.
11:32
Speaker 1: This was the biggest civil protests, longest running since communism
11:37
Speaker 1: had taken hold in ninety nine. And there were some
11:41
Speaker 1: people it wasn't just like all right, let's go in
11:43
Speaker 1: there and mow him down. There was a complete faction
11:47
Speaker 1: within the party that was like, you know what, Um,
11:50
Speaker 1: these are students and they want what's best for us,
11:53
Speaker 1: and maybe we should listen to them a little bit. Yeah,
11:55
Speaker 1: because it's like you said, they were saying down with communism,
11:58
Speaker 1: down with the China Any's Communist Party. They were they
12:02
Speaker 1: were saying, like down with corruption, and you know, we
12:05
Speaker 1: wanna we want a little more free speech, like some
12:08
Speaker 1: really basic stuff that didn't require the entire system to
12:12
Speaker 1: be overthrown, which was I think another reason why they
12:14
Speaker 1: were kind of allowed to continue. And then yeah, like
12:17
Speaker 1: you're saying, there were sympathetic members of the Communist Party,
12:22
Speaker 1: high up in the party who were like, no, no,
12:24
Speaker 1: we should just you know, maybe hear him out or
12:27
Speaker 1: just let it this thing fizzle out. But then on
12:29
Speaker 1: the other side was a guy named Lee Ping, and
12:32
Speaker 1: he was the he was the antagonist in this whole thing.
12:36
Speaker 1: Most people paying him as the villain um, but I
12:39
Speaker 1: read an article about how he's actually the fall guy,
12:43
Speaker 1: that it was really Dang Jao Ping who was the president,
12:46
Speaker 1: who was the true architect of all of this, and
12:49
Speaker 1: that Lee Ping, while he gets all of the um
12:52
Speaker 1: notorious credit, yeah for this whole thing, he he he didn't.
12:59
Speaker 1: He didn't. He wasn't the architect of it. But he
13:02
Speaker 1: also didn't stop his boss, um Danjo Ping, from from
13:07
Speaker 1: carrying this out or from being the architect of it too.
13:10
Speaker 1: So it's not like he was a good guy. He
13:12
Speaker 1: was easy to hate, I think from what I read,
13:15
Speaker 1: and it made him an easy target of the protests
13:18
Speaker 1: and then the aftermath as well. Yeah, and I think
13:21
Speaker 1: it's you know, I think people it's easy to paint
13:24
Speaker 1: a good guy and a bad guy in a situation
13:26
Speaker 1: like this, and he was painted definitely is the bad guy.
13:29
Speaker 1: And again we're not saying that he was some awesome person.
13:32
Speaker 1: But on the other side was the Communist Party General
13:36
Speaker 1: secretary and his name was Zal's Yang and he was
13:40
Speaker 1: the one that was, you know, more sympathetic to the
13:43
Speaker 1: cause basically, Yeah, and so he was kind of holding
13:47
Speaker 1: back Danjo Ping's um worst impulses and saying like, no,
13:52
Speaker 1: we just need to kind of like approach this peacefully
13:55
Speaker 1: or whatever. And he got removed to Um, which I
13:59
Speaker 1: really think kind of highlights just how uh how much
14:04
Speaker 1: crossing or opposing Dang Jo Ping where it would get
14:07
Speaker 1: you get your removed at best. And actually jaos Yang
14:12
Speaker 1: he Um spent when he was removed from office, he
14:14
Speaker 1: spent the rest of his life under house arrest, because
14:17
Speaker 1: I mean that's what happens when you are removed from office.
14:21
Speaker 1: There they just say go home and don't leave again
14:24
Speaker 1: here under political quarantine. Yeah. So, you know, they had
14:29
Speaker 1: seen this happening all around them. The Soviet Union was crumbling. Um,
14:34
Speaker 1: they saw countries, communist countries, people just like these students
14:38
Speaker 1: kind of rising up and saying that they've had enough.
14:41
Speaker 1: So they were nervous and when zalox Yang went on,
14:45
Speaker 1: he went out of town, basically went on to Korea
14:48
Speaker 1: on a state visit. This is when Lee Ping said,
14:51
Speaker 1: all right, now is our time. This guy's out of
14:53
Speaker 1: the country, and he's like, basically, we can we can
14:59
Speaker 1: start the the first piece to toppling these students. And
15:03
Speaker 1: it wasn't initially a violent piece. It was an ad.
15:06
Speaker 1: It was in April. It was an ad in the
15:09
Speaker 1: People's Daily, the state newspaper, and it was an editorial
15:12
Speaker 1: basically that just denounced the demonstrations. And that was their
15:17
Speaker 1: first sort of shot fired. Was your friend is out
15:22
Speaker 1: of town. Well they didn't say that, but because he
15:25
Speaker 1: was out of town, they said, we're going to run
15:27
Speaker 1: an editorial denouncing this. Yeah, And they basically said, look,
15:30
Speaker 1: these students are being misguided. That the whole thing started
15:34
Speaker 1: earnestly as a memorial for UH, for Hugh Um, but
15:40
Speaker 1: that that it had been taken advantage of by probably
15:44
Speaker 1: outside agitators, maybe even like plants from other governments, who
15:49
Speaker 1: were fomenting like a popular uprising out of this um
15:53
Speaker 1: genuine you know, sorrow for this guy who was you know,
15:56
Speaker 1: a real real advocate for them Um. But regardless of
16:01
Speaker 1: how it started or what's going on. We can't we
16:04
Speaker 1: can't abide this any longer. And if we do, there's
16:06
Speaker 1: going to be I think they put it, will never
16:08
Speaker 1: have another day's piece unless we act. Um. They didn't
16:12
Speaker 1: say brutally resolutely. Unless it's checked resolutely, they said, which
16:17
Speaker 1: is then in the margin it said, see brutally right exactly. Yeah,
16:21
Speaker 1: I mean like that's not checked resolutely? Is against a
16:25
Speaker 1: popular protest? Is this menacing stuff? Should we take a break?
16:31
Speaker 1: More menacing stuff? All right, we'll take a break and
16:35
Speaker 1: we'll come back and talk about the effect that this
16:37
Speaker 1: editorial had right after this stop No, alrighty, So they
17:03
Speaker 1: ran this editorial. They said that the uh, they would
17:07
Speaker 1: be checked resolutely if they didn't disperse, and they thought
17:11
Speaker 1: that that would do the job basically, But all that
17:15
Speaker 1: that had the complete opposite effect. Like literally overnight, people
17:20
Speaker 1: all over China, four hundred cities across China had people
17:24
Speaker 1: coming out and protesting because they were invigored by these
17:28
Speaker 1: students and what they saw going on in Beijing. And
17:31
Speaker 1: I think it says Dave had an estimate here of
17:34
Speaker 1: one inten citizens took to the streets and these were
17:37
Speaker 1: people of all social strata, all walks of life in China. Yeah, yeah,
17:42
Speaker 1: one intend in Beijing, but then tends to hundreds of
17:46
Speaker 1: millions of protesters all pouring out into the streets and
17:49
Speaker 1: cities across China, like they had a huge problem overnight
17:54
Speaker 1: on their hands. Like they they people were like that
17:57
Speaker 1: was the that was that editorial was the exact wrong move. Move. Yeah,
18:01
Speaker 1: it was the wrong move. And uh, things just kind
18:05
Speaker 1: of went on this way for a little while until
18:08
Speaker 1: I think about in mid May when Gorba Chef was
18:11
Speaker 1: coming to visit in China. So they said, this is
18:14
Speaker 1: the perfect chance, let's stage a hunger strike and Tienamen Square.
18:18
Speaker 1: And this was not a good look for the Chinese
18:20
Speaker 1: Communist Party. They were not happy that this is going on.
18:23
Speaker 1: What Gorba Cheff was going to pay the visit, Yeah,
18:26
Speaker 1: because I mean, you wanted to impress Goreby. He was
18:28
Speaker 1: probably the most popular guy in the world. Right then
18:31
Speaker 1: in nine Um, yeah, they lost face and it was
18:36
Speaker 1: it was a pretty well done move on the part
18:40
Speaker 1: of the students who carried out the hunger strike. Um,
18:43
Speaker 1: but that that editorial that kicked all this off, that
18:47
Speaker 1: really kind of changed things. There was a huge turn.
18:51
Speaker 1: There was a sea change in the entire thing when
18:54
Speaker 1: regular people started taking up this protest, because it started
18:58
Speaker 1: out as a student protest and now all of a
19:00
Speaker 1: sudden it was an everyday Chinese person protest um, and
19:05
Speaker 1: that apparently changed the entire attitude of the government towards
19:09
Speaker 1: this whole thing that was no longer paternal and kind
19:12
Speaker 1: of head patty and um uh patient. It was like,
19:16
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I saw in this front line documentary
19:19
Speaker 1: that somebody said it was like, the workers are the
19:21
Speaker 1: ones who who put the Chinese Communist Party in power,
19:25
Speaker 1: and now it suddenly looked like the workers were about
19:27
Speaker 1: to take the power away from them. And this scared
19:30
Speaker 1: the bid Jesus out of out of them because again
19:32
Speaker 1: this is a very um. They had an iron stranglehold
19:36
Speaker 1: over their population, and they were also there's a lot
19:39
Speaker 1: of corruption in the government too, so the the whole
19:42
Speaker 1: idea of being removed from power had a lot more
19:45
Speaker 1: at stake than just you know, losing power. Like there
19:49
Speaker 1: there was they these people that had done quite a
19:51
Speaker 1: bit that they might have to answer for after they
19:54
Speaker 1: lost power. You know, oh yeah, big time. They were.
19:57
Speaker 1: They were officially worried at this point, um, he still
20:01
Speaker 1: had Zo calling for cooler heads to prevail here. Um.
20:06
Speaker 1: But and this is before his removal, just before but
20:09
Speaker 1: Leeping said, you know what, the only way to take
20:12
Speaker 1: care of this is by kind of cracking the whip
20:16
Speaker 1: in a hard, hard way. Um, martial law should be imposed.
20:20
Speaker 1: Students heard about this, and this is when the big,
20:23
Speaker 1: big protest at Tenement Square. I think they estimated like
20:27
Speaker 1: over a million people, one point two million people, um, students.
20:32
Speaker 1: There were police involved, there were some military that we're protesting,
20:36
Speaker 1: and this is when everything really started to gain some momentum. Um.
20:40
Speaker 1: And you know what students thought was the right direction,
20:43
Speaker 1: but it turns out was a bad move. Probably yeah,
20:47
Speaker 1: I mean in high you can never yeah sure, yeah, yeah,
20:51
Speaker 1: I mean like like yeah now. But at the time,
20:53
Speaker 1: it was like, okay, we're gonna go to the mattresses
20:57
Speaker 1: rather than backing down. And they said, okay, we're gonna
21:00
Speaker 1: escalate on our end as well. If they're gonna amass
21:02
Speaker 1: troops and invade Beijing, which is what they did, we're
21:05
Speaker 1: gonna meet them and try to drive them out. And
21:08
Speaker 1: at first it actually worked. There was a a first
21:11
Speaker 1: incursion into Beijing of about three hundred thousand Chinese soldiers.
21:17
Speaker 1: The Chinese military showed up in Beijing and tanks, armored
21:21
Speaker 1: personnel carriers, troop transport trucks, the whole shebang. The imagine
21:27
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand soldiers showing up in Atlanta and just
21:31
Speaker 1: basically being like, everybody needs to go home. The thing is,
21:35
Speaker 1: everybod go home. This first probably this first um, this
21:39
Speaker 1: first incursion I guess into Beijing, UM didn't actually make
21:43
Speaker 1: it to the city center because the people in the suburbs,
21:46
Speaker 1: uh came out and swamped these army convoys and prevented
21:50
Speaker 1: them from moving forward and actually kept them there and
21:53
Speaker 1: gridlock of a sea of humanity for about four days.
21:57
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, I mean it was a it was
22:00
Speaker 1: a huge victory. Kind of right off the bat. They
22:02
Speaker 1: had UM you know, they they went after these personnel
22:06
Speaker 1: carriers and these tanks. They had children, they had older adults,
22:11
Speaker 1: they had They basically kind of paralyzed what they were
22:13
Speaker 1: trying to do and then decided to do a very
22:17
Speaker 1: kind of brilliant thing, which was appeal to the good
22:21
Speaker 1: nature of these soldiers as human beings. UM. I saw
22:25
Speaker 1: one article that that kind of guess that about six
22:30
Speaker 1: of the p l A soldiers were illiterate. Um, they
22:35
Speaker 1: were uneducated. They were from out in the country, and
22:39
Speaker 1: these Beijing city folks would approach them and they would
22:42
Speaker 1: bring them food, and they would bring them things to drink,
22:44
Speaker 1: and they would send their children out to talk to
22:46
Speaker 1: them and say things like, you know, you should be
22:49
Speaker 1: defending us, you shouldn't be attacking us, you should join us,
22:52
Speaker 1: And some of them did. Some of those soldiers stepped
22:55
Speaker 1: down and kind of quit on the spot, knowing full
22:59
Speaker 1: well that that not end well for them, And the
23:02
Speaker 1: majority of them obviously didn't right right, But even you know,
23:06
Speaker 1: even if they didn't step down and and quit, some
23:10
Speaker 1: of them did step down and mingle and talk. And
23:13
Speaker 1: I saw footage of them when they finally left on
23:15
Speaker 1: the fourth day, they turned around and retreated away from Beijing.
23:20
Speaker 1: You know, a good third or half of the troops
23:23
Speaker 1: on these trucks that were driving away were waving to
23:27
Speaker 1: the to the people of Beijing who'd just been who
23:29
Speaker 1: just spent the last four days like feeding them and
23:32
Speaker 1: talking to them and basically trying to change their minds
23:35
Speaker 1: about this. Because I don't know if we made it
23:38
Speaker 1: we made it clear when the people from the Beijing
23:41
Speaker 1: suburbs swamped these trucks. This is a big non violent
23:45
Speaker 1: form of resistance. It wasn't violent, it was it was
23:48
Speaker 1: a charm offensive. It was just straight up non violent resistance.
23:53
Speaker 1: And it worked, like it totally worked. On the one hand,
23:56
Speaker 1: it worked because the Chinese government hadn't given them orders
24:00
Speaker 1: to fire on anybody, and probably gave them orders not
24:04
Speaker 1: to carry out any violence against the people. Um and
24:07
Speaker 1: that that's really why it actually ultimately worked. Because if
24:12
Speaker 1: if you're being met with that kind of resistance and
24:14
Speaker 1: you can't meet that resistance with violence, it's not like
24:17
Speaker 1: the soldiers We're gonna explain their position or the government's
24:22
Speaker 1: position to the Beijing residents and change their minds. There's
24:25
Speaker 1: nothing they could do but just sit there and then
24:26
Speaker 1: finally turn around and leave. And so at first, the uh,
24:30
Speaker 1: the residents of Beijing were kind of chugh with themselves,
24:33
Speaker 1: you know, like like that really worked. This non violent
24:36
Speaker 1: resistance turned back three hundred thousand troops from China's equivalent
24:40
Speaker 1: of Arkansas who just showed up in China's equivalent of
24:44
Speaker 1: New York and um and and kept them from invading. Basically, yeah,
24:51
Speaker 1: so the government sees this happen, and they they're on
24:56
Speaker 1: full uh, they're on high alert now. They're fully worried,
25:00
Speaker 1: and they see the riding on the wall that this
25:02
Speaker 1: could be the end of the Communist Party as we
25:04
Speaker 1: know it if we don't squash this thing once and
25:08
Speaker 1: for all. And so they said, all right, here's what
25:11
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. Let's send the army in again, just
25:14
Speaker 1: like we did the first time, except now you're going
25:17
Speaker 1: to get to Tienamen Square and squash this uprising. If
25:21
Speaker 1: they come out and meet you in the suburbs, um
25:24
Speaker 1: take care of things. However, you need to to get
25:27
Speaker 1: to Tienamen Square, like full authorization to use deadly force. Yeah,
25:32
Speaker 1: and I saw again on that documentary they were saying
25:35
Speaker 1: like they were given guns and ammunition, and the ammunition
25:38
Speaker 1: they were given were um, thumb sized bullets. The kind
25:42
Speaker 1: of bullets that um from what I could tell, they
25:46
Speaker 1: were um what's that kind that like turned into like
25:49
Speaker 1: like circular saws inside people. What's it called? It's like
25:52
Speaker 1: a really common word. Everybody knows all the point. I
25:56
Speaker 1: think anyway, they they were meant for like combat. The
26:01
Speaker 1: bullets they're using, these weren't rubber bullets. They weren't even
26:03
Speaker 1: regular bullets. They were like combat grade bullets that these
26:06
Speaker 1: the troops were given and you have to you have
26:09
Speaker 1: to remember to chuck. By this time, there's nobody now
26:12
Speaker 1: because Zoo has been removed. Um, there's nobody arguing against
26:17
Speaker 1: this impulse, at least not openly, and so this impulse
26:22
Speaker 1: is allowed to go and check. Nobody stopped and said, well,
26:24
Speaker 1: wait a minute, wait a minute, this is crazy. We're
26:27
Speaker 1: talking about going in and slaughtering our own people. Um,
26:30
Speaker 1: we have to find another way. Nobody was saying that,
26:33
Speaker 1: and in fact, Lee Lee Paying was at the very
26:36
Speaker 1: least keeping his mouth shut, if not supporting this whole
26:39
Speaker 1: thing as well. Yeah, so you know, the students get
26:43
Speaker 1: word that this is what's coming, basically a second wave.
26:46
Speaker 1: They were victorious in that first wave. So they were,
26:49
Speaker 1: like you said, they were checked. They were probably like,
26:51
Speaker 1: all right, bring it on, Well let's do the let's
26:53
Speaker 1: do the same thing again. We're going to charm you again. Yeah,
26:57
Speaker 1: pretty much. And they did the same thing. They had
26:59
Speaker 1: these they improvised these barricades at the entrance points. They
27:02
Speaker 1: blocked off roads with people with busses uh tired like
27:07
Speaker 1: stacks of tires and stuff. And on June third, the
27:11
Speaker 1: night of June three, the tanks roll in, the personnel
27:15
Speaker 1: vehicles roll in. By this time, there are some rocks
27:18
Speaker 1: being thrown and some Molotov cocktails and stuff like that,
27:22
Speaker 1: and things start to get a little unruly, and the
27:25
Speaker 1: p l A just charged through and at nine pm
27:30
Speaker 1: the first shots rang out, and it was very clear,
27:33
Speaker 1: very quickly that they were just gonna mow people down. Yeah,
27:38
Speaker 1: but apparently even though it was clear to some people,
27:41
Speaker 1: to other people it was so surprising and just so
27:45
Speaker 1: utterly unbelievable that it took way too long for it
27:49
Speaker 1: to sink in what was going on. I'm sure everybody
27:52
Speaker 1: was shocked. Yeah, So some people, i think, just started
27:55
Speaker 1: running when they saw people falling and bodies starting to
27:57
Speaker 1: pile up, But other people were still, you know, throwing rocks,
28:01
Speaker 1: and it hadn't really sunk in yet. And then ultimately,
28:04
Speaker 1: eventually everybody got it and they started to turn and run.
28:07
Speaker 1: And then as they would turn and run, the government
28:11
Speaker 1: there the soldiers would fire into their backs, keep firing
28:13
Speaker 1: into crowds that are running away. Unarmed crowds maybe have rocks,
28:17
Speaker 1: maybe a molotov cocktails, set a bus on fire. But
28:20
Speaker 1: they don't have guns. They don't have machine guns. I
28:22
Speaker 1: was looking and apparently chuck, China has one of the
28:25
Speaker 1: strictest gun policies, um in the world. Like, if you're
28:30
Speaker 1: just an average Chinese person, you are not armed. You
28:33
Speaker 1: could get a gun if you apply for one and
28:36
Speaker 1: the government gives it to you, if you have like
28:38
Speaker 1: a real need for it, like maybe there's bears that
28:40
Speaker 1: live around your house that keep killing your livestock or something.
28:44
Speaker 1: But if you live in Beijing, you don't have a gun.
28:46
Speaker 1: And it makes me wonder like would this have erupted
28:50
Speaker 1: into civil war if Beijing was armed, you know, um?
28:55
Speaker 1: Or would it have been even worse? You know? Would
28:57
Speaker 1: they have fought back a lot more if they had
28:59
Speaker 1: had guns? Who knows. But the fact of the matters
29:03
Speaker 1: these people did not have guns, and they were shot
29:05
Speaker 1: in the back running away by government troops from their
29:09
Speaker 1: own government, from their own country. And this is just
29:12
Speaker 1: the first time this happened. This was in an isolated incident. Yeah,
29:16
Speaker 1: so I read this article. UM. I think about three
29:20
Speaker 1: years ago there was a sort of first hand account
29:24
Speaker 1: from a writer from England named Sir Alan Donald, and
29:27
Speaker 1: it was declassified three years ago. He wrote this account
29:30
Speaker 1: on June five, so you know, we'll we'll finish up
29:34
Speaker 1: on what happened June three and fourth. But it was
29:36
Speaker 1: a very fresh account of what happened. He was over there,
29:40
Speaker 1: and he got his information from a source who had
29:43
Speaker 1: spoken to a very close friend in China State Council
29:46
Speaker 1: who apparently previously had always proved very reliable, very even handed,
29:52
Speaker 1: um and very factual. And the things that he would, uh,
29:55
Speaker 1: I guess leak um out to his friend, and the
29:59
Speaker 1: account of what happened is just like mind boggling that
30:05
Speaker 1: they were there were snipers shooting people in on their
30:08
Speaker 1: balconies that weren't even not down on the street protesting um.
30:13
Speaker 1: They said that there were snipers using street cleaners and
30:15
Speaker 1: things just sort of a target practice. Uh. They were
30:19
Speaker 1: young women who were begging for their life that were
30:21
Speaker 1: bayonetted through the chest. There was one account of a
30:24
Speaker 1: three year old that was wounded and the mom was
30:27
Speaker 1: racing to try and help it and they mowed her down. Uh.
30:30
Speaker 1: They were you know, hosing body parts and entrails into
30:33
Speaker 1: the drains of the street. It was just they were
30:37
Speaker 1: mowing people down at like forty miles per hour, just
30:40
Speaker 1: running people over in these personnel trucks. And it just
30:44
Speaker 1: can't be overstated what a complete and utter massacre this was. Yeah,
30:51
Speaker 1: I mean the end result of this was as on
30:55
Speaker 1: the high end, maybe ten thousand people civilians, almost almost
31:00
Speaker 1: to a person was were killed overnight from June three
31:04
Speaker 1: to fourth, and the violence that took place, and then
31:08
Speaker 1: on the next day, June four, unarmed, many of them
31:12
Speaker 1: shot in the back, just just killed and including Yeah, like,
31:17
Speaker 1: like you say, some people weren't even down on the street,
31:19
Speaker 1: They were in their apartment. They just had the misfortune
31:22
Speaker 1: of having an apartment whose windows looked out onto ten
31:25
Speaker 1: m And Square. Uh, and who had caught the attention
31:28
Speaker 1: of a sniper on nearby rooftop. Like it was just
31:33
Speaker 1: just ghastly one of the worst things that any government's
31:37
Speaker 1: ever done to its own people, certainly in modern times. Um,
31:41
Speaker 1: it doesn't really get much worse than that. Yeah, So
31:45
Speaker 1: one thirty am, the army is finally in the heart
31:49
Speaker 1: of Beijing. They have surrounded Tenamen Square. All of these
31:53
Speaker 1: protests are not all of them, Sure, some people got
31:55
Speaker 1: out of there, but most of these protesters are still there.
31:59
Speaker 1: Um there order to leave the they opened fire again.
32:04
Speaker 1: I think at this point they sent in something called
32:05
Speaker 1: the twenty seven Army, which the best the best I
32:10
Speaker 1: could find is that just as was a very um
32:14
Speaker 1: loyal division, apparently that would they knew that would just
32:17
Speaker 1: obey the orders no matter what. And so now they're
32:20
Speaker 1: in Tiennement Square. They're throwing rocks, they're getting strafed by
32:24
Speaker 1: machine gun fire. And within a few hours and most
32:28
Speaker 1: of Tienamen Square had empty out. Uh, they were down
32:31
Speaker 1: to about three to five thousand students. They took a
32:34
Speaker 1: vote um the student union basically said do you want
32:38
Speaker 1: to go or do you want to stay? And most
32:41
Speaker 1: people wanted to stay, but the leadership said, no, we
32:44
Speaker 1: got to get out of here otherwise we're all going
32:47
Speaker 1: to be killed. Basically, yeah, they just said the ghost
32:49
Speaker 1: have it, let's go um. And in retrospect, that was
32:53
Speaker 1: the smartest possible thing they could have done. There wasn't
32:55
Speaker 1: any anything that would have been gained necessarily by the slaughter.
33:01
Speaker 1: But they were all very surprised that they weren't just
33:03
Speaker 1: indiscriminately slaughtered themselves like they you know, a lot of
33:06
Speaker 1: people have been killed in Tianamen Square already and they
33:09
Speaker 1: were cornered by the military. But then rather than just
33:12
Speaker 1: mow them down like had been done to everybody else,
33:15
Speaker 1: they were given an ultimatum that they could either leave
33:18
Speaker 1: now and and just dropped the whole uprising thing, or
33:22
Speaker 1: um they could be jailed, prosecuted and probably killed. So
33:27
Speaker 1: they decided to go. And it makes you wonder like
33:30
Speaker 1: would it have had an effect if they had been killed,
33:33
Speaker 1: because these these must have been the very students from
33:37
Speaker 1: the elite Beijing University who were the sons and daughters
33:40
Speaker 1: of the elite leaders in China at the time. Um,
33:44
Speaker 1: So what repercussions would there have been had they died?
33:46
Speaker 1: But ultimately it was the right move, It was the
33:49
Speaker 1: smart thing to do, and the best thing to do
33:51
Speaker 1: is for the leadership. These students themselves, they were in
33:54
Speaker 1: their early twenties, tops to say let's we should leave,
33:58
Speaker 1: and they did. Yeah. So, you know, Tienamen Square itself
34:02
Speaker 1: gets all the press and the and the historical record
34:06
Speaker 1: kind of lies in Tienamen Square, but uh, it was
34:10
Speaker 1: it was all over Beijing the um June four, like
34:12
Speaker 1: it was on June three. On June four, Some say
34:16
Speaker 1: that that's where the most loss of life happened and
34:18
Speaker 1: some of the bloodiest. H I was about to say battle,
34:22
Speaker 1: but it wasn't even a battle. The bloodiest part of
34:23
Speaker 1: the massacre happened the next day in the surrounding streets. Yeah,
34:28
Speaker 1: for Tienaman Square to have, like you say, all the press,
34:31
Speaker 1: very little actually happened there. It was mostly in the
34:34
Speaker 1: area around it in the rest of Beijing. Um. But
34:37
Speaker 1: the the street that actually runs in front of Tienaman Square, UM,
34:42
Speaker 1: shooting on Yeah, shooing on avenue it Um, it got
34:47
Speaker 1: the most coverage and has the most record of what
34:51
Speaker 1: happened because there happened to be a high rise hotel
34:55
Speaker 1: along shune On Avenue that that housed a bunch of
34:59
Speaker 1: Western journalists who were surreptitiously recording and photographing this whole
35:04
Speaker 1: thing and documenting it. Yeah, so they that was very fortuitous, um,
35:09
Speaker 1: because you know, we'll get to tank Man later. But
35:12
Speaker 1: on this avenue, the protesters gathered and they started to
35:17
Speaker 1: get on the p l A troops demanding answers. The
35:22
Speaker 1: army said, all right, you need to disperse again or
35:24
Speaker 1: face the consequences. And once again, just like in the
35:28
Speaker 1: other instances the army just opened fire and they just
35:32
Speaker 1: barreled down the avenue and people were scrambling, they were
35:36
Speaker 1: getting out of the way, they were hiding behind trees
35:38
Speaker 1: and buildings, and there would be a little period of
35:41
Speaker 1: calm and then people would gather up again. And this
35:44
Speaker 1: is what makes us also tragic, is the people would
35:47
Speaker 1: continually get the nerve to try again over and over. Yeah,
35:52
Speaker 1: and a lot of those people the next day on
35:54
Speaker 1: on shooing on Avenue UM, were the parents of these
35:59
Speaker 1: these protests or who they wanted to get into Tianneman
36:02
Speaker 1: Square to find out what had happened to their kids.
36:04
Speaker 1: They didn't They hadn't heard from him yet. They thought
36:06
Speaker 1: maybe they were dead in there. So I think that
36:08
Speaker 1: might have been what drove them to to come back
36:11
Speaker 1: over and over again, even after being fired upon UM
36:15
Speaker 1: And I saw footage of this. There's like after that
36:19
Speaker 1: first wave, maybe even after the second wave, this whole
36:21
Speaker 1: thing went on a dozen or so times where the
36:25
Speaker 1: people would come back up and confront the military, the
36:27
Speaker 1: military to open fire them, they'd run away, and then
36:30
Speaker 1: the people would like gather their courage up again and
36:33
Speaker 1: go do it again. At least after the first or
36:35
Speaker 1: second wave. Uh, there's an ambulance that shone like rushing
36:39
Speaker 1: to the scene, and they fire on that. And they
36:42
Speaker 1: seemed to have either killed or possibly injured the driver
36:45
Speaker 1: because it like years off course and runs into like
36:49
Speaker 1: a booth or some of some sort. So they were
36:51
Speaker 1: firing on ambulances that were coming to help the injured
36:55
Speaker 1: who they had fired on just a few minutes earlier. Yeah,
37:00
Speaker 1: I saw one report that they uh one I'm not
37:05
Speaker 1: sure how it's split up, but one troop fired on
37:07
Speaker 1: their own officer and murdered him because I think he
37:11
Speaker 1: had shown a little bit of resistance or maybe the
37:14
Speaker 1: way I read it, it was a kind of even
37:16
Speaker 1: just like hey, what are we doing here, like a
37:19
Speaker 1: little bit of self doubt about their mission, and so
37:22
Speaker 1: they murdered him. Man, I mean, imagine this like whether
37:27
Speaker 1: you're in America or the UK or Australia, Like, imagine
37:31
Speaker 1: your own army doing this to you, like showing up
37:35
Speaker 1: in your city and just opening fire like what I
37:38
Speaker 1: just nightmare situation. That would be. Yeah. Should we take
37:44
Speaker 1: another break? Yes, all right, we'll take another break, and
37:48
Speaker 1: we'll talk about tank Man and sort of the legacy
37:51
Speaker 1: of the massacre at Tenement Square right after this stop
37:59
Speaker 1: stop you. So, like I said, Chuck, there was about
38:18
Speaker 1: on the high end, ten thousand residents of Beijing killed
38:23
Speaker 1: June three and fourth. Um oh really, Um yeah, I
38:29
Speaker 1: mean the account from the one guy said that it
38:31
Speaker 1: was at least ten thousand, and that was from his
38:35
Speaker 1: supposed source from inside the Chinese government. And that's that's
38:38
Speaker 1: just killed. That's not killed or injured. That's not just
38:40
Speaker 1: total casualties. That's that's killed. Um. The uh, the government
38:47
Speaker 1: of China, whenever they did acknowledge that this even happened,
38:52
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a little bit, they said,
38:54
Speaker 1: I think it was like to tote like two something,
38:59
Speaker 1: is what they said. And they included in that a
39:01
Speaker 1: lot of soldiers and officers. And it is true that
39:05
Speaker 1: there were reports of you know, some of these barricades
39:08
Speaker 1: that people had put up around Beijing where they there
39:11
Speaker 1: were enough people that they overran you know, troop like
39:15
Speaker 1: troop transports and killed soldiers on board. So there were
39:19
Speaker 1: some soldiers that died, but far in away, the most
39:23
Speaker 1: casualties were on the civilian side, unarmed civilian side. Keep
39:28
Speaker 1: in mind, yeah, I think I saw the Chinese Red
39:31
Speaker 1: Cross initially said twenty seven hundred, but that was quickly squashed. Uh,
39:38
Speaker 1: and that even seemed super super low, right, So um,
39:44
Speaker 1: this is uh. That was June four that the worst
39:46
Speaker 1: of the massacre happened. It was in broad daylight. And
39:50
Speaker 1: then June five, Um, things had calmed down some in
39:55
Speaker 1: the sense that there was not necessarily indiscriminate mowing down
40:00
Speaker 1: of people in the streets anymore. People had just basically
40:04
Speaker 1: resigned to give up and stay inside. The TENEMN protests
40:09
Speaker 1: have been completely squashed. Um, And it was I guess
40:14
Speaker 1: calm as calumn as could be, considering that there were
40:17
Speaker 1: still plenty of like tanks and martial law in the
40:20
Speaker 1: area and on shooting on avenue, like a column of
40:25
Speaker 1: I think eight tanks or a few a few tanks,
40:27
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how many there were, um gathered into
40:30
Speaker 1: a line and sort of going down the avenue, and
40:33
Speaker 1: then just out of nowhere, this one guy tank man
40:37
Speaker 1: steps out of nowhere and just stands in front of
40:41
Speaker 1: the lead tank, and eventually the tank just comes to
40:44
Speaker 1: a stop. And I guess there were This is all
40:47
Speaker 1: right in plain view of the Western journalists, of a
40:51
Speaker 1: lot of people who were watching this waiting for the
40:54
Speaker 1: tank to just run this guy down or to just
40:57
Speaker 1: shoot him with the machine gun, just basically treat him
41:00
Speaker 1: just like like you know, ten thousand or more other
41:04
Speaker 1: people have been treated in the last day, and to
41:07
Speaker 1: everyone's great surprise, it didn't happen. Instead, the tank just
41:11
Speaker 1: tried to move. Yeah, so he stops the tanks. Uh.
41:16
Speaker 1: He's motioning, you know, like kind of get out of here.
41:20
Speaker 1: He's kind of sweeping his arm around and then, you know,
41:23
Speaker 1: this footage is just remarkable to look at even today.
41:27
Speaker 1: The tank tries to go around him, and like you said,
41:29
Speaker 1: then the guy gets in its path. The tank stops again,
41:32
Speaker 1: the tank goes to the left. They're doing this just
41:35
Speaker 1: surreal dance of the tank moving and the guy moving
41:39
Speaker 1: in front of it. And then finally the tank stopped again,
41:42
Speaker 1: cut its motor, and the guy climbs up on top
41:45
Speaker 1: of the tank and starts yelling at the soldiers. One
41:49
Speaker 1: of the dudes in the tank, uh, pokes his little
41:53
Speaker 1: head out and they start talking, and I say, little head.
41:57
Speaker 1: I think he had a normal size head, but just
41:59
Speaker 1: from the the vantage point of the footage was a
42:03
Speaker 1: little head. Uh, or who knows, maybe he was a
42:07
Speaker 1: tiny headed person. It was smaller than normal. You can
42:09
Speaker 1: never say. So they start yelling at each other and
42:13
Speaker 1: having an exchange, and the guy gets back down on
42:16
Speaker 1: the ground. Tank Man does. The tank starts this engine
42:20
Speaker 1: and he gets right back in front of front of
42:23
Speaker 1: it again. And that is when that very famous photo
42:26
Speaker 1: from Charles Cole is snapped of him just standing again
42:32
Speaker 1: with those shopping bags by his side, just as defying
42:35
Speaker 1: as the human being has ever been. And I mean
42:38
Speaker 1: this is after ten thousand of his fellow Beijing Beijing
42:43
Speaker 1: ors have been killed in the street. And this guy
42:46
Speaker 1: said this is enough. Like that's the thing to me.
42:50
Speaker 1: The guy said, this is enough. I'm sick of this.
42:53
Speaker 1: S you guys need to go. That very clearly what
42:56
Speaker 1: the guy was saying. But the beautiful thing about tank
42:59
Speaker 1: Man is you can't hear what he said. You can't
43:02
Speaker 1: see you can't see his face, uh nearly enough to
43:06
Speaker 1: to even tell who he was. There's no way anybody
43:09
Speaker 1: saw who this guy actually was, um at least not
43:12
Speaker 1: from like a camera or anything. So you also couldn't
43:14
Speaker 1: read his lips or anything. So it's left up to
43:17
Speaker 1: you and your imagination what this guy was saying and
43:20
Speaker 1: what he was doing, and then actually comes through in
43:23
Speaker 1: the fact that China, right after this incident, broadcast it
43:28
Speaker 1: on TV. But they broadcast it as clear evidence of
43:32
Speaker 1: just how much restraint the Chinese military had shown in Beijing,
43:37
Speaker 1: and how all of the casualties that had actually come
43:40
Speaker 1: out of it were the fault and the on account
43:43
Speaker 1: of the these um rebellious anti communist uprisers, and that
43:48
Speaker 1: the military had really done a good job with us.
43:51
Speaker 1: But it really kind of underlines like you can put
43:54
Speaker 1: into tank man what you want, but far and away
43:57
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the world. Because that Charles Cole
44:00
Speaker 1: photo quickly got out, we'll explain how in a second,
44:04
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the world was inspired by this
44:09
Speaker 1: guy showing courage. That that's how they took it, that
44:11
Speaker 1: this guy was saying, and not if you can do
44:13
Speaker 1: what you want to me, but I represent the real
44:16
Speaker 1: true feeling of the people of Beijing, are the people
44:19
Speaker 1: of China, of all freedom loving people in the world,
44:22
Speaker 1: I represent how they feel about you in that tank
44:25
Speaker 1: and all the people who sent you here right now. Yeah,
44:28
Speaker 1: it was it was remarkable. Um So Charles Cole takes
44:32
Speaker 1: this picture, he is seen by some security officials that
44:37
Speaker 1: are on a rooftop across the street. And he knows this,
44:41
Speaker 1: and he's like, they're gonna come for my camera. Um,
44:43
Speaker 1: for sure, So he very smartly pops this roll of
44:47
Speaker 1: film out and hides it in the water tank of
44:50
Speaker 1: his toilet in his bathroom. I was, Oh, I don't know,
44:57
Speaker 1: I think can you imagine? I think the keyster would
45:01
Speaker 1: be sought out sooner than the toilet tank, right. The
45:07
Speaker 1: first thing they did was probably bend him over and
45:09
Speaker 1: see what he had. So they did come, and they
45:12
Speaker 1: did compensate his camera, and they confiscated a roll of film,
45:16
Speaker 1: but it was from the day before, and he came
45:19
Speaker 1: back the next day and that that roll of film
45:23
Speaker 1: was still in the toilet tank. Yeah, I got it.
45:26
Speaker 1: Otherwise the world may have never seen this image. Yeah no,
45:30
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's necessarily true, because there's that
45:32
Speaker 1: video footage of it that shows the whole thing. And
45:37
Speaker 1: did we say also that he um, have we gotten
45:40
Speaker 1: to the part where he's hustled off? Who cole tank man?
45:46
Speaker 1: Oh no, okay, well I just spoiled it. So I
45:50
Speaker 1: mean there is the video of it. But yeah, that
45:52
Speaker 1: that that photo that the world got to see because
45:56
Speaker 1: of Charles Cole's quick thinking, that that became like a
46:00
Speaker 1: symbol of you know, the tenam and square uprising, like
46:05
Speaker 1: tank Man just standing defiantly. I wonder if do you
46:08
Speaker 1: know the release date of the video footage? No, I don't.
46:14
Speaker 1: I know that stuff leaked out pretty quick. I imagine
46:16
Speaker 1: that everybody was kind of like, ho, um, I'm just
46:19
Speaker 1: leaving Beijing for no good reason. I'm a Western journalist
46:22
Speaker 1: just traveling to Shanghai to fly back to London for
46:25
Speaker 1: no good reason. You don't need to search me for anything,
46:27
Speaker 1: and just got out of there as fast as they could.
46:30
Speaker 1: I just wonder if they released the footage after the
46:33
Speaker 1: photo had become released. I'm not sure. I know that
46:38
Speaker 1: there were a lot of journalists watching that at the time,
46:40
Speaker 1: including just you know, UM text journalists when writers, I
46:44
Speaker 1: guess you'd call them um that that that were witnessing
46:49
Speaker 1: this and writing about it and memorizing and documenting it. Um.
46:52
Speaker 1: And the fact that they were left alive let this
46:56
Speaker 1: idea get out, because we'll see the Chinese government like
47:00
Speaker 1: washed a memory of this. This is a lot. It
47:03
Speaker 1: bears a lot of resemblance to um to the Tulsa
47:09
Speaker 1: Race massacre. Yeah, you know, it just follows a lot
47:13
Speaker 1: of the same key points, but um to some up
47:18
Speaker 1: tank Man or to wrap up his story. Um, after
47:22
Speaker 1: this this, like you said, this weird dance goes on
47:25
Speaker 1: for a little while and he's just standing there and
47:27
Speaker 1: there's there in a standoff. It's between him and the tank.
47:30
Speaker 1: A guy runs it, comes up on his bike and
47:33
Speaker 1: you could tell he's just kind of like you, Okay,
47:35
Speaker 1: you need to get out of here. This is not
47:37
Speaker 1: going to go well for you. And that kind of
47:39
Speaker 1: cues up a couple of other guys who run into
47:42
Speaker 1: the frame of this video footage and just grabbed tank
47:45
Speaker 1: Man and hustle him away. And there's some debate over
47:48
Speaker 1: who those people were and what became of tank Man.
47:50
Speaker 1: Some witnesses say, well, they were clearly you know, members
47:54
Speaker 1: of the Communist Party, you know, secret police, and he
47:58
Speaker 1: was taken away and executed. But if you watch the footage,
48:01
Speaker 1: to me, these are these are people who are getting
48:03
Speaker 1: him out of there to help him. That's how it
48:06
Speaker 1: would Yeah. Yeah, So they think the fact that the
48:10
Speaker 1: Chinese government did not parade this guy around, hold a
48:14
Speaker 1: public trial and probably a public execution to make an
48:17
Speaker 1: example out of him, and the fact that no one
48:19
Speaker 1: has any idea what his name was and no one's
48:22
Speaker 1: ever said it was this guy definitively makes people think
48:26
Speaker 1: that he is still alive and hadn't told anybody that
48:30
Speaker 1: he he made it out of there alive. Basically, Yeah,
48:34
Speaker 1: I really wonder. I mean, there have been various accounts
48:37
Speaker 1: over the years of who they think it was. Some
48:39
Speaker 1: people have even named individuals. Uh. Some people have said
48:43
Speaker 1: that no, he was executed. Some people said no, he wasn't. Uh.
48:47
Speaker 1: Some people said he was incarcerated, never to be heard
48:50
Speaker 1: from again, and we just there's really no way of knowing. Uh.
48:54
Speaker 1: It is interesting to read though, all the accounts of
48:56
Speaker 1: what people think might have happened. Yeah, I like to
49:00
Speaker 1: know with that he was absorbed by a crowd and
49:03
Speaker 1: disappeared like live to live, not disappeared like disappeared like
49:09
Speaker 1: from the government's radar. Yeah, it's like at the end
49:12
Speaker 1: of Victory, the Great World War two soccer movie. Oh
49:16
Speaker 1: I never saw that one. Well, should I spoil it? Sure?
49:22
Speaker 1: I think I kind of did they win? All right?
49:26
Speaker 1: If you want to see this movie, don't listen to
49:28
Speaker 1: this people. But the whole deal is as they stage
49:32
Speaker 1: the Allies prisoners of war stage the soccer match against Germany.
49:37
Speaker 1: But the real plan is that they are to escape
49:40
Speaker 1: during a tunnel in the locker room. Uh, this rag
49:45
Speaker 1: tag team of soccer players that the prisoners as symbol
49:49
Speaker 1: featuring Sylvester Stallone as the loan American in goal, and uh,
49:55
Speaker 1: they think that they can win the soccer game. At
49:58
Speaker 1: halftime that they don't escape, they decide to not go
50:03
Speaker 1: and to play that soccer match and they win, and
50:08
Speaker 1: it's amazing, and the stadium is field is stormed and
50:13
Speaker 1: they are absorbed by the crowd and you see images
50:17
Speaker 1: of them getting hustled off and having like street clothes
50:19
Speaker 1: put on them over their soccer uniforms, and that's the
50:23
Speaker 1: end of the movie. It's great. So they were very
50:26
Speaker 1: fortunate that the crowd treated them that way, but they
50:29
Speaker 1: didn't know that that was going to happen. No, they
50:33
Speaker 1: then that was one of the dumbest decisions ever made
50:36
Speaker 1: by a group of human beings in the world to
50:39
Speaker 1: try and win a soccer game instead of this game,
50:41
Speaker 1: because it doesn't matter. The soccer game doesn't matter, that matters.
50:49
Speaker 1: That was so dumb it's such a good movie based
50:53
Speaker 1: on a real life true story. You know, I have
50:55
Speaker 1: no idea. I don't think so it has to be
50:59
Speaker 1: I've hoped so Okay, So anyway, Um, we don't know
51:02
Speaker 1: what became a tank man, but the the his his image,
51:07
Speaker 1: they think, or they say, actually inspired a lot of
51:11
Speaker 1: those um protests in Eastern Europe that had made the
51:15
Speaker 1: Communist Party so nervous for a wild chuck that um
51:18
Speaker 1: they actually inspired those protesters to go all the way
51:21
Speaker 1: and actually led to the downfall of the USSR. What
51:24
Speaker 1: he did not lead to the downfall of was the
51:27
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party because they won. They they they went
51:34
Speaker 1: as far as they needed to go to make sure
51:37
Speaker 1: that they held on to power, like they went far
51:40
Speaker 1: beyond like any reasonable point and engaged in not civil war,
51:46
Speaker 1: a massacre of their own people, just to hold on
51:50
Speaker 1: to power and keep things the way that they were.
51:53
Speaker 1: But one thing that really changed that directly came out
51:57
Speaker 1: of this June popular uprising was a shift toward economic
52:05
Speaker 1: reform that they had said, Okay, you people, you want
52:08
Speaker 1: some economic reform. You want a bigger shot at life,
52:11
Speaker 1: you want more, you want to make more money, you
52:13
Speaker 1: want you know, luxury brands build malls and open up
52:17
Speaker 1: stores here, We'll give you that. And they did. They
52:20
Speaker 1: opened up China to foreign investment. And I mean we
52:23
Speaker 1: all know how that story went. Um, this rise of
52:26
Speaker 1: China that we're seeing now and have been seeing for
52:30
Speaker 1: the last couple of decades directly came from the June
52:34
Speaker 1: uprisings and the decision for the government to say, okay,
52:38
Speaker 1: we'll open up some economic reform. Yeah. And in the end,
52:41
Speaker 1: like we said, you know, up to and perhaps more
52:44
Speaker 1: than ten thousand people murdered, um at least six d
52:50
Speaker 1: people imprisoned. I gotta think it was much more than that.
52:54
Speaker 1: But that's from a human rights group called the Dii
52:58
Speaker 1: Hua Foundation and uh, you know, imprisoned for uh you know,
53:06
Speaker 1: crimes against the government, um, re education camps, life sentences. Supposedly,
53:14
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen, a man was supposedly the very
53:20
Speaker 1: last prisoner from the Teneman massacre to be released twenty
53:25
Speaker 1: seven years later. But who knows the truth? And a
53:28
Speaker 1: lot I mean a lot of public executions, like making
53:31
Speaker 1: examples out of people, scaring the the Jesus out of
53:35
Speaker 1: the population, saying like this is what happens. Look, what
53:38
Speaker 1: happens if you're a um, if you're anti government. But
53:43
Speaker 1: again they were they were doing in a was saying like,
53:45
Speaker 1: there's just a few people who were really against the government.
53:48
Speaker 1: We know you would never do this, and it really
53:50
Speaker 1: had this huge chilling effect on that. And so they said,
53:53
Speaker 1: we'll give you economic reform. Do not ever ask for
53:56
Speaker 1: political reform again, because this is what happens when you do.
54:00
Speaker 1: We're in charge, we're keeping things the way they are,
54:03
Speaker 1: but we'll make it so you can have more money
54:04
Speaker 1: or whatever. And now China is basically like um, much wealthier.
54:09
Speaker 1: There's a huge middle class than there was before. But
54:12
Speaker 1: there's also a tremendous amount of inequality that wasn't there before.
54:16
Speaker 1: But you can also say, on the other hand, everybody
54:18
Speaker 1: was equally poor. Um, now there's a lot less people
54:21
Speaker 1: who aren't poor, and even a lot of the poorer
54:23
Speaker 1: people are way better off than they were, but they
54:26
Speaker 1: still live under one of the most repressive regimes in
54:29
Speaker 1: the world. UM. And that was the that was the tradeoff,
54:33
Speaker 1: that was the bargain that was made. Yeah, and you
54:37
Speaker 1: know what, there's one thing that I think I really
54:39
Speaker 1: learned from this, and it was that you have to
54:42
Speaker 1: nip corruption in the bud before it takes true route,
54:47
Speaker 1: Because if you let your government and your leaders get
54:52
Speaker 1: away with corruption, they're gonna try to get away with
54:54
Speaker 1: a little more, and a little more and a little more,
54:56
Speaker 1: and then before you know it, corruption is so entrenched
54:59
Speaker 1: in your government, it and in your society that the
55:03
Speaker 1: people who are in charge have so much to answer for.
55:08
Speaker 1: I have so much that they've done that they would
55:11
Speaker 1: not want people to know about that. They can't ever
55:14
Speaker 1: afford to let go of power, and so they will
55:16
Speaker 1: do anything to hold on power, including murder their own
55:20
Speaker 1: people who try to take them out of power. And
55:23
Speaker 1: I mean, this happened in China, but if it if
55:26
Speaker 1: it reaches that point, you could make a pretty good
55:28
Speaker 1: case that this could happen anywhere. That's what I took
55:32
Speaker 1: from it. You cannot as a society, You cannot as
55:35
Speaker 1: a um, a political group of citizens, a citizenry put
55:39
Speaker 1: up with corruption, no matter how big your house small,
55:43
Speaker 1: in your leaders, in your government, you can't do it. Yeah,
55:47
Speaker 1: it's a man, what a time. But like you said,
55:51
Speaker 1: it's it's a cautionary tale. Forever agreed. Uh, Oh, one
55:56
Speaker 1: more thing, Chuck. They showed some They showed a picture
55:58
Speaker 1: of tank Man to some kids from Beijing University when
56:01
Speaker 1: that documentary was made in two thousand six, and either
56:06
Speaker 1: either they pretended they didn't know who it was or
56:09
Speaker 1: they legit did not know what they were looking at.
56:12
Speaker 1: Yeah it looked real to me, man. Yeah, But you
56:15
Speaker 1: could also make the case like that this is such
56:17
Speaker 1: a taboo subject that like you would pretend on camera
56:21
Speaker 1: to some Western journalists with government mind or sitting right
56:23
Speaker 1: next to them, or had no idea what it was.
56:25
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, well that's tenemn square now, you know. Um.
56:31
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about it, there's
56:33
Speaker 1: a lot to read about it, um all over the internet, thankfully,
56:38
Speaker 1: as long as you live outside of China. It's about
56:41
Speaker 1: one internet, right Uh. And since Chuck said one Internet,
56:45
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mate. Uh, this is which
56:52
Speaker 1: one should I read here? So you know what? Let
56:54
Speaker 1: me read this? This was a this one just came in.
56:56
Speaker 1: This was a uh listener male prediction and that puts
57:01
Speaker 1: Jared from sub from subway to shame. Did you read
57:04
Speaker 1: this one? No? I don't know which one that is. Uh,
57:07
Speaker 1: well just sit back then and hold onto your seats. Hey, guys,
57:11
Speaker 1: My family and I live in Oregon have been in
57:13
Speaker 1: lockdown for the past ten weeks. My husband is a
57:15
Speaker 1: firefighter paramedics, so we are really staying home so we
57:19
Speaker 1: can minimize the risk of spreading the virus because he
57:22
Speaker 1: has so much exposure due to his job. I am
57:24
Speaker 1: a substitute teacher and I am not work right now,
57:27
Speaker 1: but I'm homeschooling our kids age two, six, and eight.
57:32
Speaker 1: We're very lucky. My husband's job is essential, though, because
57:36
Speaker 1: so we're not in the position that so many Americans
57:38
Speaker 1: are in with losing both of our jobs. And when
57:42
Speaker 1: I'm not homeschooling, I get to listen to as much
57:44
Speaker 1: stuff you should know as possible. So onto the reason
57:48
Speaker 1: I'm writing this. I was listening to the Globe of
57:51
Speaker 1: Death episode from December two thousand seventeen, and I went
57:56
Speaker 1: back and listen to this. In fact, maybe we should
57:58
Speaker 1: play this one again. Uh, listener mail, Well, let me
58:04
Speaker 1: just read this. We'll see if we need to. We'll
58:06
Speaker 1: play the entire episode in this listener mail. No, just
58:10
Speaker 1: the listener mail, gotcha? Okay, the listener mail. And this
58:13
Speaker 1: episode was really eerie. It's a woman who predicts the
58:17
Speaker 1: next global outbreak will be a flu pandemic, and it
58:20
Speaker 1: calls on the government for cutting c DC funding to
58:24
Speaker 1: prepare for an event like this. It's very strange to
58:27
Speaker 1: be listening to this listener mail on this situation after
58:30
Speaker 1: being in quarantine. I know you guys love it when
58:32
Speaker 1: you're show predicts events, so I thought I would throw
58:34
Speaker 1: this out there. Thanks that you do all that you
58:37
Speaker 1: do to keep me sane, and that I'm able to
58:39
Speaker 1: hear other grown ups talking about interesting talk topics. My
58:42
Speaker 1: kids are always asking what I'm laughing at and then
58:46
Speaker 1: asked to hear what Josh and Chuck are saying. Thank you, guys.
58:49
Speaker 1: That is from Tiffany Hallock and uh, shall we play
58:53
Speaker 1: a portion of that? Yeah? We should. All right, Well,
58:57
Speaker 1: here's the listener mail from two thousand seventeen, and see
59:01
Speaker 1: if this is uh sounds a little eerie to you.
59:06
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this flu epidemic. Hey, guys, I'm a
59:10
Speaker 1: Master's of Public Health candidate in Atlanta at Emory, and
59:14
Speaker 1: we spend a good amount of time discussing the flu.
59:16
Speaker 1: I remember you mentioning the Spanish flu and wondered if
59:18
Speaker 1: such an epidemic could happen again. Bad news is, it
59:21
Speaker 1: can and it probably will. According to public health scholars,
59:24
Speaker 1: that is the culprit is our meat industry, which keeps
59:27
Speaker 1: an overbundance of foul and pigs and tight unsanitary quarters.
59:33
Speaker 1: Because of the way this industry is growing, and some
59:36
Speaker 1: might argue due to its lack of regulation. Uh, these
59:39
Speaker 1: unsafe conditions lend to the rapid mutation of the virus. This,
59:43
Speaker 1: coupled with the ever decreasing c DC budget, makes it
59:46
Speaker 1: harder and harder for vaccine scientists to create accurate vaccines.
59:50
Speaker 1: On top of all that, the flues scene is a
59:52
Speaker 1: low threat by most of our society, rendering us ill
59:55
Speaker 1: equipped and underprepared. Most people are scared of ebola or
59:59
Speaker 1: other difficult catch viruses. However, influenza is a rapidly mutating
1:00:03
Speaker 1: and highly aggressive virus that is easily transmittable and is
1:00:07
Speaker 1: right here on our doorstep. Scientists predict the flue might
1:00:10
Speaker 1: be the next most deadly epidemic if we're not careful.
1:00:13
Speaker 1: My recommendation to our congress people stop cutting the CDC budget.
1:00:17
Speaker 1: Prevention is key. I know will probably sounds like a
1:00:20
Speaker 1: quack not to me for real, but just wanted to
1:00:23
Speaker 1: spread a little knowledge and say hey to my favorite podcasters,
1:00:26
Speaker 1: thanks for putting on such amazing show. And that is
1:00:29
Speaker 1: from Jasmine. Wow, that was pretty eerie. Turned out to
1:00:33
Speaker 1: be Dr Debra Burkes herself. Uh well, thanks dude, that
1:00:40
Speaker 1: was a that was a good listener mail. And that
1:00:42
Speaker 1: was from Tiffany, you said, yeah, that was from Tiffany.
1:00:45
Speaker 1: Thanks for that one, Tiffany. Thanks good catch, um, and
1:00:48
Speaker 1: thanks for letting us know that you guys are doing okay, Uh,
1:00:51
Speaker 1: hanging there with the home school in and hanging there
1:00:54
Speaker 1: everybody who whose job was not essential, who's on furlough
1:00:57
Speaker 1: or um beating up the unemployement an office website. Uh,
1:01:01
Speaker 1: hang in there, everybody, because things are going to get better.
1:01:04
Speaker 1: Uh and we will be here the whole time too. Okay,
1:01:08
Speaker 1: that's right. Okay. If you want to get in touch
1:01:10
Speaker 1: with this in the meantime to say hi or whatever,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: well you can do a via email. How about that.
1:01:15
Speaker 1: Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
1:01:17
Speaker 1: it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
1:01:24
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