Maoist View of Beijing Massacre

This article addresses the broad historical amnesia being promoted by the press concerning Tiananmen and Maoism. For its part, MIM has denounced Deng from the beginning of MIM's existence in 1983. While Deng was popular in both phony communist and Western capitalist circles, MIM saw him for what he was--a bourgeois dictator. Yet, some people fooled by the bourgeois media think Deng is a Maoist or that we Maoists are responsible for the Beijing massacre. They taunt us with the Beijing massacre or tell us to move to China or other state-capitalist societies. Actually it is the critics of Maoism responsible for the massacre in Beijing. No truly Maoist people's army would have massacred its people. This article is to clear up the record.--July 27, 1992

From MIM Notes 38, 1989
by mc5

On the weekend of June 3rd-4th, the Beijing regime shot down hundreds of student-led demonstrators opposed to government corruption and dubbed as pro-democracy by the Western press.

The figures for the death tolls are estimates. According to USA Today, the figure was at least 500 deaths. (USA Today, 6/5/89, 1) In the following days there were crackdowns in other cities as well. Estimates of people killed in the whole crackdown in China ranged into the thousands. (New York Times, 10/19/89, 5) In the ensuing struggle the students retaliated with violence. AP published the photo of a military vehicle driver killed by students after he rammed into them with his vehicle. (USA Today, 6/5/89, 6a)

Apparently, the urban areas largely supported the students while the countryside was silent. "In Beijing a poll indicated that 93.3 percent of the residents believed that the student demonstrators' goals were reasonable, compared with 1.5 percent who thought they were unreasonable. The rest had no opinion." (NYT, 8/5/89, 2)

The massacre has reportedly created a small, perhaps permanent armed resistance. Two or three times a week, soldiers in Beijing are attacked by snipers according to diplomats. The so-called guerrillas may be relatives of those massacred. (NYT, 8/2/89, 7)

Citizens seized 1,000 guns from soldiers during the Tiananmen uprising that have not been turned in. (Ibid.)

Demonstrations of thousands occurred across the world in protest of the massacre. The largest demonstrations were in Hong Kong. Under pressure the U.S. government supposedly halted in $685 million in arms shipments. It did not cut off diplomatic ties or impose economic sanctions. (The Plain Dealer, 6/6/89, 1) It did cut high-level non-diplomatic exchanges and got the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to postpone loans to China. (New York Times, 9/30/89, 5)

The reason that the U.S. government did not do more is that the U.S. imperialists obtain electronic intelligence information from China in the kind of alliance against the Soviet bloc that the U.S. seeks to preserve at any cost.