Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Why Tianamen is such a big deal for China? I have read almost everything there is about it - and it is just meh. Compared to Prague Spring or the Hungarian events, it was peanuts. Especially on China's scale.
In what sense?
Why'd they crack down so hard? Why is it still held up as a pivotal moment in Chinese history or why is it censored perse?
About the censorship. When it comes to massacres it barely even qualifies as one. So no reason to be ashamed or somehting.
I think there's a bit of a self-perpetuating loop where the outside world making such a deal of it means that there's more desire to quash it, plus having violent crackdown happening in the absolute center of the country in a way that the powers that be almost instantaneously regretted means less willingness to go over it. China also seems quite happy to crack down on navel-gazing/revisionist history stuff to stop it gaining steam, and better to absolutely prohibit topics. A lot of Chinese senior leadership is very scarred by the Cultural Revolution (since they were the 20-30 year old children of higher-ups who got sent to the countryside) and thus try their utmost to stop popular movements gaining steam.
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They probably see it as a catalyst to rebellion. Just look at how many civil wars they’ve went through and it’s easy to see why they want to suppress anything that could be construed as challenging order and authority.
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It is their version of exterminating the woke mind virus before it becomes endemic in the Chinese population.
This information quarantine requires maintenance so it's a sensitive issue. The Chinese are relatively united and patriotic, so it seems to have worked out relatively well for them. As far as I'm aware, they don't have a need for cultural war threads like we have here on the Motte. If anything, the Chinese are curious how western democracies aren't devolving into total anarchy and chaos given the increasing political polarization over culture war topics.
Kind of. Most of the Chinese senior officials were at formative ages during the Cultural Revolution, so they're very hesitant to allow anything approaching an ideological purity cycle to take place since they know how bad it can be for them. If Kent State happened in literally the middle of Times Square it'd have reached another level of exposure within the culture, though.
I do think you're overstating how ideologically unified the current Chinese populace is, but they've also seen massive improvements in living standards within living memory and tend to be anti-woke due to seeing a lot of the media that hits about Europe being flooded with refugees and whatnot.
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