Tiananmen and the Catholic Church
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The New York Times has really been pumping out a considerable number of China-related articles recently, many of which deal with the country’s darker underbelly. Today’s edition offers a very interesting look at the relationship between China and the Catholic church, specifically in relation to the 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy: Church Official Calls for Review of Tiananmen Killings.
I have done little research into the current state of religious freedom in China, though I find it somewhat surprising that there is any relationship between the Vatican and the PRC. Accordingly, the following statement surprised me even more:
“The criticism by Cardinal Joseph Zen is the latest sign that the Vatican may not be willing to compromise on human rights in order to establish diplomatic relations with mainland China.”
Is the Vatican really balancing human rights and diplomatic relations? Somehow I don’t see how considering diplomatic relations, especially to the detriment of human rights issues, is an option at all. Very interesting.
The author makes a very succinct statement about the dynamic that permits such discrepancies as economic prosperity and rampant abuses to coexist:
“The Chinese Communist Party now bases its legitimacy to a considerable extent on the material prosperity it has brought to many of China’s 1.3 billion people.”
How true. Wealth and an advancement in standard of living can prompt almost anyone to let go of the past.
“‘Yes, the economy has improved and some people have earned lots of money, but corruption abounds, the gap in wealth is huge, mines keep swallowing workers and fake milk powder and fake medicines are flooding the market – is this considered an improvement?’ he asked. ‘If they had listened to the kind advice of the students and workers, would today’s country be a better country?’”
I hope to find an answer, or at least a little insight, to the last question during my travels through China in a few weeks. It should be an interesting trip.
TAGS: This entry was posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 11:49 am and is filed under CalPoly MBA, China, Interesting News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
June 6th, 2006 at 11:44 am
I’d like to offer couple more reference in addition to PBS Frontline’s “The Tank Man”, where it reported the fact Chinese government did investigate this, and release casualty figure of 240 some dead (incidentally in-line with our own NSA intel estimate.)
An article by Gregory Clark on pack journalism:
http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/7702519.html
“the so-called massacre was in fact a mini civil war as irate Beijing citizens sought to stop initially unarmed soldiers sent to remove students who had been demonstrating freely in the square for weeks. When the soldiers finally reached the square there was no massacre.”
An article by Columbia Journal Review on passive journalism:
http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/5/tiananmen.asp
“as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.
…
Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances.”
[Just for reference, throwing molotov cocktail at riot police is a crime in US.]
June 6th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Bobby,
Thank you for offering an alternate view and also providing links and information to check out. From what I remember of the Frontline segment, I am pretty sure that it supports what you say about the “massacre,” that it happened outside of the square, and that there was little to no bloodshed within Tiananmen.
Take care,
Peter