More "mutual understanding"

Mutual understanding seems to be spreading since it has worked so well in the past. (I think "understanding" means pretend to accept what ever happens. Don't complain or criticize no matter what.) China, which has obviously observed how this process works, has decided to pursue it with the US too.

In celebration of June 4 1989 Tienanmen Square:

Chinese police aggressively deterred dissent on Thursday's 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy activists in Tiananmen Square, ignoring calls from Hillary Rodham Clinton and even Taiwan's China-friendly president for Beijing to face up to the 1989 violence. AP

China has gone through enormous changes in 20 years, so what is the government worried about? The one-hour plus PBS Frontline online The Tank Man (2006) is a good reminder of those days and more recent times. It enhances mutual understanding.

9:55PM: The Frontline video has a section with four young Chinese students who could not identify the famous photo of the man and the tank. Knew nothing about it.You can find denials that anything out of the ordinary happened at Tiananmen in many places on the Internet, for example in the comments to a The Online Photographer post from one of the anonymous posters (#6 at 4:05PM). The Chinese government has done its work well. The assertion of some at the time that China did no more than what the US government would do under similar circumstances has taken hold. It always come back to the US somehow...

Speaking of Tiananmen, the late Premier Zhao Ziyang's Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang is sorta available at amazon.jp as long as you are in no hurry to get it. Zhao Ziyang was the guy who went to the square and was sympathetic to the student protesters which ultimately ended his career. The book was recently discussed on the PBS Jim Lehrer Newshour.