Thursday, May 28, 2015

Global Times Deletes Own Article About June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Incident

On May 25, 2015, the state sponsored Global Times published an editorial in English (“Hostile Forces Target Younger Generation”) and Chinese (“Hostile Overseas Forces Scheme to Incite the Post 80’s and Post 90’s Generations” - 境外势力试图煽动八零后九零后). Some excerpts:
Eleven Chinese students born in the 1980s or 1990s and studying in the US recently signed an open letter to their counterparts in the mainland. The letter carries their extreme views on the 1989 Tiananmen incident in the tone that used to be adopted by much older pro-democracy activists. It harshly attacked the current Chinese regime, twisting the facts of 26 years ago with narratives of some overseas hostile forces. 
The open letter claimed that the post-1980s and post-1990s generations in the mainland have been fooled and they couldn't get to know the "truth" of the 1989 Tiananmen incident until they moved abroad to study, where they can get unlimited access to the Internet. However, it's well-known that Internet censorship cannot prevent people acquiring sensitive information from overseas websites. The signatories mistake their own closed mindsets as the syndrome of the whole society. If the letter is truly written by a few students overseas, we have to say that those young people have been brainwashed in foreign countries, copying the paranoid minority overseas.  
十几名自称是“八零后和九零后”的在美“中国留学生”日前联署了一封致国内青年学生的公开信,就八九政治风波发表充满“民运味”、像是被手把手教着写出来的极端观点。它以十分凶悍的语言攻击中国现政权,照抄海外一些势力的话语歪曲讲述26年前发生的事情。通常来说,中国大陆赴美留学生即使思想发生一些变化,也写不出如此赤裸裸攻击祖国的文稿。 
这封公开信宣称八零后九零后受了“欺骗”,到国外留学得以无限制上网,才了解了1989年的“真相”。众所周知,网络屏蔽阻止不了人们接近海外网站的敏感信息,并非真能对人们看什么和不看什么做完整设计。写信者像是在把个人的闭塞当成整个社会的闭塞来抱怨,如果这封信真是个别大陆留学生写的,只能说这些人恰是在国外被洗了脑,成了留学生中思想和感情都很偏执的少数异类。
The Chinese language version, originally available here - http://opinion.huanqiu.com/editorial/2015-05/6524246.html - was deleted within hours of publication.

These screenshots show the link to the Chinese language article disappeared from Baidu’s search results.


These images show the article as it originally appeared in Global Times print and online editions.

These screenshots were taken on May 26, 2015, and show that searches on Baidu for “Tiananmen Open Letter” (天安门 公开信) and “June 4” (六月四日) were being censored, apparently by preventing overseas websites from appearing in the search results.


Translation: Xu Zhiyong's Statement in His Own Defense

 Source: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/694913.html China Digital Times: On April 10, 2023, Xu Zhiyong, a well-known human rights de...