Ross
The Great Firewall
Post-Tiananmen Online Censorship
and Dissent
By Katherine Ross
“The Chinese have
found a new platform
for dissent that leaves
them less vulnerable
to violent repression.”
China not only has the world’s largest number of internet users,
but also the world’s largest market for internet cafes.
While the phrase “Tiananmen Square
Massacre” has become a buzzword in the
West for the Chinese government’s perpetual
violation of its citizens’ human rights, it has a far
more complex connotation in China. Canadian
journalist Jan Wong says of the immediate
aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square
Massacre: “Although it had been years since I
had been a Maoist, I still harbored some small
hope for China. Now even that was gone.”1
According to Asian Studies scholar Belinda
Kong, “The term ‘Tiananmen Square Massacre’
has firmly entered into the ‘political vocabulary
of the later twentieth century’.”2 Today it is
impossible to talk about the incident, let alone
search Baidu (the Chinese equivalent of Google)
for Tiananmen Square-related terms, such as
“six four”, “23”, “candle”, and “never forget.”3
Therefore, the true legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen
Square Massacre in China is hard to assess.
The lack of demonstrations that “approach the
1989 movement in number of participants,
the duration of the protests, or the number
of cities in which demonstrations occurred
simultaneously”4 might indicate indifference, an
inability to discuss sensitive events, or simple
ignorance in modern-day China.
If the Chinese government succeeds
in the erasure of Tiananmen Square from
China’s shared historical narrative then the
underlying causes behind the protests may
be lost forever. The significance of such a loss
cannot be understated. Accounts such as that
of a young factory technician “whose right ear
was torn off and right arm crushed”5 by a tank at
Tiananmen Square will become insignificant. In
the collective Chinese consciousness, it will be
forgotten that he feared leaving his home for six
Current Affairs 43
The Great Firewall
months following the massacre. He is a “living
contradiction to the government’s Big Lie”6 that
no tanks had crushed students that day.
The death of Hu Yaobang, a disgraced
ex-government official and high-ranking CCP
member, provided the impetus for the 1989
protests. Jan Wong expresses bewilderment
at the fuss over Hu’s death, describing him as
“a political has-been” and “party hack.”7 Hu
had been purged two years earlier as Deng
Xiaoping’s heir-apparent after failing to contain
the 1986 student demonstrations. Although Jan
Wong contends that the relationship between
protestors and the media was symbiotic, the
New York Times’ obituary is dated months
before Tiananmen Square, and could not have
been written as a result of the event. Hu Yaobang
is described as being “the exception” in a nation
where caution is often over-valued. When asked
which of Mao Zedong’s thoughts were applicable
in China’s efforts to modernize its economy, he
purportedly said, “I think, none.”8
In January of 1987, Hu resigned. The
official party line was that he had done so
after recognizing his mistakes on major issues
of political principle, such as his “tolerance
for dissidents”.9 Rather than being dismissed
for his failure to contain protests, Hu was
forced to resign. Within two years, the Chinese
government was able to twist the political
narrative of Hu Yaobang so that his fall from
grace was the result of an ugly combination of
ambition and incompetence. The smearing of
Hu’s name in 1989 gave students a reason to
stage protests in Beijing, calling for his name to
be cleared and his reputation restored.10
There are two conditions encouraging
individuals
to
actively
participate
in
demonstrations: if the state is unlikely to
respond to a protest with repressive violence
Figure 1: Timeline of online censorship in China
44 Kaleidoscope Journal Vol. 5 Issue 1
Ross
and if there are enough other participants in the
vulnerable to violent repression. They are now
protest that, should the state choose to act, the
able to protest out of the government’s reach via
likelihood of any particular individual becoming
the online community.
11
a victim is reduced. In 1989, mild government
Perhaps China’s vibrant internet
action in response to demonstrations in 1978
community is the legacy of the Tiananmen
and 1986 led students to wrongly believe that
Square Massacre, and protest demonstrations
their government would not send the army to
have taken on a uniquely Chinese form.
slaughter unarmed protestors in the streets.
Instead of gathering in the streets to shame
Today, the possibility
the government into adopting
still remains of the Chinese “Perhaps China’s vibrant more progressive policies, their
internet community
government erasing the bloody
objections are channeled online.
is
the
legacy
of
the
events of June 4, 1989 from the
Is it possible that the influence
collective consciousness of the
Chinese internet users have thus
Tiananmen Square
Chinese people. Yet whether
Massacre, and protest been able to exercise is solely the
China still has such a tight grip
consequence of an increasingly
demonstrations have
on the voices of its populace
smaller world?
taken
on
a
uniquely
remains to be seen in light of
Chinese authors who
Chinese form.”
recent technological advances.
choose to write about Tiananmen
For example, in spite of the supposedly strict
Square are keenly aware that, given official
censorship of material pertaining to Tiananmen
censorship of June 4th, their audience is not
Square, some users of the Twitter-like Sina
primarily composed of readers in the PRC, but of
Weibo were able to upload photos evocative
Chinese and non-Chinese audiences around the
of the event on its 23rd anniversary.12 A few
world.16 Ren Bumei, the former student activist,
months ago, Chinese internet users petitioned
concluded that “15 years without self-reflection,
the U.S. White House to “investigate and deport”
15 years of callous indifference, 15 years of
a suspect in the case of a poisoned university
student in China in 1994.13 On May 3rd, 2013,
Chinese government censors blocked searches
and posts about the case. When “online furor
grew, the floodgates were opened.”14 By May
7th, Global Times, a state-run newspaper,
wrote that Chinese citizens should not use the
White House as a “foreign petition-office”, and
suggested that the case would no longer be
covered up. This is not the first time Beijing
reneged on its decision to censor sensitive
material. When censors disabled the ‘comment’
Riot police on streets of Urumqi, China to deal
function on local microblogs in the spring of last
with ethnic Uighur protestors in 2009; as a direct
year, restrictions were removed after only three
consequence, the government blocked off all internet
days.15 This suggests that the Chinese have found
access in the region until the following year.
a new platform for dissent that leaves them less
Current Affairs 45
The Great Firewall
Figure 2: Websites and terms blocked by Chinese authorities
speechless rage or rageless speech…shows that
June 4 [1989] was not really a turning point for
[China].”17
Wang Hui, a former participant in the
Beijing protests and one of the last students to
leave Tiananmen Square on June 4th, supports
this supposition in his paper about the event.
His paper has never been published in the
mainland, but circulates widely on the internet
and in translations abroad. In his insight on
the 1989 massacre and its impact on modern
Tiananmen Square
46 Kaleidoscope Journal Vol. 5 Issue 1
China, he states that “the populace’s cry for
democracy arose from a desire not for political
deposition but for socioeconomic equality…
for a guaranteeing [of] social justice and the
democratization of economic life.”18 Hui’s
paper continues to give life to the memory of
Tiananmen, making us aware that the Chinese
people must be conscious of the tragedies of
the past. The crux of his argument was that the
protests at Tiananmen Square were peaceful
and democratic, and that they represent the
moment the possibility for true socialism in
China died.
Although Tiananmen seems to be of
less interest to most youth today, it is typical to
find Chinese youth under attack in the Chinese
media for being “reliant and rebellious, cynical
and pragmatic, self-centered and equalityobsessed.”19 It is also worth noting that Chinese
youth “can lay claim to having a [long] tradition
of revolutionary credentials.”20 This could be
one explanation for the attempts by the statecontrolled media to discredit their actions,
preemptively. The specificity of the censored
Ross
from behind the scenes, to abdicate.24 This
was actually a thinly veiled demand for Deng
Xiaoping to step down from office. This method
of dissent has continued in Chinese microblogs
in spite of the “Great Firewall.” Until recently,
it was impossible to even type the name of the
President or any of the high-ranking government
officials’ surnames into the search engine. Thus,
when a politically controversial event occurs,
micro-bloggers make use of puns and alternative
spellings to get around government censors in
order to critically discuss the issue at hand.
According to the Chinese government’s
“Protecting China’s Innocents from Smut,
own estimates of June 1989, “demonstrations
Violence, and the Dalai Lama”
occurred in each of China’s twenty-nine
provinces and in eighty-four of its cities. Over
Tiananmen Square-related terms such as “six
two million students from over six hundred
four”, “23”, “candle” and “never forget” would
institutions of higher learning nationwide
imply that Chinese internet users are already
21
participated.”25 Ren Bumei said that, in regards
familiar with the details of Tiananmen.
to the massacre that followed, “all my writing
During the first “spontaneous, antihas been influenced by this tragedy – to a greater
government protest in Chinese Communist
22
or lesser extent, there is nothing that does not
history”,
the Chinese people indirectly
originate from that seething spring and that
expressed their anger at the reign of Mao
blood-soaked dawn.”26 To say that the impact of
and the Gang of Four. The Monument to the
Tiananmen Square can be reduced to a death toll
People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square was
of 3,000, or that it was a blight on
covered with poems attacking
both Empress Wu Zetian, a “Whether consciously or China’s path to modernization,
seventh-century Tang dynasty not, the Chinese people would be a mistake. Whether
consciously or not, the Chinese
empress, and the first Chinese
have continued the
people have continued the
emperor, who executed scholars
legacy of Tiananmen
legacy of Tiananmen Square by
and used corvée labor to build
Square
by
expressing
expressing dissent even under
the Great Wall of China. These
dissent even under
oppression, and perhaps today
poems used the Tang empress
they are more aware of what that
and Qin emperor as surrogates
oppression.” means than they were in 1989.
for Chairman and Madame Mao,
implementing a very Chinese technique of
dissent: using the past to attack the present.23
This practice was used again during the protests
Katherine Ross is a Political Science and
in 1989, when crowds in front of the Central
Economics double major, Class of 2015
Committee headquarters called for the Empress
Dowager Ci Xi, infamous for controlling politics
Current Affairs 47
The Great Firewall: Freedom of Speech on the Internet in China
By Katherine Ross
1. Wong, Jan. Red China Blues (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 259.
2. Kong, Belinda. “Conclusion: The Square Comes Full Circle” in Tiananmen Fictions outside the
Square (Philadelpha: Temple University Press, 2012), 237.
3. Moskvitch, Katia. “China bans Tiananmen Square-related web search terms”, BBC News, June 4,
2012.
4. Mason, T. David and J. Clements, “Tiananmen Square Thirteen Years After: The Prospects
for Civil Unrest in China” in Asian Affairs 29. 3 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 2002): 159.
5. Wong, 257.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 225.
8. Kristof, Nicholas D. “Hu Yaobang, Ex-Party Chief in China, Dies at 73”, The New York Times,
April 16, 1989.
9. Ibid.
10. Mason, 164.
11. Ibid., 163.
12. Moskvitch.
13. “Who you gonna call?” The Economist, May 8, 2013.
14. Ibid.
15. Moskvitch, Katia. “Cracks in the Wall: Will China’s Great Firewall backfire?”, BBC News,
May 1, 2012.
16. Kong, 241.
17. Ibid., 238.
18. Ibid., 245.
19. Rosen, 360.
20. Ibid.
21. Moskvitch, Katia. “China bans”.
22. Ibid., 167.
23. Ibid., 168.
24. Ibid., 226.
25. Mason, 164.
26. Kong, 238.
Image 1: The New York Times, 20 Dec. 2012.
Figure 1: The Economist, 6 Apr. 2013.
Image 2: BBC News. “In photos: Xinjiang Protests”. 2009.
Figure 2: The Economist, 6 Apr. 2013.
Image 3: article.wn.com
Image 4: The Economist, 25 July 2009.
56 Kaleidoscope Journal Vol. 5 Issue 1