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"8. GALLO EVENTUALLY ENDED UP AT THE RED CROSS STATION, AGAIN HOPING THAT TROOPS WOULD NOT FIRE ON THE MEDICAL PERSONNEL THERE. HE WATCHED THE MILITARY ENTER THE SQUARE AND DID NOT OBSERVE ANY MASS FIRING OF WEAPONS INTO THE CROWDS, ALTHOUGH SPORADIC GUNFIRE WAS HEARD. HE SAID THAT MOST OF THE TROOPS WHICH ENTERED THE SQUARE WERE ACTUALLY ARMED ONLY WITH ANTI-RIOT GEAR"--"-TRUNCHEONS AND WOODEN CLUBS; THEY WERE BACKED UP BY ARMED SOLDIERS. AS THE MILITARY CONSOLIDATED ITS CONTROL OF THE SQUARE'S PERIMETER, STUDENTS AND CIVILIANS GATHERED AROUND THE MONUMENT TO THE PEOPLE'S HEROES. GALLO SAID WOUNDED, INCLUDING SOME SOLDIERS, CONTINUED TO BE BROUGHT TO THE RED CROSS STATION."
"10. ALTHOUGH GUNFIRE COULD BE HEARD, GALLO SAID THAT APART FROM SOME BEATING OF STUDENTS, THERE WAS NO MASS FIRING INTO THE CROWD OF STUDENTS AT THE MONUMENT. WHEN POLOFF MENTIONED SOME REPORTEDLY EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF MASSACRES AT THE MONUMENT WITH AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, GALLO SAID THAT THERE WAS NO SUCH SLAUGHTER. ONCE AGREEMENT WAS REACHED FOR THE STUDENTS TO WITHDRAW, LINKING HANDS TO FORM A COLUMN, THE STUDENTS LEFT THE SQUARE THROUGH THE SOUTHEAST CORNER. ESSENTIALLY EVERYONE, INCLUDING GALLO, LEFT. THE FEW THAT ATTEMPTED TO REMAIN BEHIND WERE BEATEN AND DRIVEN TO JOIN THE END OF THE DEPARTING PROCESSION. ONCE OUTSIDE THE SQUARE, THE STUDENTS HEADED WEST ON QIANMEN DAJIE WHILE GALLO HEADED EAST TO HIS CAR. THEREFORE, HE COULD NOT COMMENT ON REPORTS THAT STUDENTS WERE AMBUSHED AND SLAUGHTERED IN THE ALLEY JUST WEST OF THE SQUARE NEAR THE BEIJING CONCERT HALL."
The communique corroborates the account of the Chinese government that the injured and deceased included many unarmed soldiers and police. While there is no evidence or footage of the "thousands" of alleged corpses of CIA-trained student demonstrators, there is ample documentation of the armed thug participants setting fire to and even lynching PLA troops from buses during the confrontation. It was only on the final day that some police and soldiers were equipped with weapons as during the weeks prior the government had unsuccessfully attempted to put down the gatherings sending in defenseless PLA troops who were then attacked by the mobs. Not only were the riots brought under control mostly without lethal force, Gallo's testimony upheld much of the PRC's side of the story. The truth seems to be much closer to the Chinese government figures of around a few hundred fatalities, not thousands, during what were violent clashes and not any one-sided massacre.
It's no wonder the anonymous 'tank man' in the internationally circulated iconic footage isn't surrounded by the "thousands" of presumed corpses in the streets of what was then the largest public space in the world. Then again, the infamous stand-off between the unidentified protester and the tanks didn't actually occur until June 5th, the following day after the protests concluded, a significant detail that has been curiously suppressed. That is to say, the image associated by most people around the world with the events""and one of the most universally recognizable of the 20th century""did not even occur during it. Not to mention that the unknown man was actually preventing the tanks from leaving, not entering, the city square. Nevertheless, the mysterious incident became the perfect extract for Western propaganda to put its spin on the crisis. If only the tanks had not exercised such restraint and run him over like the Israeli Defense Forces when they crushed the body of activist Rachel Corrie with a Caterpillar bulldozer in the Gaza Strip""then China would be considered a 'democracy.'
Recently, former President Jimmy Carter reportedly phoned Trump to discuss China about their mutual concern that it will soon exceed the U.S. as a superpower on the world stage. While Trump nixed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal which excluded China and could have kickstarted WWIII, he has launched a protectionist trade war with tariffs on Chinese imports in an ill-fated attempt at stimulating domestic manufacturing and industry. Carter noted that while the U.S. is spending hundreds of billions on defense instead of redeveloping its crumbling infrastructure, China is using its productive power to help its people and leading the way in constructing high-speed railroads. He contrasted the wasteful Pentagon budget with the PRC "which has not wasted a penny on war" which he attributed to his own credit in "normalizing diplomatic relations with China in 1979."
While these days Carter seems to lean towards social democracy, his critique is ironic considering a path can be traced from today's obscene military budget back to his administration's decision in 1979 to arm the mujahideen in Afghanistan to undermine the Soviet Union and divide Eurasia at the direction of his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. So too can the Uyghurs falling prey to the spread of Wahhabism during the 1980s when China relaxed its policies and radical Islamist groups from neighboring Central Asia and Pakistan infiltrated the region. Meanwhile, the breakup of the Soviet Union resulting in the independence of former Soviet and Muslim-majority Central Asian republics like Kazakhstan bordering Xinjiang only increased the resurgence of Uyghur separatism. While the PRC may not be squandering on endless war, an enormous portion of the U.S. defense budget in recent years has been in the Pacific with the deployment of naval and missile systems in close proximity to China which was part of the Obama administration's 'Pivot to Asia' foreign policy shift, a regional strategy akin to Imperial Japan's encirclement of the mainland in the lead-up to WWII.
The strategy of the empire's information warfare is to invert reality and depict China as a regional tyrant and surveillance state persecuting its religious minorities while seeking colonial dominance and polluting the environment. It's hard to imagine a clearer case of imperial projection, where the U.S.'s own signature wrongdoings are being displaced onto its chief rival. Leaving aside the obvious in regards to American hegemony militarily, within its own borders the U.S. has more people incarcerated despite the fact that China has a population three times as large. Even more startling, China has less people living in poverty despite its exponentially bigger populace. Then there is the hysteria over Apple's tech rival Huawei and the completely baseless espionage allegations by the CIA against its 5G technology. The irony that Washington is trying to bully Germany for installing the cellular network when it was the U.S intelligence services that were caught red-handed tapping the personal phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is is clear that the U.S. is in pathological denial of its own sins while attributing them to China.
The demonization of China has been so successful that it has become commonplace on the Western 'left' which characterizes Beijing and Washington as an 'inter-imperial rivalry' of equal footing. Yet China's development and aid in the continents like Africa is regarded by their leaders as one of mutual benefit, not plunder like its debt crisis manufactured by Western financial institutions. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped much of the left from agreeing with the likes of John Bolton in characterizing China's assistance as 'neocolonial.' Liberalism is supplanting internationalism and anti-imperialism in many 'leftist' circles and it is especially disappointing to observe many who may be innately skeptical of corporate media narratives of a crisis in the Middle East or Latin America suddenly abandon their suspicions to rely on the very same sources as dependable in their coverage of China.
This failure shows the residual effects of post-WWII reinterpretations of Marxism in the West that is institutionalized in the academic canon, such as the Frankfurt School hybrid that prioritizes using Marxism only as a theoretical lens in their corresponding disciplines of examining culture and critiquing the arts. While there is no denying that 'socialism' is ascendant since the 2008 financial crisis which a recent Gallup poll shows that 40% of Americans support in some form, the version budding leftists are encountering is a variety that strongly demonizes all previous historical attempts at putting Marx's theories into practice whereby the first requisite is to denounce all existing revolutions and achievements by socialism in the last century as totalitarian failures. For this reason, China is dismissed as a "state capitalist" or 'Stalinist' deformation. Michael Parenti warned of this in Blackshirts & Reds:
"[R]eal socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this 'pure socialism' view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage."
The hesitancy to defend China can also be ascribed to the widespread misconception that because of its market-oriented reforms, the People's Republic is no longer socialist. The truth is much more complicated. The Tiananmen Square protests occurred at a time when China was undergoing economic liberalization not unlike glasnost and perestroika in the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev. The demonstrations themselves even consisted of many Maoists who opposed the reforms under Deng Xiaoping such as the privatization of agribusiness and the social safety net, as the participants were not all united under the same demands or political tendencies. Still, Deng was no Gorbachev as he oversaw the ratification of the most recent constitution which maintained much of the socialist system. Through all its many significant faults, the People's Republic has lifted nearly a billion people out of poverty since 1949 and while it is true there are still tens of millions who are poor, the Communist Party continues to organize the economy to eventually raise those remaining to a higher standard of living under the guide of its self-professed 'socialism with Chinese characteristics.'
Despite its market economy and the adoption of some outward capitalist features, its public and state-owned enterprises are of much greater prevalence. The state sector has a bigger share in everything from transit to energy while virtually all land and property is still owned by collectivities or the state. There is not a single private bank in China which includes the world's largest that is state-controlled, as are virtually all major media outlets from television to newspapers. Fundamentally, its advances on the world stage are more attributable to a planned economy than the free market. That Beijing is increasingly in the crosshairs of imperialism is only a further sign of the inevitable decline of the American empire. As for the fact that China is not only producing more cars than the West but many of the world's billionaires is indeed an internal contradiction""but only an inherent one to those who have been duped into believing that socialism is about making everyone equally poor. If you believe that, there is a proverbial bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
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