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Asia Buzz: Reality Bites
When Li Peng gets invited to the U.S. over the Dalai Lama, there's something wrong
By TERRY McCARTHY
August
30, 2000
Web posted at 12:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 12:30 a.m. EDT
As I was driving past Tiananmen Square in Beijing today, a small thought fired in my mind. This was the scene of the Tiananmen Square massacre, if you believe the sensationalist Western press. It was the Tiananmen "incident," if you prefer the Japanese press, which has long been craven to Beijing. Or it was the scene of a reactionary, illegal, destabilizing uprising by malevolent students who killed many noble patriotic soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, until their Western-influenced, anti-Chinese actions were finally ended by the just and correct actions of those troops as overseen by supremely wise patriarch, Deng Xiaoping, and much beloved hatchet man Li Peng.
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But today, if you talk to Chinese people about the massacre/incident/unpatriotic crime, nobody mentions the name Tiananmen. It is "June Four" or "6/4," usually uttered in a slightly hushed tone for fear of anyone nearby overhearing. I thought about this habit of alternative naming of awkward realities -- usually a phenomenon of oppressive societies (Pyongyang calling itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?) -- and my mind began spinning.
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Stuck in what seemed an intractable traffic jam on the broad boulevard beside the square of Heavenly Peace, I watched people flying kites over the open space as plain clothes police toured the perimeter on the lookout for Falun Gong protesters, whom they routinely round up and toss into vans that are conveniently waiting under the trees around the fringe of the square. Horns sounded as taxi drivers got impatient, and a car trying to jump lanes slammed into the side of a bus, causing a crowd of rubberneckers to gather around the damaged vehicles. Not so heavenly, and not very peaceful either. I started to feel my grip on reality loosening.
When I made it back to my hotel, I turned on CNN in an attempt to return to some reality. The lead news item was about the hostages in the Philippines, released through the intervention of known humanitarian and antiterrorist hero Muammar Gadaffi. Then there was an item about Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who had tried to drive up-country in Burma and was being blocked in her car on a small bridge by the Burmese army -- they accused her of trying to "damage" the country. The third story concerned the opening of an international religious summit in New York under the auspices of the United Nations. Yes, China was there, with its seven-person delegation. Of course, none of the Falun Gong adherents were included -- most of the leaders are in jail anyway.
But what really made me feel a migraine coming on -- the Dalai Lama
had been disinvited by the UN. It might have offended China, admitted
Kofi Annan, secretary-general, TIME cover boy and renowned hero of
the oppressed around the world. But guess who is on his way to New
York, for a meeting of parliamentary heads? None other than the hero
of the Tiananmen Square massacre/incident/unpatriotic crime, Li Peng.
Kick out the Dalai Lama, and line up to welcome Li Peng. In the United
States. Have I completely lost the plot here?
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