China: Today's Myanmar, yesterday's China?

In John's round-up of Chinese bloggers’ responses to the Saffron Revolution, he mentioned that some Chinese bloggers used "this incident as an opportunity to reflect on the state of China's own democratic movement."

Some of them even link the Saffron Revolution to the political disturbance of Beijing in the 1989's summer.

Here is an example. A post Myanmar's Today on TianYa.cn reads,

你们吃人民给你们的食物。你们却杀戮人民、杀害僧人!

曾经,有些人吃人民的乳汁,当人民的子弟兵,却杀戮xuesheng。

You are eating food given to you by the people. Yet you kill people and you kill the monks!

At one time, some men ate the people's milk, became the people's army, yet they killed xuesheng (Students).

To avoid censorship, the author used PinYin for the word Student instead of Chinese characters.

It is not easy to find similar posts on the Chinese internet now. As the 17th Party Congress is approaching, most of the Chinese web sites have tightened up their filters.

However, Chinese are good at expressing themselves implicitly.

A netizen, personating the Myanmar Daily Editorial, wrote a post A Clear-cut Stand Against The Myanmar Unrest, imitating the tones and styles of the People's Daily Editorial.

全国僧侣、全国人民必须清醒地认识到,不坚决地制止这场动乱,将国无宁日。这场斗争事关缅甸振兴和国家建设的成败,事关国家民族的前途。

All the monks and the people shall realize that if we do not stop the unrest resolutely, there will be no peace in the country. This battle is concerned with the revitalization of Myanmar and the success of nation-building. It is vital to the future of the nation.

Replacing the words Myanmar and Monks with China and Students, you get the message.

Many Chinese readers found this article interesting and cross-posted it on different BBSs and Blogs. But the intention of this article is too obvious to the web sites’ moderators. It disappeared from most of the big BBSs and blog sites. Still, readers can find pieces of this article hidden scatteredly in some comments of BBSs or Blog posts.

Some netizens took more complicated routes to get their voices across.

A post on KDNet.net, The Iron Evidence of America Interfering Myanmar Internal Affairs – Let's Protest Together!, has generated many responses from the readers.

The author called on the readers to protest against the US.

想干涉下美国内政的就跟贴干涉好了,我搂主大大的欢迎!

Those who want to interfere the internal affairs of America please post your follow-ups here. I greatly welcome.

It looks like a post from the Anger Youth, buried in some other nationalistic posts. But if you read carefully, you will find something interesting. Responding to Bush's statement on the situation in Burma, the author wrote,

我呼吁秉持砖制和奴才价值观的人们颠覆美国布什政府的狰荡要求。

I call on those who embrace the values of autocratic and flunkeyism to overthrow the Bush Administration's hideous request.

Many readers applauded the author in their comments.

From this cat and mouse game, we can see that the monks’ protest in Myanmar is not only a foreign issue but also an internal issue to the Chinese government.

32 comments

  • Charles Liu

    There’s something else Burma and TAM has in common – CIA officer Col. Robert Helvey:

    (Helvey’s involvment in Burma already cited in 1st “Chinese blogger” post)

    http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_308.shtml

    “[Helvey] also trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to subsequently use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989”

    The color-revolutions in eastern Europe also received such “non-violent warfare” training from CIA advisor Col. Robert Helvey. This pattern is by no means coincidences.

  • […] Chinese bloggers reflect on the recent troubles in Burma and democracy issues in their own […]

  • Hi Charles,

    Thanks for the information. I am not surprised that CIA is playing some role in this, as the future of Myanmar is of the interest of the US too. But I don’t think you can attribute what is happening in Myanmar all to CIA. Many evidences show that China has many commercial espionages in the US, but can you say all China technology development owe to the US?

    Furthermore, I am sure there are many active Chinese intelligent agencies in Myanmar too.

  • Hi folks!
    Everthing you blame U.S. CIA do that , CIA do this. The same old story have been come from Comminist propaganda and its people have been indoctrinated, brainwashed. Shame on you.

  • Pei

    I am surprised you can dig up so many anti-Myanmar post from Chinese BBSs consider Chinese, as a whole, are quite anti-religion/monk. The opinion of my friends and me is that the CIA is trying to replace a tyrant with a dictator, akin to recent development in Ukraine.

  • Please help us get the word out that we are offering Burmese people free email address and confidential communications to the outside families so we can help them be freed. We are in the US and have family in the country. We have posted this site to help start a channel where they can contact us to forward information. Please visit http://www.linkburma.org and share it with the Burmese People.

  • Charles Liu

    (Sorry this is a bit OT)

    Jacky, you are right the Burma crisis is multi-faceted. In addition to CIA’s “non-violent warfare” color-revolution, George Soros’ OSI has been bank rolling this little uprise.

    The Burmese democracy activists have openly acknowleged receiving support from OSI. Add on qusai-government organization like NED funded Einstein Institute operated by CIA officer Col. Rober Helvey, people start wondering.

    But you are wrong about the Chinese. They have no direct access nor influence over the issue. Heck they even have to go thru some intermediary to get a word into Burma, according to Andrew Small of German Marshall Fund:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/26/wburma1226.xml

    Bottom line is China is far from being the deciding facter, and many countries are involved, including Russia, Indonesia, India, France, Thailand, US, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore.

  • Rudolph

    Bush is a coward. If he really wanted to spread democracy over the whole world, this would be his chance. If I were running the show, I would free the easy countries first. That would make tackling the bigger countries much easier. Anyways this shows how much of a true bigot Bush is.

  • Andrew Wong

    US and the European Uonion can put tremendous pressure on China NOW to censore Myanmar because of the Beijing Olympic 2008. All they need to do is to express their desire that both US and European Union nations will defintely BOYCOTT the Games, if China refuses to show more concerted action against the military junta in Myanmar. No need to impose sanctions , just mention boycott of the Olympic , and China will cooperate.

  • yangdonglin

    to All:
    who has supported south korea military dictatorship in 1960-80s?
    who has supported Repulic of China (Taiwan) military dictatorship in 1950-80s?
    who has supported Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in 1980s?

    who had held olympic games twice while it was still mistreating black people?
    USA ! is it qualified to blame others?

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