Anniversary Celebrations

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Student Protests. You might ask how China is celebrating this anniversary, and I am sure the official answer is "What anniversay?"

I think there is a lot of fear here, it seems like the Chinese government is worried something is going to happen again. Two days ago I was out on the street with some friends chatting and three pairs of soldiers passed at different times, patrolling. My neighborhood friends in their mid-forties remarked that the soldiers were simply practicing. Although there is a military base near my house, I have never seen soldiers marching down the street before. Although they were wearing helmets, they were unarmed.

The truth is that it's very quiet about June Fourth here. It's not a topic I normally bring up with my friends, most were only a few years old at the time and not in Beijing. I am, however, hearing more about Tiananmen from foreign news sites and blogs then from friends here in China.

Considering this, it's no surprise that Twitter and Flickr as well as Hotmail were all Tuesday night. The site that hosts this blog was blocked last month, and YouTube has been blocked since the end of March. This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the People's Republic of China as well as today's much more sensitive anniversary, and ensuring that the status quo is maintained is, it seems, top priority.

I am convinced that 3 out of 5 people in and around Tiananmen Square this week are undercover police and soldiers dressed in civilian clothes.

I hope that after this anniversary passes that those sites, Flickr (the photo hosting site that I use) at least, will be available again. Or will this anniversary serve as an opportunity to shut off those sites for good? The fact is that even though parts of the Internet are blocked, it does not mean that all free thought is blocked. They are just not able to post on western sites online.

I also think it is interesting that in the '80s students were interested in freedoms and democracy while the people born after 1980 and are students now are more concerned with material possessions. They want the best brand names of cell phones, shoes and clothes. At least the people I know aren't concerned that America is so free, but that it is so wealthy. This is by no means all Chinese, but a majority of people I have talked to and met are more concerned with the material, not the rights and freedoms. While according to an American mindset, non-democratic China's citizens are oppressed, but if citizens can still pursue what they want are they truly oppressed?

It's interesting that the Washington Post, NY Times, and Guardian websites have their stories about Tiananmen and nothing is blocked. I have seen the iconic "tank man" picture more times in the last 48
hours of news and blog browsing than I have in probably the last two years. It's interesting, it seems it's not the ideas China wants to shut out, but rather the opportunity to express them openly online and quickly find others with those same view points, which communities like Twitter would allow for.