Today marks the 19th anniversary of events at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where peaceful student protests ended in a violent military crackdown on the night of June 3 and early on the morning of June 4, 1989. Reports on how many protesters were killed is still uncertain, with different sources reporting anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand.

Nineteen years later, and after one of the most devastating natural disasters in recent Chinese history, it is interesting to see how much has changed in China, and how much still remains the same. Chinese media have become arguably more open with their reporting, but there are still strict controls placed on journalists, even in advance of about 20,000 foreign reporters descending upon Beijing in August.

We still do not know exactly what happened that night, or have an accurate tally of how many people were killed, and the Chinese government is still extremely sensitive about large gatherings anywhere near the square. Many young Chinese grow up with unclear notions, or no idea at all about what happened in 1989. That year is widely considered a turning point in their nation’s history, especially in its foreign relations. All of this is testament to the fact that, even after nearly two decades, China still has a long way to go.

Ma Jian has an op-ed in the NYT this morning about Tiananmen in light of the Sichuan earthquake.

Photo: Arguably the most famous image of the Tiananmen Square protests, photographed for the AP in 1989 by Jeff Widener, who is now a photographer at the Advertiser.

Sharon Stone’s films are being been banned in China, following remarks the American actress made at the Cannes film festival last week suggesting the Chinese earthquake was “karma” for what happened in Tibet earlier this year. Hong Kong’s Cable Entertainment News interviewed the actress on the red carpet, and got a mouthful from Stone:

First, I’m not happy with the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else, and so I have been very, concerned, about how to think about what to do about that, because I don’t, like, that. And then I’ve been, just, concerned, oh, how should we deal with the Olympics, because they’re not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who’s a good friend of mine. And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, ‘Is that karma?’, when you’re not nice the bad things happen to you?

Stone’s comments are all over the internet. According to the Chinese media-watching site Danwei, the Chinese Information Times printed a full-page special on her comments under the headlines “Sharon Stone is an enemy of the whole nation” and “The Chinese people spontaneously start an anti-Sharon movement.” As most Chinese media are still focusing on the 68,000 people killed in the earthquake, the Stone story received more moderate coverage in other papers, Danwei said.

Watch the video of the interview here:

She is not the first person, however, to link the May 12 earthquake to theories about the supernatural and the much-referenced Mandate of Heaven. As mentioned before in this blog, natural disasters have an eerie way of coinciding with major political events in China. Except, others who mention the Mandate of Heaven aren’t necessarily referencing the Chinese government’s policies towards Tibet, but rather how the Communist Party will answer questions about shoddily constructed public structures — like schools that collapsed on young children.

Being college-educated, and from her involvement with the Free Tibet movement — and being an American living under the current political conditions in this country — Stone should be able to separate the actions of a government from the wills and actions of its people. It was an ugly remark and she should have known better.

It’s difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the tragedies in Myanmar and China this week. Both countries have suffered tremendous losses of life, and we will see more lives lost if help is not swiftly and effectively provided.

The two countries’ authoritarian governments reacted to relief efforts differently. With now more than 100,000 people estimated missing or dead in Myanmar from Cyclone Nargis, the country’s secretive military government has been slow to accept the international aid that survivors now desperately need.

In China, the death toll from Monday’s 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province rose past 15,000 on Wednesday, with thousands more trapped or missing. That number will almost certainly increase in the days ahead.

The Chinese Communist Party has not embraced foreign aid workers with open arms, but unlike Myanmar, China has the capacity to send 50,000 soldiers to the devastated region to help with relief efforts. Official reports of the damage in Myanmar came slowly and were confusing, but Chinese media have been reporting on the death toll and the damage with increased openness.

Natural disasters and political events can be eerily linked in China. When media call this week’s quake “China’s deadliest earthquake in three decades,” they are referring to the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed more than 240,000 people in the northeast region of the country. That was one of the most turbulent years in modern Chinese history — Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai both died in 1976, and that the was the year the Cultural Revolution ended.

It seems 2008 may be stacking up to be another one of those years for China — the earthquake follows a spate of intense snowstorms in January and an Olympic torch relay mired in controversy as the country prepares for the Games in August.

China received plenty of criticism (deserved or not) regarding the Tibet protests in March, but after this week’s events, we’ll almost certainly see a change in China coverage. Now hardly seems the time to assess the political fallout from the disaster. Even so, you can be sure the world will be watching to see how China responds with less than 3 months to go before the opening ceremonies.

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Related:

Peter Hessler in The New Yorker, After the Earthquake (Hessler’s former students from his books River Town and Oracle Bones report on the disaster that struck close to home.)
Gady A. Epstein in Forbes Magazine, China’s Mandate of Heaven
Daniel Goldbloom in the National Post, Cyclone Nargis, The Sichuan Earthquake and Authoritarian Disaster Relief: Burma vs. China
Danwei’s coverage of China and Myanmar, Danwei.org
American Red Cross, ways to help survivors of the China Earthquake and Myanmar Cyclone

photo: Rescuers search for survivors in a collapsed road in Beichuan County, Sichuan province. AP / Cong Feng, Xinhua

A meeting with my Chinese friend/tutor on Saturday turned to a very interesting discussion about China, Tibet, media bias and media control. She is from Nanjing, is in her twenties and graduated from HPU last semester. Like many young Chinese, especially those now living outside China, she is frustrated with the characterization of the Tibet conflict in the foreign press as a “crackdown” by Chinese police on innocent Tibetan dissidents.

She’s not alone. The recent protests in Lhasa, which began on March 14 on the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising, spurred intense feelings of nationalism among young Chinese and a debate that continues on YouTube and Facebook.

A few of my Chinese friends on Facebook have posted a link to anti-CNN.com in their profiles (full disclosure: I was an intern at CNN’s Beijing bureau in spring 2005). The site, which includes several videos, is dedicated to pointing out anti-China bias in the foreign media. One friend’s Facebook profile picture is an image of a T-shirt that reads: “I LOVE CHINA.” Facebook groups that are variations on the “Free Tibet” movement have been joined by a number of groups supporting “One China.”

For example, the group “Tibet WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE a part of China” has 20,167 members and seems to be adding members by the hundreds every week. Not all comments posted on the group’s wall adhere to rules outlined in the group’s profile (”NO RACIST REMARKS” and “NO HATE TALKS”).

My friend believes foreign journalists are misrepresenting the conflict, and that is exacerbated by a view in America, popularized in part by the Free Tibet movement, that the Chinese government is oppressing Tibetans. The way she see it, she said, the People’s Liberation Army’s entrance into Tibet in 1950 was not the “invasion” it is often said to be; rather, the army entered a country that was backwards and still relying on a feudal system, and helped Tibet to modernize.

Regardless of what you may think about Tibet’s complicated history, I was interested in her frustration in explaining her views to others. We started using the word “brainwashed.” For many young Chinese, the biggest problem in explaining your opinion to your foreign counterparts besides the language barrier is the fact that many people simply EXPECT you to be in support of your government and without sympathy for Tibetans.

“Of course you think the Communist Party is right,” they nod and say, as if to a child. “You’ve been brainwashed by your government and your country’s education system.”

My friend is not naive about the ills her government has committed over the years, unlike some young Chinese I met in Beijing for whom it seemed large chunks were missing in their understanding of their country’s history. My friend only learned certain details about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989 after she left China and moved to the United States. She is well aware that the government exercises more control over the media in China than in the United States.

In the end, though, media bias is not media censorship. This is not to excuse the media that have been accused of anti-China bias, but to point out the irony of anti-CNN’s creators spending time rooting up evidence of foreign media bias when media censorship stares Chinese citizens in the face every day. Censorship of topics like Tiananmen and human rights is still heavily exercised in China. Earlier this month, a Beijing court sentenced Hu Jia, one of China’s most prominent political activists, to 3.5 years in prison. Hu had written controversial articles on web sites and made comments in the foreign media about human rights.

Even what Chinese citizens can read in newspapers or watch on TV about what is happening in Tibet is limited.

It may just be stirrings of nationalist sentiment, but Chinese netizens have attacked foreign media bias with a zeal that suggests objectivity and journalistic integrity are at least of some importance to them. Now if they could only do it in their own country — imagine what would happen.

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Related reads:

Danwei: “The Internet wages war on the liberal media.” (April 14)
Matthew Forney in the NYT (op-ed): “China’s Loyal Youth” (April 13)
EasySouthWestNorth: translation of Chang Ping’s “Where does the truth about Lhasa come from?” (April 3) [Chang, an editor with China’s Southern Metropolis Weekly, created controversy when he posted this piece on his blog]
The China Beat: “The Taelspin on Tibet: The Chinese Response to foreign media coverage of the 3.14 unrest” (March 27)
CNN: “Transcript: James Miles interview on Tibet” (March 20) [Miles, of The Economist” talks about being in Tibet during the unrest]

photo: www.anti-cnn.com

BBC reporting that PM Gordon Brown will not attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics on August 8.

President Bush is under pressure at home, most recently from presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, to skip the opening ceremonies. Congressman Neil Abercrombie has also joined a group of other House members in pushing for a hearing on a resolution calling for an Olympic boycott until China improves its human rights record.

Since winning the Olympic bid in 2001, China has come under pressure from numerous sources to address human rights before August. Protests in Tibet in the last few weeks have people focusing more and more on the idea of a boycott.

I have many more thoughts on this issue, but have to run to do a story/video. In the meantime, take a look at this site, Anti-CNN.com, which is dedicated to shaming the Western media’s coverage of the situation in Tibet. It gives a different perspective on what’s happening over there.