Nicholas Kristof on Tiananmen

Radley Balko | June 4, 2009

The NY Times columnist was the paper's bureau chief in Beijing 20 years ago, and was in the crowd when Chinese troops began the slaughter. He looks back in his column today:

Troops had already opened fire on an ambulance that had tried to collect the injured, so other ambulances kept their distance. Finally, some unlikely saviors emerged — the rickshaw drivers.

These were peasants and workers who made a living pedaling bicycle rickshaws, carrying passengers or freight around Beijing. It was those rickshaw drivers who slowly pedaled out toward the troops to collect the bodies of the dead and injured. Then they raced back to us, legs straining furiously, rushing toward the nearest hospital.

One stocky rickshaw driver had tears streaming down his cheeks as he drove past me to display a badly wounded student so that I could photograph or recount the incident. That driver perhaps couldn’t have defined democracy, but he had risked his life to try to advance it.

That was happening all over Beijing. On the old airport road that same night, truckloads of troops were entering the city from the east. A middle-aged bus driver saw them and quickly blocked the road with his bus.

Move aside, the troops shouted.

I won’t let you attack the students, the bus driver retorted defiantly.

The troops pointed their guns at the bus driver and ordered him to move the bus aside. Instead, he plucked the keys from the ignition and hurled them into the bushes beside the road to ensure that no one could drive that bus away. The man was arrested; I don’t know what happened to him.

 

Comments

Xeones|6.4.09 @ 8:34AM|#

The man was arrested; I don't know what happened to him.

Probably this: some weeks later, his family received a bill from the government for the cost of one bullet. But i like to think i'd do the same in that situation.

P.S. Any replies to this comment will most likely consist of ad homs, as libertarians concede my points and show their childish, anti-intellectual nature.

|6.4.09 @ 8:44AM|#

Shut the fuck up, Xeones.

I mean, yo fuck Xeones.

I mean Xeones is right. That's probably exactly what happened.

|6.4.09 @ 9:16AM|#

I'll bet the tankers that didn't run that guy over got some shit too. Of course if they had run him over they would have gotten it too.

|6.4.09 @ 9:22AM|#

That should be the LP's symbol--one guy stopping a column of tanks. In a country that had--and has--no problem killing its citizens. What moral force that moment has!

That guy should've been Time's "Man of the Year" in 1989, not Gorby.

|6.4.09 @ 9:53AM|#

I would point out that it was the Tianamen Square Massacre. That is what it was called at the time. And that is what it was. Dropping the massacre part from the description is just wrong.

This day always depresses me. How different the world might be today if the uprising had succeeded. Nineteen-eighty-nine was, other than the massacre, a wonderful year. The world got a lot more free. It seems better every year as we live year after year in which the world gets less and less free.

|6.4.09 @ 10:03AM|#

I won't let you attack the students

Big, massive, hairy balls on that dude.

How has this event not made the big screen by now? Seriously, Hollywood, you might as well turn all the movie piracy in China into a revolutionary positive.

|6.4.09 @ 10:15AM|#

"How has this event not made the big screen by now? Seriously, Hollywood, you might as well turn all the movie piracy in China into a revolutionary positive."

Cash strictly cash. The Chicoms control a large chunk of capital. Hollywood would be loath to offend them. Why piss off the CHICOMS and risk funding for your next ten movies, when you can make some anti-Iraq polemic and get the praise of all your collegues and be called couragous?

JB|6.4.09 @ 1:15PM|#

This needs to be shoved in the faces of all the commie apologists out there. Especially the socialists like Obama and his ilk.

|6.4.09 @ 3:19PM|#

John,

What's the difference between 1989 and now? We didn't owe the PRC government trillions of dollars in 1989. Maybe we can convince all the people who complain about the US govt not calling the Armenian genocide a genocide to agitate for calling Tianeman Square a massacre. Considering where they tend to fall on the spectrum, though, it may not work.

Nick,

You could bet that would be one movie the Chinese government would crack down on making illegal copies of.

|6.4.09 @ 3:21PM|#

This needs to be shoved in the faces of all the commie apologists out there. Especially the socialists like Obama and his ilk.

If Chas Freeman is typical of Obama's circle, it's not likely to have any effect. They think the Tianeman square incident is just an example of excessive government leniency.

|6.5.09 @ 1:10AM|#

This needs to be shoved in the faces of all the commie apologists out there. Especially the socialists like Obama and his ilk.

I don't recall Defender of Freedom George W. Bush making very many disapproving noises about the Chinese government when his Treasury Department was encouraging them to buy every T-bill in sight, while selling us massive amounts of consumer goods at cut-rate prices.

When you turn over control of your economy and currency to a tyranny, it's hard to self-righteously denounce said tyranny's policies. The US under Bush I, Clinton and Bush II unconditionally subsidized Chinese economic growth, so yelling about "Commie sympathizers" at this point sounds more than a tad hypocritical. You don't like the Chinese government? Stop shopping at Walmart, and don't buy any more computer equipment or clothing.