30th Anniversary of the Crushing of the Tiananmen Square Demonstrations

'It's a reminder to those of us who live in democracies that as much as we gripe about the imperfect nature of the governments we live under, these freedoms are hard won and require eternal vigilance to keep.' 
-TransGriot  June 4, 2009 

Back in May 1989 the world watched as student led demonstrations calling for greater democracy and an end to government corruption occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square as the world watched.

Then late in the evening on June 3 and into the early morning hours of June 4 the plug was pulled on the international television network's live feeds. moments later PLA troops rolled into the square with trucks and tanks firing their weapons to brutally end the protests .

Estimates of the dead ranged from 200 to 1000 people as China was universally condemned for what happened.  It also produced this iconic photo of a lone Chinese man stepping in front of a tank column before being taken away by police to a still unknown fate.

It's now been 30 years since that fateful evening that impacted modern Chinese history.  Despite their Chinese government's diligent efforts to scrub it or suppress any knowledge that it happened inside the country , those of us outside of China ensure that the memory of what happened in 1989 never dies.

And we must keep the memory of what happened alive for future generations so that those persons who died in Tiananmen Square didn't do so in vain.

     

Today's The 25th Anniversary Of A Massacre..

The world will never forget.   

It's the 25th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which it is estimated that up to 1000 people died after PLA troops and tanks were called in to brutally crush a five week old democracy demonstration by students in the square. 

Never forget that day.   Also never forget that freedom require eternal vigilance to maintain it from the external and internal enemies determined to crush it.

Naw China, We STILL Haven't Forgotten What Today Is

June 4, 1989, the 24th anniversary of the crushing of the Tiananmen Square student led protests with PLA tanks and troops. 

Since somebody thought it would be a cute stunt to remove the link to the original TransGriot June 4, 1989 post and reroute it to some game site, bad move.  All you did was piss me off and ensure I'd circle the date on the calendar to make sure I'd write another post reminding my readers here in the States and around the world about the day Chinese tanks and troops slaughtered their own citizens participating in a peaceful protest.  

Besides, I don't ever forget that June 4 date because it happens to be my late grandmother Tama's birthday. 

It was a five week protest by students and concerned citizens simply asking for government reform and an end to corruption in their government that captured the world's attention.




The Chinese government answer to those demands came in the late evening of June 3 and the early morning hours of June 4.  The plug was pulled on the television feed for the international foreign news networks broadcasting the event and PLA troops backed up by tanks began firing on and running over the people in the square to break up the demonstration.    Casualties were estimated between 200-1000 people dead. 


As I said in last year's post, those PLA tanks and troops may have crushed the demonstration, and the Chinese government may continue to try to erase and deny what happened, but the video, photographic and written evidence is still out there and it's always going to be a part of world history. 

Neither can you crush the root of freedom from which democracy will inevitably flower once it has taken root.

So on this day international community, remember the people who died in the name of freedom and democracy in their homeland's capitol city.


We also need to on this day in the United States, remember that freedom requires eternal vigilance from the enemies inside and outside our borders who seek to exterminate it.

China Launches First Female Taikonaut Today

Y'all know I'm a space flight junkie, and I found this piece of news to be way cool.

Chinese space history will be made later today when the Shenzhou IX mission blasts off into space with the first female taikonaut on board  

33 year old PLA transport pilot Liu Yang beat out  14 other female taikonaut candidates and will be part of the three person crew along with male astronauts Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang.

Jing Haipeng, the mission commander will make a little Chinese space history of his own when he becomes the first taikonaut to make a return trip to space.   He was part of the 2008 Shenzhou VI mission in which China's first space walk took place.

After blasting off from the Jiuquan launch facility they will head to China's Tiangong 1 space station module launched last September to attempt China's first manned docking with it. 

Once the docking is completed, the taikonauts will enter the space station module and spend 13 days aloft conducting scientific and technological experiments in the longest mission so far attempted by the Chinese manned spacecraft program.

China would become the third nation after the old Soviet Union and the United States to launch a woman into space using their own equipment. 

Naw China, We Haven't Forgotten What Today Is

June 4, 1989

Student demonstrators calling for government reform and an end to corruption in their government occupied Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing for five weeks in the spring of 1989.

Those simple demands and the demonstrations backing them up captured the world's attention, but unfortunately between the late evening of June 3 and the early morning hours of June 4, the plug was pulled on the international foreign networks such as CNN broadcasting the event and PLA soldiers backed by tanks subsequently opened fire on civilians in and around the square with casualties estimated between 200-1000 dead.


It's also a reminder to us that democracy requires eternal vigilance. Because once you lose freedoms, it's hard as Hades to get them back. 

Frankly, the Republicans and the conservafool moment are staging an all out assault on our basic freedoms while wrapping themselves in the flag, hiding behind the Bible and pimping vanillacentric racial resentment, hatred of GLBT people and fear.  People in the USA need to wake the frack up about it and push back against these domestic enemies to our Constitution.

Keep that in mind people when November 6 rolls around.

Political rant ended, back to the post.

Those PLA tanks and troops may have crushed the demonstration, and you continue to try to erase what happened and deny it, but you can't crush the root of freedom from which democracy will inevitably flower  once it has taken root.
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Naw China, we haven't forgotten what today is and neither have the people who experienced it and live to tell the story.  The world hasn't forgotten those Chinese citizens who died simply because they wanted to make their country a better place to live and their government more accountable to them.

China A Step Closer To Building Its Heavenly Palace

Last week China became the third nation after Russia and the United States to successfully master space docking when their unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft that was launched on November 1 docked with the already orbiting Tiangong-1 space station module 211 miles above the planet on November 3.  

"China is now equipped with the basic technology and capacity required for the construction of a space station," chief designer Zhou Jianping was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency."This will make it possible for China to carry out space exploration on a larger scale," he added.


The Chinese have been conducting tests over a twelve day period since then with the joint assembly.  To make sure the docking collar works and the previous docking wasn't a fluke they will separate the remote controlled Shenzhou-8 from the module and attempt to dock it with the Tiangong-1 module again before the Shenzhou-8 craft is scheduled to return to Earth on November 17.    

The Tiangong-1 module was launched into orbit from their Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center back on September 29, and the Chinese plan to send two more Shenzhou missions to dock with it next year.  One of those missions will be a manned one with taikonauts scheduled to stay on board for a month.

They plan to launch two more test modules before launching the actual planned 60 ton station into space in three sections between 2020 and 2022

But the ambitious Chinese space program has taken another step toward catching up with the Russians and the USA in terms of becoming a spacefaring nation and if the United States wants to keep its hard won leading position in space technology, we need to step up our game now.

China Building A 'Heavenly' Space Station

As the US space program ended thirty years of shuttle flights with the successful completion of the STS-135 mission and is moving away from low earth orbit operations to other goals, the Chinese are going full speed ahead with preparations for the launch of the first module of their Tiangong space station.


Tiangong means 'Heavenly Palace', and the first steps toward building it were undertaken during the three man Shenzhou-7 mission in September 2008 when Zhai Zhigang became the first Chinese taikonaut to conduct a spacewalk. 

The first TG-1 module for it is being prepped for a September launch. After it achieves earth orbit an unmanned Shenzhou-8 mission will be launched to commence several weeks of testing of the rendezvous and docking capabilities of the TG-1 module.  

If those tests of the Tiangong-1 module are successful, then manned Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 missions will be sent aloft next year.   The station will be comprised of the core TG-1 module with two experiment modules and docking ports for cargo craft.   The first of the two experiment laboratory modules is planned for a 2016 launch with the completion date for the 60 ton station set for 2020.

In November China will also take its first steps toward its goal of a manned mission to Mars by launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in conjunction with the Russian space program the YG-1 Yingho Mars probe.

The YG-1 was scheduled to be launched in October 2009 but preparation delays with the Russian probe pushed back the launch timetable.  After it takes the year in transit to get to the vicinity of the Red Planet the two probes will separate and orbit the planet independently.

China is also interested in participating in the International Space Station.  The docking rings on the Tiangong 1 are supposed to be compatible with the ISS ones, but I haven't been able to confirm that for certain yet. 

The 60 ton Tiangong 1 is scheduled for completion by 2020, but they'll need to have the first critical step of that process, the launch and successful insertion into orbit of the TG-1 module be executed  successfully in a few weeks .

China's New Red Star- In Space

TransGriot Note: My latest piece for Global Comment.

When I was growing up, the space race between NASA and the Soviet space program was a major topic of conversation.

The race to the moon between the United States and Russia was a major avenue of Cold War competition that NASA lagged in during the early days.

The Russian space program piled up history making achievement after achievement during the late 50's and 60's while the United States struggled just to get a rocket off the launch pad.

From its Baikonur Cosmodrome Russia launched the world's first ICBM, the world's first orbiting satellite in Sputnik 1, the first satellite to reach the moon in Luna 1, the first manned orbital flight in 1961 with Yuri Gagarin, and the 1963 flight of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.

Under the Interkosmos program 14 cosmonauts from 13 nations such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Cuba and France were paired up with a Russian cosmonaut and blasted into space.

Eventually the United States got its space act together during the 60's, spurred on by President John F. Kennedy bold declaration of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Thanks to NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs the goal was accomplished when Apollo 11 landed on the moon July 20, 1969.

In the United States we're about to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Our onetime Russian Cold War rivals are one of our major international partners helping to assemble and staff the International Space Station.

Just as our space program has slipped from the heady days of the Apollo era, the Russian one has fallen a bit as well due to tight budgets. The breakup of the Soviet Union also put the Russians in the position of having to lease the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome until 2050 since it now sits in Kazakhstan.

As the Russians upgrade the Plesetsk Cosmodrome and NASA prepares to retire its aging space shuttle fleet in 2010, China has made moves over the last few years to challenge both nations in a bid to become the leading space-farer on earth.

China launched its first satellite in 1970, but didn't conduct a manned space mission until the Shenzhou 5 mission was launched October 15, 2003. Taikonaut Yang Liwei made 15 orbits of the Earth before touching down in Inner Mongolia.

They quickly followed it up with the Shenzhou 6 two-man mission almost two years later. It was launched October 12, 2005 with taikonauts Nie Haisheng and Fei Junlong making 76 earth orbits over nearly five days before touching down.

Read the rest of my post at Global Comment.

June 4, 1989

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Chinese government crushing the student led pro democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

Student demonstrators calling for government reform and an end to corruption occupied Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing for five weeks in the spring of 1989.

Those demonstrations captured the world's attention, but unfortunately between the late evening of June 3 and the early morning hours of June 4, the plug was pulled on the foreign networks such as CNN broadcasting the event and soldiers backed by tanks opened fire on civilians in and around the square. Casualties were estimated between 200-1000 dead.

It also produced the iconic photo in this post of a lone citizen stopping an armored column. The fate of that brave citizen is unknown to this day.

The Chinese government can try to censor it all they want, but no one will forget what happened 20 years ago and the remarkable five weeks preceding it. Keep those that died on June 4, 1989 in your thoughts and prayers.

It's a reminder to those of us who live in democracies that as much as we gripe about the imperfect nature of the governments we live under, these freedoms are hard won and require eternal vigilance to keep.

It is also a reminder that there are people who put their lives on the line in other parts of the world to obtain the freedoms that too many of us take for granted.

China's Transgender Community

Since the turn of the 21st century, China has begun making another 'Great Leap Forward' in terms of modernization and putting itself in the world's spotlight.

We got a glimpse of just how much it has progressed during the recently concluded Beijing Games, and its space program continues to take giant leaps as well toward their ultimate goal of becoming the second nation to put a man on the moon.

One interesting thing that has come to light is that China, like 'errbody' else on our planet, has an estimated 400,000 transgender people in their midst. Over 1000 of them have had surgery, and we in the West have been getting introduced to them and their stories as well.

It's not unusual now to Google 'china transsexuals' and see many links to various stories about transpeople in China. But all Chinese transsexuals probably owe a major debt to internationally acclaimed dancer Jin Xing. Her struggles and eventual SRS in 1995 basically opened the door that has made life easier for other transpeople across China to follow.

Chinese society has become more open and tolerant towards transsexuals to the point where in 2004, Chen Lili won the Miss China Universe pageant and was poised to become the first transgender contest in the 50 plus year history of the event that was being staged in Ecuador that year. But rules were quickly passed limiting the event to cisgender women and Chen was barred from participating.

Maybe the Donald should rethink that ban. Some of the biggest traffic days I get on TransGriot is when I post video or photos from various transgender pageants around the world.

As the examples of Jin Xing and Chen Lili show, Chinese transpeople are being fully integrated into society. They can now change their ID cards without hassles, their civil rights are protected by law, and after they have surgery can get married and have those marriages recognized by the state as valid.

They are examples that the rest of the judgmental Western world would do well to emulate, especially in my own country.