Hong Kong University Pulls Down Monument to Tiananmen Massacre Victims

[Greywind]

HONG KONG—The governing body of the city’s oldest university removed a statue commemorating the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, felling one of the most prominent monuments to the incident on Chinese soil.

The Council of the University of Hong Kong said in a statement Thursday that it made the decision based on legal and risk assessments. It said that no party had ever obtained approval from the university to display the statue on campus.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-university-pulls-down-monument-to-tiananmen-massacre-victims-11640230213?fbclid=IwAR11mAVrfz7WZUzikXOxaAqXxBUSrrF3Pe_UQ9s4h64ZET68RLywCPOmnDg

[Tjack]

 Does anybody buy this excuse?  
 Or is it more likely they just want the thing down and the issue settled before the Westerners start coming in for the Olympics in ‘22.  Christmas week is good timing, people want to think about “Peace on Earth & Good Will Toward Man”.  Not raising a stink about something that happened far away and long ago.

[Pariah]

This surprises me not even a little.

[Asperion]

The primary surprise is that this event even got a monument in the first place,  considering the way the government controls its people. Although the U.S. is not completely innocent in this arena (looking at the educational system).

[Cygnia]

And the grip grows even tighter...

[csyphrett]

5 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

The Council of the University of Hong Kong said in a statement Thursday that it made the decision based on legal and risk assessments. It said that no party had ever obtained approval from the university to display the statue on campus.

 

 

if they made a comic book writer disappear for making fun of the Chairman's wife, there is no telling what they would do to a bunch of bureaucrats and academics. The officials have a right to be worried for their own safety

CES  

[Lord Liaden]

The Tiananmen massacre occurred in 1989. Hong Kong was returned to Chinese control in 1997. That's why the monument was allowed to go up, because the PRC government had no say in the matter at the time. That it's coming down now is just one more sign of how the Chinese government's control of the city has grown. Other such signs preceded this, more are coming.

[Scott Ruggels]

It's also Xi clamping down on any sort of reform, and walking China back towardds more doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist governance:
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/12/china-is-becoming-the-soviet-union/

 

[Cancer]

In another piece of cruel irony, a couple of days ago while looking for something else, I found the Goddess of Democracy t-shirt I bought in late May or early June 1989 from the Chinese student group at U of Washington (where I was at the time) who were holding demonstrations in support of the movement in China.

[Lord Liaden]

On 12/23/2021 at 7:10 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

It's also Xi clamping down on any sort of reform, and walking China back towards more doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist governance:
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/12/china-is-becoming-the-soviet-union/

 

 

The self-proclaimed Communist states never followed Marxist-Leninist doctrine. There was no classless society, no distribution of control of the means of production to the masses. Every one of them paid lip service to that doctrine while using the mechanisms supposedly intended to force that socio-economic change, to bolster the power of autocrats.

 

Xi has been fostering a cult of personality around himself, in the style of Mao and the Kim dynasty of Korea, to cement his personal power. He may believe he needs to do this to promote the interests of China, but it looks like he's making the mistake all dictators make, of seeing himself and the State as synonymous, and what's good for him as good for the State. Conversely, he treats anything that challenges the authority and reputation of the State as an attack on his personal prestige and position.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:08 PM, Lord Liaden said:

 

Xi has been fostering a cult of personality around himself, in the style of Mao and the Kim dynasty of Korea, to cement his personal power. He may believe he needs to do this to promote the interests of China, but it looks like he's making the mistake all dictators make, of seeing himself and the State as synonymous, and what's good for him as good for the State. Conversely, he treats anything that challenges the authority and reputation of the State as an attack on his personal prestige and position.

 

The "communist states", all have to go through a segment of time as "Socialist States" until such time as the state can dissolve itself and turn over the reins of power to The New Soviet Man.

 

Xi's anti-corruption efforts were mostly to remove his rivals, and now his kneecapping of the Chinese economy is to remove alternate centers of power. But the problem is that, like most dictators, he has a poor understanding of economics.  I feel really bad for the Hong Kongers. I had relatives working in Hong Kong for various companies, but they all moved out, leaving friends behind , and they are not happy about it.  (My mother's side of the family, and I , have been very anti-communist).