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Bobby Yip / Reuters
People take part in a candlelight vigil at Hong Kong's Victoria Park on Monday to commemorate those who died during the military crackdown of the pro-democracy movement at Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
BEIJING – Government controls many aspects of life in China, but for today at least the invisible hand of market forces proved too strong even for the country’s ruling Communist Party.
In an apparent coincidence, Shanghai’s local stock market, the Shanghai Composite Index, opened trading this morning at 2346.98 points. Read backwards, it looks like the date, June 4, 1989 – this day 23 years ago when the Communists brutally cracked down on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in the capital.
Even more bizarre? By the end of trading in the afternoon, the market had lost 64.89 points.
PhotoBlog: Thousands remember Tiananmen Square crackdown
The significance of the numbers might have passed without comment had authorities not tried to censor discussion of the anniversary by preventing users on Weibo - China’s equivalent of Twitter – from posting terms such as “six four,” “candle” and “never forget.” With users abuzz over the Shanghai Composite Index numbers, censors had to widen the list of banned terms to include the Chinese word for ‘Index’.
Hundreds of students and other civilians are estimated to have been killed in 1989 as People’s Liberation Army soldiers entered the capital to clear the streets of protesters. The topic of the crackdown is taboo in this country and little discussed aside from sanitized official accounts in textbooks that call the event a “political disturbance.”
Security around Tiananmen Square is typically boosted before the anniversary and censors work to keep discussion to a minimum.
June 4, 1989: NBC News reports as Chinese soldiers crush demonstrations.
State Department deputy spokesman, Mark Toner, issued a statement on Sunday urging the Chinese government to "release all those still serving sentences for their participation in the demonstrations; to provide a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing; and to end the continued harassment of demonstration participants and their families."
In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Weimin, called U.S. statements on the June 4th incident a “crude meddling in domestic Chinese affairs.”
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Leave a Comment:
Six four. Candle. Never forget. Index. Murdering Chinese communist punks!
The only bizarre about this story is the fact you are reading numbers backwards to try to find dates. Has MSNBC resorted to numerology for ad revenue?
When you have a system where the numbers can be manipulated, you need to be careful who you allow the ability to manipulate. Someone did this on purpose.
Or maybe the program "Touch" is on to something? :) Cue theme music.
The thing is. The Chinese are NOT communists. They are pure capitalists without any hold bars. The USA is a capitalist pussy in comparison to the Chinese. But even the capitalist Chinese will tell everybody they are "communist". Just to keep China stabilized. The USA employers wish they had such government like the Chinese. No workforce rights whatsoever. No lunchbreaks, and harsh punishments. Communism? Humbug! And all the USA companies outsource to their capitalist overlord: China. Cant have the USA citizens have any rights now do we? O. Right. You gave all your rights away for some imaginary safety.
China is now the paradise for big corporations and companies...especially for those from developed countries such as Japan, the US, Germany and etc. Regulations are only suggestive, local governments are so happy to get foreign investment that they can afford to sacrifice the environment. Workers are so happy that they could get a job that they are willing to work for 18 hours a day. And additionally, there's the biggest potential market for anything in the world!
This is not news. You could pull plenty of other numbers of the day and read them backwards or forwards and they will mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Yes it is a coincidence, and not a very relevant or interesting one. Articles like this should not be written, let alone made the headline on your home page.
Oh yeah, another one of those "fine" countries that show us what Communism/Socialism do to you.
Don't forget that when you vote in September!
It is news, not because msnbc interpreted the numbers this way, but because so many Chinese did.
The only thing that is still "Communist" in China is the Name of the Political Party that maintains power. That's it.
And people wonder why the Chinese government supports some of the more evil nations in the world. It is because they are on top of that evil pedestal, and I guess they like company.
The misogynous child-murderers of Tiananmen Square have never been held responsible for their crimes. That only reinforced the dictators' hold on the rest of the country. Killing baby girls, selling others, enslaving others.... When will the perversion stop?
I document my own experiences at http://justlooklikefrog.wordpress.com. Child slavery, public physical abuse of women, prostitutes in the courtyard of the Beijing Cathedral on Wangfujing.
I've smuggled so much media contraband into China, I can't even name all the prohibited books, newspapers, magazines, and Bibles. I encourage all business travelers to take free-world literature and digital media into China and pass them around to some free-thinking young people.
The Chinese government needs to be subverted and overturned.
While I fully support the distribution of censored material to oppressed citizens, I would not be encouraging random foreigners to do it on business trips. As this article makes pretty clear, the Chinese don't take that sort of thing lightly, and most businesspeople won't know how to avoid getting caught.
The only government needs to be subverted and overturned is the zionist regime headed by warmonger nittyahoo.
bibles are cool. Jesus Christ is Lord. The Jews had my Jesus crucified so I checked your arrow Henrich Von Dorf on golf.
"Shanghai Composite Index, opened trading this morning at 2346.98 points. Read backwards, it looks like the date, June 4, 1989"
Uh . . . no it doesn't. Read backwards, it looks like 89.6432. I guess if you switch where the year is written and ignore the 32 that don't work with the theme then it could kind-of pass, but in that case pretty much any number can be made to be significant!
I think the way MSNBC put it, it is confusing as i did the same thing. 89, the last two numbers are the year it occurred. Then the 6 is for June, the 4 for the day and then you have to look at the 23 as 23, not 32, for the number of years in has been since the occurrence. I agree its a little stretch, but interesting nonetheless.
Year-Month-Day is a very common way of writing a date (especially outside the U.S.). Don't need to really switch anything.
I have a feeling we'll end up with a similar censorship game in the US... September 17th and November 5th will both be blocked from trending on twitter and posts will be erased on all of the social networks.
We point out how unfree China is, but I think at this point we're no better off in the US.
And your extrapolating this from.... what?
Quite a few liberal viners have said that if the repubs win due to voter fraud then they will be forced to revolt. This one viner said this and then went on to say, the only way the repubs can win in 2012, is through voter fraud or suppression.
So its quite easy to see a Repub victory and then the libs coming out and saying the election is void because there must have been voter fraud. Then Obama will say for the good of the country, I must stay in office.. All the tools are there ready to be used, just takes someone brave or stupid enough to cross the line..
seems you crossed some sort of line with your post........
I wasn't aware that Twitter and various social networks had started letting the government tell them to remove certain posts. Putting aside partisian paranoia (Obama subverting the decisions of the electoral ruling? REALLY?), I can't imagine anyone would put up with that. People are a lot more finicky about the 1st Amendment than the 4th.
It think it's a crumbling global economy and the numbers are only a vague indicator.
Freedom will come to China, they are not dumb, they have tasted it and like it. Young people of the World will unite, for Love -- hate will die of old age.
I bet it's Dragonball Z's Krillin who is being secretly trained on a hidden built together Xbox 360 Constant Jaspers super computer somewhere in Mongolia like China to destroy the world's raster graphics problems and trust English only if it's what's linguistically left if continuity relies on having to collect on the borrowed money if a sudden the United Senate of America's rules keep guessing up on an other worldly view of no reasons keeping fuel prices low and funding half ass put in to it citizens to camp at football pride because their police the seas got you in a strangle hold suggestions are supposed to be good enough as if the logic of China has to risk another British opiate Tawain Kong is going to happen just because its got to be honorable enough for the en masse attitudinal guess that George Bush got the first President slot of the 21st century off of some internet organizational buildup internet post is work enough to keep economic participation responsibilities possible.
The Chinese confiscated all the punctuation marks in your post, rendering illegible. That last one is a mole.
Yes, coincidence or prank by a Chinese market programmer...
Censorship at its best! Reckonthatis.com
And, if you listen to The Beatles' Revolution 9 (from The White Album) backwards, it says that Paul is dead. Bottom line, if you try hard enough, you can read anything into anything; backwards or forwards.
"Crude meddling" ? I beg your pardon, China. It is an out in the open serious question as to why the government is so sensitive to past reprehensible acts. Does the Chinese government still disapprove of what the protests were about? I'm sure it does. And until you come to grips with inhuman treatment of citizens "lucky" enough to be born within the confines of China, countries governed by democratic principles will question your values, style and worth by how you treat your citizens.
In the United States we do not always get it right, however, we are free to discuss the shortcomings of our political system and criticize our leaders for their mis-steps. Much of your industry has graduated to the 21st century. Now it's time for your politicians to grow up as well.
The problem is that China is behaving like the US politicians. Workers at 'area 51' were permanently injured by burning toxic waste in open trenches. Our courts have no justice for those hurt because to admit to any of the actions taken by those in charge at the non-existent base, would jeapordize national security. It's more about keeping up appearances, we appear to have a voice in the direction our country takes, yet regardless of who occupies the White House, things stay the same. You change a cog in a machine, it doesn't change what the machine does. I think all large nations have a group of people who operate in concert with the government yet separate from them, free from rules and regulations. Both nations engage in these activities, ours are military based while China's are used for control of the population. BTW, how many bloggers from China or Russia who bash America, do you know of? Not many. Just like they don't hear our words. Media manipulation from all sides is the new norm.
"... crude attempts to meddle in Chinese domestic affairs".
The ambassadors statement was not meddling; its calling a murderer a murderer. Just because it happens to be the Chinese State (of confusion) makes no difference.
If China wants others to stop 'meddling', stop be hardline communists. Nobody gives a damn about 'communist ideals' except China and North Korea (neither of which are role models for anything or anyone).
It's not the Communism that gets people (China is actually quite capitalist nowadays), it's the authoritarianism. Communism had a ideological and philisophical basis. Authoritarians are just power-hungry jerks. Like our politicians, but without rival politicians and independent courts to reign them in.
Aren't false equivalencies wonderful? You don't have to make any effort at critical thought whatsoever, and you can sound so worldly wise and insightful. lol. Come live in China for awhile and tell me if you think it is the same as in the U.S. Spoiled brat American--learn to appreciate how great you have it.
It's funny that only people outside China care so much about what happened in Tian'anmen Square 23 years ago. Inside China, people either don't know or simply don't care. The younger generations are completely unaware of this event due to the successful erasing of this event in all forms. Older generations are so busy getting along with their daily life that they do not have the time to stop to think about it either. I don't think any discussions or memorials held worldwide for this event can bring any measurable influence to today's China. Chinese people have become extremely practical these days, intangible ideas such as democracy or freedom of speech are far less appealing to them compared with personal success in terms of career and wealth.
But do you think that attitude can continue indefinitely? Good careers and wealth are all well and good, but when that becomes commonplace people start wanting more. Liberalism only became possible once people got rich enough to feed themselves, provide for their families, and still have time to worry about whether their social status was morally fair.
I don't know if the Chinese have an inherently different mindset than Westerners. Maybe they do. But I've heard that there are an awful lot of protests in China that get only scant media attention. There might come a point where enough of the people want more than just a living.
The only logical explanation why tiananmen square incident was kept reminded in the west year after year is because the media harbour hostility and uneasy about China's rise to prominence and wish to raise resentment and fear.
Chinese people are practical and realise the government clamp down at tiananmen square was necessary to preserve the unity and the stabilty of the nation. By squashing the sedition by those who bent to destroy the governing regime, China was able to sustain stability and unity which was instrumental to the economical growth and development that benefits the world.
Nothing is coincidence.
In an "apparent" coincidence? Of course it's a coincidence -- an actual coincidence, not an "apparent" coincidence.
This is what you get when you put superstitious people in charge of media stories: superstitious bull****.
dear China: try googling "The whole world is watching"
Censorship already exist on all media-thanks in advance MSM,MSNBC,NBC,CBS,CNN,USA
To Dennis 816242 and those people who care about someone manipulated the Shanghai index:
I think the dead have not rested after more than two decades!!! I still remember the first anniversary of the 9/11 attack because the NY lottery for that date was 911 and hundreds (mostly Asian ?) correctly guessed that lottery number!!! The 9/11 victims did not rest in peace and so are the Tiananan Square victims! Do you still think these are just coincidence?
This incidence will cause much disturbances in China, and the end of the China communist government and those who were responsible for the massacre are near.
in china, This event does not exist. Not to say the us government hasn't covered up a few things.
China is a hybrid of Communist top down SUPER control...and capitalist money making (and power acquiring) techniques. But the power stays at the top.
Also, unlike many free capitalist countries, they have no outside accountability. They make up their own ideas of right and wrong.The US still depends on government documents which claim our rights are "God Given". The US, for instance, still has persons of faith and others with consciences who still have the freedom to protest all kinds of evils. Thus, we have unions, OSHA, other regulations, regulations concerning protection of children, etc. (tho we so far have FAILED to eliminate gender based or race based abortions in the laws (See PRENDA bill up for Congress vote last week).
CHINA doesn't want "lip" from its own or other protestors...And thus baby girls will be aborted in far greater numbers, and other human rights will be squelched...whenever CHINA sees fit.
That is why the US cannot compete with China. America's system has become truly socialist-->weak, soft, inefficient and conservative. While China was what the US used to be in early 1900s-->young, ambitious, progressive and assertive. Competition takes no moral standards or whatsoever, if you cannot accept that, you already lose.
Competition does not recognize morality, but an awful lot of other things do. China cares about more than its GDP (otherwise it wouldn't bother rebuking countries for "meddling").
Why the US interest in China now, looking for another war, or just to cause trouble as usual...
Maybe we want the world's largest nations to be responsible international citizens and for as many people as possible across the globe to be happy and not oppressed/murdered by their governments?
It may be an idealistic and naive thought, but it seems far more likely than America provoking China into war (and since when was criticizing poor human rights "causing trouble"?).
Good, drive the censors to total insanity...the end result of suppressing what cannot be suppressed.