Tiananmen Incident - How Views Can Differ

It is interesting how views about one single event can differ so much, how some people know about a major event while some are forbidden to hear of it. For example, the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square is named an incident in China and a massacre to most of the rest of the world. At the time, the government’s view was divided, some members, such as Zhao Ziyang, wanted a soft and sympathetic approach to the demonstrations while some, like Premier Li Peng, wanted military action. Overall, the government felt that the demonstrations were threatening the stability of China. 

Now days, China’s views of the incident is mostly the same, the crackdown on June 4th is still viewed as necessary military action to ensure stability. It is a topic forbidden in the government. When, in 2009, Hilary Clinton said Beijing needed to “provide public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal”, a Chinese spokesman replied saying: “The US remarks are groundless accusations against the Chinese government and in contravention of the fundamental norms governing international relations, as well as a gross interference in China's internal affairs…” Because it is a forbidden topic, information about the incident is generally banned in media in China. Twitter, flickr and other social-media websites were banned for days before and during the 20th anniversary of the incident. Internet censorship, such as in Google, is used to keep the people from finding anything related to the protests. 

This is how history is portrayed differently around the world. With suppression like censorship, sometimes events are not known in the country that it happened in but is known to the rest of the world. Sometimes, the view of the government determines what they show their people, and therefore not giving them the freedom to have a view themselves.