Thucydides wrote:
> I would like to compare and contrast two countries awakening eras.
> First, China in 1989 had significant protests from the younger
> generations. The government responded with a brutal crackdown,
> most famously the massacre on June 4 in Tiananmen Square. The
> populous then responded with an eerie silence.
> Second, Syria in 2011 had significant protests from the younger
> generations. The government responded with a brutal crackdown and
> massacres. The populous responded with a general uprising leading
> to a civil war.
> My question is: What is the difference between these two countries
> that caused two such drastically different popular reactions to
> similar situations and similar government responses?
First off, the eerie silence from China is not from the populace, but
from Chinese media, which doesn't talk about it. Ten years ago I
started writing about "mass incidents" and "mass riots" in China.
Here's an article where I said that there were 58,000 mass incidents
in 2003, 74,000 in 2004, and 87,000 in 2005:
** China's People's National Congress paralyzed by ideology
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... tm#e060317
** China says that increasing numbers of 'major mass incidents' threaten government
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... m#e061210b
I haven't followed this issue in a long time, but here's an article
from 2012 that says that the number of mass incidents had gone up to
180,000 by 2010:
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... ay/250940/
Any one of these mass incidents would be a major national news
story if it happened in the US. But in China, they're as common
traffic accidents, so they don't get any coverage.
The Chinese have become very skillful at handling these mass
incidents, to contain them and prevent them from spreading. Every
police force in every city is thoroughly trained in handling these
situations quickly and efficiently. However, when a mass incident
occurs in China, they don't send warplanes out out to drop barrel
bombs on hospitals and schools.
That's exactly what Bashar al-Assad does when one of these mass
incidents occurs in Syria. Al-Assad responded to peaceful
demonstrations with a war of extermination targeting the Sunni
protesters, including women and children.
And, in answer to your questions, that's the big difference between
China and Syria.
You have to be pretty bad to be worse than the Chinese, but Bashar
al-Assad is. That's why I call him the worst genocidal monster of the
21st century so far.