I’ve heard from several Chinese American friends (now US citizens), who lived in China in 1989, that the student leaders behind the Tiananmen Square protest/massacre (April 14 to June 4, 1989) were supported by the CIA.
Oh, come on, I thought, another conspiracy theory!
However, my curiosity was stirred, so I spent hours hunting the internet for clues that this might be true. I discovered several coincidences that raised an eyebrow.
The U.S. Ambassador in China at the time, James Lilley (April 20, 1989 to 1991), was a former CIA operative who worked in Asia and helped insert CIA agents into China. President H. W. Bush served as Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing (1974 – 1976) , then went to serve as Director of the CIA (1976 – 1977).
Why did President H. W. Bush replace Winston Lord as ambassador to China (1985-1989) during the early days of the Tiananmen Square incident with a former CIA agent? After all, Lord spoke some Chinese and was a key figure in the restoration of relations between the US and China in 1972. Wasn’t he the best man for the job during a crisis like this?
I returned to my friends and asked, “How do you know the CIA helped the student leaders of the protest?”
“It’s obvious,” was the answer. The reason, my friends explained, was the fact that it is very difficult, almost impossible, for anyone in China to get a visa to visit the United States. Yet most of the leaders of the Tiananmen incident left China quickly and prospered in the West without any obvious difficulty. After these student leaders came to the West, many were successful and became wealthy.
I returned to my investigation to verify these claims. Let’s Welcome Chinese Tourists was one piece I read from the Washington Post documenting how difficult it was to get a visa to visit the US from China. I read another piece in the Chicago Tribune on the same subject. My wife told me her brother and two sisters were denied visas to the US.
After more virtual sleuthing, I learned that Wang Dan, one of the principal organizers of the Tiananmen incident, went to jail because he stayed in China when most of the student leaders fled. Today, Wang lives in the West and cannot go back. Two others went to Harvard and a third went to Yale. Where did they get the money? It’s expensive to attend these private universities.
How about the other leaders who fled to the West? “Some have reincarnated themselves as Internet entrepreneurs, stockbrokers, or in one case, as a chaplain for the U.S. military in Iraq. Several have been back to China to investigate potential business opportunities.” Source: Time
Lahsa, Tibet
Then there are the Dalai Lama and Tibetan separatists who have received CIA support. “The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA’s payroll from the late 1950s until 1974, reportedly receiving $US15,000 a month ($US180,000 a year). The funds were paid to him personally, but he used all or most of them for Tibetan government-in-exile activities, principally to fund offices in New York and Geneva, and to lobby internationally.” Sources: Infowars; The CIA’s Secret War In Tibet and the CIA. “Retired CIA officer Roger E. McCarthy published his book, which describes his role in support of the CIA’s assistance to the Tibetan resistance to China’s occupation of Tibet, which began in 1950.”
Yes, the circumstantial evidence was compelling, but maybe all of these facts are just a coincidence.
______________________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Corruption can be said to be part of China’s culture. It has been around for thousands of years. Despite the best efforts of president hu and premier wen to eradicate corruption, they have had little or no success in doing so. However, changing to a democratic government won’t do anything to help this problem. Even if China is able to sustain its current progress with a democratic government, such a massive system change would most probably lead to a period of anarchy. Another thing I would like to say is that democracy really doesn’t fit into Chinese culture. I simply can’t imagine my countrymen queing up to vote for a leader.
You mentioned that only the top 10% of your countrymen should have the right to vote. However, most people vote for their own interests and such a system would only reflect the needs of the rich and educated, possibly resulting in a bigger gap between the rich and the poor.
Terry,
You are correct to say that if only 10% of Americans voted (and they were the 10% with the most money and/or property), they would vote in their best interest. The US Republican Party does this all the time and it is obvious from how they vote and what they promote mainly supports only the top 10% of Americans.
However, I believe that the right to vote should be earned and linked to literacy. If forty million Americans cannot read as the media claims (from studies), then those forty million should not have the right to vote. In fact, I would extend the right to vote only to people that support themselves financially without any government assistance because people on welfare that are an anchor to the economy also vote in their best interest becoming parasites dragging the country down.
On another topic, if you check literacy rankings for the world, these statistics show that the US is 99% literate. How can that be when the media says about 40 million American adults don’t read? If we subtract the 40 million that the media says cannot read, that means literacy in the US is about 87%.
When the media says 40 million are they including the 11 million illegal aliens mostly from Mexico where the literacy rate is listed in the 80% range.
Hello, I just found this site and I have to say its the most unbiased review by a westerner that I have ever read. Had the CCP given in to the demands of the students, the country would have been plunged into chaos and western nations would take the oppurtunity to weaken China even more. Taiwan and tibet would gain independence and there would be people in the other 54 minority groups would ask for equal treatment with the tibetans. The western countries would undoubtedly support these people and the Chinese people and government powerless to stop the trend. What remained would be less than half its current size and China would be a small, poor, and weak country constantly bullied by the western powers and all hopes of China being the powerful prosperous country it is today would be nothing but a dream of the Chinese people. While it pains me that the CCP killed many of my countrymen, it was a necessary evil to ensure the social stability and progress of the country.
Terry,
Well said. In fact, if the democracy movement were successful in China today, that would probably stall the progress that has been taking place for the last three decades (in spite of government corruption), and I suspect China would eventually become another India with 40% living in severe poverty instead of China’s current two and a half percent as the CIA reports in their Factbook.
Instead, the CCP has taken literacy from 20% to more than 90% since 1949 (most of it since 1976) created the largest middle class China has ever known and reduced poverty more than any nation on the planet. Ninety percent of global poverty reduction has taken place in China since the 1980s.
Another necessary evil, is the government corruption we often hear of in China. However, the United States has a lot of this sort of corruption too and possibly more of it, and government corruption in India is estimated to be half of the country’s GDP — much worse than China and the US.
One more point that the CCP deserves credit for. In 1949, the average life expetancy in China was 35. Today, the average lifespan in China is in the 70’s.
Lloyd:
It is good to know that you are there to research into these events and expose the facts of these incidents. I had always believed that these covert operators were always behind incidents such as the Tiananmen Square incident. It was a very sad time for Chinese people in China and all over the world.
Thank you for being there.
Ken C
Thank you. Remember, my opinions, even with the facts I dig up, are still opinions and you must decide what you agree with. Never accept another person’s opinion without putting the facts to the test. If the opinion has no facts to support it or the facts are suspect, that opinion does not deserve your support.
I agree with your assessment of the tiananmen situation and am worried such a situation might arise again with the US wrecklessly destroying global finance through quantitative easing to temporarily delay facing its own financial hardships. Already, we’re seeing similar cia color revolutions throughout the middle east. Iran had its own mini-tiananmen event just several months ago with the video of the supposed sniper killing of that woman.
The key to diminishing such hardship is food. Here in the US, those awake enough to see what is happening are storing food, as much as years in advance, or as much as possible, and even learning to produce their own food as much as possible, and I hope that the Chinese are doing the same, withi less reliance on meat, and more on vegetables and fruits, beans and rice in particular, and supplementation with vitamins and minerals. It’s not as delicious, but will keep one alive.
Mark,
China has been able to grow enough food to feed its population for centuries (except during droughts/floods, which have caused famines) but unfortunately, the growing middle class in China, which may number as many as 600 million in coming years, wants meat since they see meat as a sign of prosperity and want to show off and feel good about their success and buying power. That growing middle class consumer’s demand for meat has increased imports of meat to China from all over the world. China has bought and/or leased land in other countries such as Africa to meet this demand for meat.
I understand the need to store food. In fact, with the drastic changes we are seeing in global weather, it is probably a good idea to store food that will last a long period of time such as steel cut oatmeal, nuts (almonds, peanuts, walnuts, etc) fifty pound bags of (dried) brown rice and legumes all kept inside airtight containers. A month long supply of water might also be a good idea in addition to a water filter similar to the ceramic type that back packers carry when gone from civilization days and weeks at a time. That way the water from any pond or stream no matter how contaminated may be run through those wondeful ceramic filters and made drinkable. I have one (bought at REI) that I’ve used on week long backpacking trips into the mountains.
Along with this increased demand for meat come increased rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer
Happy to see that some truth about the Tiananmen facts of 1989 are finally coming out, and more and more people start to at least question the lies western media told us about what really happened at that time….
Thank you. No government is pure and as they say “all is fair in love and war” but when you want to appear pure you hide the facts.
Hi, just found your site. Nicely writen. I lived in China at the time. I am an witness to how complaints about Deng and inflation grew into the Tiananmen incident, and how the whole thing actually did start in Lhasa. Yep, that’s right. Even before Hu’s sudden demise.
It is true that the students who staged protests in Tiananmen did not understand what the demonstrations were acutually about. It is also true that three US navy ships were in ShangHai harbour the day after gorby came for a visit. Hundreds of thousands in Shanghai did NOT protest Gorby as the US consulate embedded CIA agents expected, instead they protested in front of the French and US consulate, resulting in the closing of the International school for expatriot children housed on US consulate grounds.
It is also true that the original students who were protesting in Tiananmen went back to college classrooms and the Union called off their strike well before the Tiananmen incident. Those who had attempted to hijack the people’s protests stayed behind, and included ne’re-do-wells like Wu’er kai Shi, why gave the interview to US reporters who failed to vet his outragelously false claimes that he had witnessed a massacre in the Sq which never happened. In fact he was in a restaraunt eating dinner at the time.
A spanish TV crew, as well as the Chinese government took complete video of the peaceful clearing of the Sq.
Was the CIA or other agents of the US behind the spring protests in China. You betcha!
Hi, just wanted to add a few things to the article if that’s all right. I’ve believed everything produced by the western media about the Tiananmen Square “incident” for a long time until I had a talk to my parents last year who actually experienced it at the time. They told me a lot of things that were shocking… First of all, one of the leaders were a family friend whom my aunt actually went to school with, and it was common knowledge that he hopped onto a plane the NEXT DAY to America, how he got the tickets in those times no one knew. A lot of the supplies the students used to camp out in front of the squares were probably from the American government because who else would have that kind of money to give to some student protestors?
Also, most students had no idea what they were really protesting about (at least my parents didn’t). They read the banners which made sense to them, assuming they were just going to a peaceful protest. Before this event my mom actually recalls openly discussing the pros and cons of communism in class as part of the university curriculum. They talked about whether it was really better than democracy and which of the two would be better for China. Everything was in good spirit and nobody saw anything wrong with it…until the protests started. After the protests people weren’t really allowed to talk about these things, probably to avoid another Tiananmen Square.
I just wrote this because I’m starting to realize how biased the media can be and how many people will believe it without any thought on their own part. This has not only caused misunderstandings on western nation’s part but also people on the other side. Ten years ago, the Chinese thought Americans were really friendly people and if they are lucky enough to go there, it would be paradise. Now, even the taxi drivers are dissing America and laughing at their loss because that’s what they feel coming from the other side. I was shocked when I saw a joke about the American recession on a national chinese show on Chinese new year. Then I realized why that was, everything is a two way street.
I have no problems with portraying the bad things about a nation, only with exaggerating it. When 30000 people go on a protest without even making the newspaper, how is it remotely fair that the front page is of two tibetans protesting against China? I only wish everyone would think and do some actual research before becoming biased against something, because thought is what sets us apart from other animals.
Thank you. Another post (a nine part series) I wrote goes into more detail and touches on this topic again.
http://ilookchina.net/2010/07/04/chinas-capitalist-revolution-part-7-of-9/
I wonder if China would have had all of the progress it has had over the last three decades if it had been a democracy. I doubt it.
For example, if we look closely at India, we do not see the same progress that has taken place in China. The Communist Party may not be perfect (what government is), but the lifestyles of Chinese have improved since 1980 and continues to improve while I get a distinct impression from reading comments on Blogs and in the Western media that many in the West are praying that China fails.
The World Bank and the UN said that most of the reduction in severe poverty that has taken place in the world in the last thirty years took place in China and most other countries that suffer from severe poverty have seen little improvement. India, for example, still has about 40% of its population illiterate and living in severe poverty.
In 1976 when Mao died, about 20% of the Chinese were literate. Today that number is above 90% and still improving.
Those who protested at Tienanmen Square did so peacefully. They didn’t intend to completely abolish communism back then. They just wanted the Chinese Government to listen to it’s people’s needs (The List of Seven Demands). It was only then that the army came in and used force that everything escalated out of control.
If you were one of those students who organised the protest, you would not want to stay in China. So those student leaders who organised the protest had no choice, but to leave China. Furthermore, they didn’t go straight to the USA. Some of them were aided to go to Hong Kong after the protest under Operation Yellowbird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird).
If the CIA were involved with the protest then why does China censor internet searches of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989?
Government should fear its people. Not its people fearing them.
You ask, “If the CIA were involved with the protest then why does China censor internet searches of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.”
Chinese culture does not like to talk about the “White Elephant” in the room. Americans, however, love to air “dirty laundry” for the world to see and exaggerate it. Even if China could prove a CIA connection, I suspect they would still keep what happened quiet. From what I’ve learned, there were people in power in the Chinese Communist Party who were not pleased with what happened and the bad image it created. It was embarrassing.
However, many in China who are on the Internet often get by the government censors by using proxy servers. I know people who live in China that do this often so China is aware that their Net Nanny is not that affective at blocking any Internet search from anyone in China who is determined to get past the censors and do some snooping around.
And yes, I did read that some of the students who fled ended in Hong Kong. Does it matter which route they took before they arrived in the West? They couldn’t all fly out the same day in the same plane.
Talk about fear of governments. America’s “Founding Fathers” understood how power corrupts and added a “Bill of Rights” to protect the American people from the US government. It doesn’t always work.
American governments have shed blood: the American Indian Wars (millions dead); a quarter million dead in the Philippines after the Spanish American War; Kent State; the Bonus Army incident during the US Great Depression, or violence during the history of labor unions in US, women fighting for the vote; slavery, the Civil War where brothers fought brothers and sons fought fathers.
I suggest you read “2/28 Massacre in Taiwan” at http://wp.me/pN4pY-ET
No government is perfect. I do not excuse the deaths that took place Tiananmen Square. However, I do not judge the Chinese government the same way I would judge America’s government since China and America are two different cultures with different laws. I also question why the West constantly harps on perceived wrongs in Communist China while seeming to forget the Western wrongs like the Taiping Rebellion (led by a Christian convert), The Opium Wars where the British Empire and the French forced drugs on China, and the real reason why peasants caused the Boxer Rebellion, etc.
You say it was supposed to be a peaceful protest. This link will take you to students setting fires to block military. http://www.kansascity.com/2010/06/03/1989533/tiananmen-square-protests-of-june.html
China has a violent history with much death and suffering and since Mao died, it would appear that China has had less violence and death than before while the standard of living for many has improved.
And if you want to know about fear, mention an IRS audit to almost any American. The IRS has indiretly caused the deaths and ruin of many people by grabbing homes, businesses and bank accounts without giving those people a chance to go to court and defend the IRS ruling against them. Then the American government has the right to take homes away from people (and pay them what is considered fair market value) if someone in the governments decides that tearing down homes to build a freeway or a park, etc is in the publich interest. There have been cases of police raids with violence where people were shot or arrested to get them out of their houses when they didn’t want to go.
Frank, I just took a second look at your comment and noticed the language used for “the list of seven demands” by the so called peaceful students. “Demands” is a powerful word. Maybe “requests” would have been better. Using the word “Demands” sounds like there is no choice and anger is present, which could be seen as a potential for revolution. Could it be that China’s central government didn’t want to take the chance so they over reacted.
And now that so many people in China are on the Internet, I’ve read where there have been Virtual debates where tens of thousands and even more than a million comments about an issue has caused the central government to change plans or abolish laws that do not appear political in nature.
I’ve written about two of these events on iLookChina.net. Change is taking place but it is happening at its own pace–not by demand.
If you are truly interested in the story of the 1989 Chinese student movement, you might want to visit my blog and/or read my narrative history book available on Amazon: http://www.standoffattiananmen.com
If the CIA were truly behind the movement, they would be even more incompetent than we already suspect them to be.
I know about what took place during the Tiananmen Square Event and that people died. What caused those young people to be so foolish and believe they could change China–to risk everything on the toss of dice? China is not a Western country.
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