Chinese Censors Accidentally Block Shanghai Index

New submitter Vulcan195 writes "Now this is amusing in so many ways ... Today (June 4, 1989 ... i.e. 6/4/89) is the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Naturally, the Chinese Censors were working overtime to block anything that made remote or oblique references to that event. Well, sometime during the day the Shanghai Composite Index dropped by 64.89 points; You can guess what happened next."

Comments

at least it wasn't a search-and-replace

[Trepidity]

Much like the fate that befell Olympic runner Tyson Homosexual, the Shanghai Stock Exchange could've found itself falling Harmonious Society points today.

Not like the USA

[cryfreedomlove]

Every discussion of Chinese censorship inevitably leads to posts about how the USA should get off it's high horse because it is just as bad. It is true that the USA has committed atrocities. Kent State, Jim Crow killings, Dresden, etc. The difference however, is that the USA reflects on its past in a much more transparent way than China does today. Come on China, it has been 23 years. Let's discuss this in an open way. You won't be able to hide it forever, especially because most Americans saw a lot of Tiananmen on TV.

Re:Not like the USA

[couchslug]

Dresden was a legitimate military target. All infrastructure was a legitimate military target and all workers were in effect war workers so they were military targets.

WWII was a serious war, a Total War, not some UN police action designed to fail. It was literally an existential war which made thorough destruction of all Nazi capabilities a duty.

Germany initiated WWII and the population of Germany worked long and hard to prepare for and sustain that war to the bitter end.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Being transparent about one's past is certainly a good thing, but it's a pretty small consolation when atrocities keep going on.

The war in Iraq killed over a hundred thousand civilians - I have no doubt that in several decades, the USA will officially give REAL recognition to these victims (instead of blanket statements such as "we remember the victims of this war" which doesn't clearly spell out "CIVILIANS"). However, this won't make up for the fact that the war should have ended years earlier than it did (and in fact should have never been started).

I'd go as far as to say being transparent when you don't learn from your mistakes is pointless.

So sure, it's better than China. But not by much. The homeless man with two pennies is twice as rich as the one with only one penny - they still both have the same standards of living.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Infrastructure and industry was a legitimate target, housing and historical buildings certainly not.

Re:Not like the USA

[girlintraining]

The difference however, is that the USA reflects on its past in a much more transparent way than China does today.

Transparency must be why, after Vietnam, we stopped broadcasting live coverage of the war and made sure every embedded journalist turns in his/her footage to be edited for "homeland security" reasons prior to being sent in for publication.
Transparency is why we have our own Star Chamber now, where suspected terrorists are tried, convicted, and sentenced, in secret trials where they cannot see the evidence presented against them, nor offer testimony in their defense.
Transparency is why at the bottom of most google search results, is the phrase "In response to a complaint we received under the 'US Digital Millenium Copyright Act' we have removed n results."
And transparency is most certainly why the founder of Wikileaks found his assets frozen because of a request by Homeland Security to PayPal through extrajudicial means, and then we discovered a secret unit within Homeland Security who's sole purpose is to discredit citizens who express "politically undesireable" viewpoints.

We don't "reflect on our past" any more transparently than China does -- we just have a higher threshold before the government decides to assassinate someone they disagree with. A threshold, I might add, that's been on a downward trend for some time.

Re:Not like the USA

[Trepidity]

I'm not sure what percentage of people actually reflect on their past, and certainly it's not that prominent in the mainstream media. I think considerable amount of reflection does happen, though, and it isn't actively suppressed. There are a lot of critical books on the Reagan presidency that you can buy from Amazon or other major bookstores. There are books attacking the Vietnam War, the invasion of Grenada, the suppression of the Black Panthers, etc. You cannot buy similarly critical books in China, which seems like a key difference: it's not just that Chinese don't want to read books attacking the invasion of Tibet or the Tiananmen Square massacres, but that these books simply cannot be purchased in China even if you're one of the minority of people who does want to read about it.

In fact, not only are such critical books published in the United States, but I have taken taxpayer-funded university courses that assign them as required reading! Angela Davis is a tenured university professor at a state-run university. None of that kind of thing happens in China.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

One can argue whether Dresden was or was not a legitimate military target, but even if it was, it doesn't automatically make targeting it justifiable. An ammo stash on the roof of a hospital is also a legitimate military target, but if the enemy is already crippled to the point where he is unable to use that stash to any meaningful effect, targeting it just because you can - with all the ensuing civilian casualties - is morally wrong.

For reference, by the time of Dresden firebombing, Soviet troops were already at Oder, within 50 miles from Berlin, for over a week. In fact, Soviets could have likely ended the war right there and then if they kept marching on; they just decided to play it safe.

Re:Not like the USA

[Charliemopps]

What the fuck are you talking about? It's insane what people think war is today. War is horrible, awful, terrible. All assets of a country you are at war at are legitimate targets. Babies, puppies, little old ladies. Anything that would stop the German people from trying to rule the world was a legitimate target. Imagine if the Nazis had won the war... Whole races of people could have been wiped off the face of the earth. Imagine if we had taken another 6 months to a year to defeat them and they had come up with their own atomic weapon and dropped it on London...

The very idea that there are "rules of war" is just stupid. War crimes are what the winners of a war charge the leadership of the losers so they can execute them in some semi-legal way.

The rules of engagement that the US military exercises are a token effort made by our leadership because our military is so ridiculously over equipped and the enemy is usually so completely out-classed that it costs us relatively little to avoid some of the more publicly distasteful practices. I promise you, if we ever got into a war with an enemy that was even remotely evenly matched to our military our rules of engagement would be out the window in a heartbeat. Would you shoot some strangers baby in the face if the alternative was that he would shoot your baby in the face? Of course you would. Now shut the fuck up.

Re:Not like the USA

[X0563511]

Here's a dose of perspective:

"Fuck the US, and fuck the US government."

Hey look, not only am I still alive and unharmed, I still have all my rights!

Try that in China, and see what happens.

Re:Not like the USA

[lorenlal]

I completely disagree dude. There are rules to war.

1) Win. Do this in whatever way is necessary to preserve as much of your side as possible.
2) The winners decide how it gets written in history. They're in charge. They are the feel good side, and they dictate how the losers pay for what they did.
3) War criminals are the ones who lost. They got what they asked for. This is the true leadership risk of waging war. If you're the Generalissimo, and you lose, it's your head both figuratively and literally. The soldiers who survive may be tried, but the leaders will most certainly be.
3a) If you welcome the winners with open arms, you're more likely to be in good shape even if you're on the losing side... Assuming the tide doesn't turn and you end up a traitor.
3b) If you fight to the bitter end and lose... It's the bitter end.

Rules of engagement are an attempt to preserve the non-fighting population who will presumably welcome the victors with open arms. I believe it's more of an attempt to maximize follow-up stabilization attempts.

Yes, this is an over-simplification. Please understand that tongue is firmly planted in cheek, even if there's a bit of truthiness in there.

Re:Not like the USA

[JoshuaZ]

You are possibly assuming there a degree of targeting accuracy which they didn't have. Also, many historical building had military import (such as historic railway stations used for moving supplies). Keep in mind in World War II, the accuracy of bombing was so poor that they sometimes bombed the wrong city. If you had a factory or the like in the middle of an area, that wasn't going to help. The more serious problem with Dresden was that arguably they really were targeting civilians. There is some complexity involved though- it isn't clear that the laws of war had yet reached a consensus at that point. See http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jpcl.htm for some relevant points. There's a decent argument also that the presence of factories and the presence of military units stationed in and around Dresden made it a legitimate target. George Marshall made an inquiry that came to that conclusion, but the fact that the US military thought an inquiry was necessary does reflect strongly on the questionable nature of the decision. The argument that the bombing was not justified has been most strongly argued by Alexander McKee who is a historian who has written a fair bit on this subject. Overall, I'd say that McKee's analysis is a strong but not convincing case (although this is also going off my memory of the last time I looked into this subject in detail which was around 5 or 6 years ago).

Re:Not like the USA

[Elldallan]

Another reason that the US military "limits" itself with rules of war is that their leadership recognizes that the US has to keep existing in the political climate after a war. If the US military just went about steamrolling across Afghanistan/Iraq with no concern for civilians there would be huge political repercussions with possible sanctions as a result, not exactly what the US economy needs at the moment.
Another obvious complication with a "real" war is that it would with 100% certainty trigger WWIII and the obliteration of mankind as the countries capable of fighting on similar terms is pretty much limited to Europe, Russia, China, India, Japan and maybe few others and any actions against any one of those nations would trigger a chain reaction that would eventually pull every major industrialized nation into the war.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Historical buildings owned by people with lots of wealth, and whom [sic] had no problems sharing that wealth with the Nazi war machine.

Problem was they hit the historical buildings owned by people with lots of wealth who had very grave misgivings about the Nazi war machine just as hard.

Valid target.

Yes pre-Nueremberg it was. By today's standards it would be judged a war crime.

Sorry.

You are not.

Re:Not like the USA

[Cederic]

Yes, but what's the purpose of war? It's not to kill the enemy, it's not to disable their infrastructure, it's not to reduce their ammunition supplies.

Clausewitz suggested the purpose is the imposition of your will on another. Killing civilians in this day and age reduces your chances of successfully imposing your will, so it's counter-productive, for all the damage you may cause to the enemy.

Think bigger picture.

Re:Not like the USA

[ultranova]

Would you shoot some strangers baby in the face if the alternative was that he would shoot your baby in the face?

Can you explain how shooting a baby in the face will keep anyone from shooting yours? For that matter, how is shooting puppies or little old ladies going to help you win? It won't. If anything it just inspires the enemy. Which gets us to why "rules of war" exist: wars are extremely stressful situations, which cause people fighting in them to do unnecessary or even counterproductive cruelties. Rules of war and rules of engagement exist to try to prevent the more outrageous of these.

Now shut the fuck up.

Do you have some kind of personal stake here? Because you seem to be getting pretty emotional about the topic.

Re:Not like the USA

[TheLink]

There are rules to war. There were plenty of rules that were mostly followed by both sides in WW2.

If you break the rules, more of them may fight you to the death than surrender. For example there is no point surrendering if you are breaking the rules and killing prisoners that surrender. Then even if you eventually win, it would cost you a lot more.

You want to wage a war where the enemy is more likely to surrender than fight you to the bitter end.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

All assets of a country you are at war at are legitimate targets. Babies, puppies, little old ladies. Anything that would stop the German people from trying to rule the world was a legitimate target.

Terrorists can make the same justification against the United States.

Re:Not like the USA

[TapeCutter]

No matter how you spin it, the fire bombing of Dresden and subsequent incineration of 250K civilians was an atrocity that should not have happened, nearly every historian agrees it made no military sense. Face facts, it was an immoral and spiteful target by anyone's standards, you just need to grow up and accept that we can be (and often are) every bit as 'evil' as our percieved enemies, (and I offer the fact that you consider Dressden a 'valid target' as proof of that last claim).

Re:Not like the USA

[TapeCutter]

Keep in mind in World War II, the accuracy of bombing was so poor that they sometimes bombed the wrong city.

Dressden was systematically fire bombed, they diliberately created a huge fire in the center of the city with incendery bombs. It was so large it created it own weather with hurricane strength winds on the outskirts of the city sucking fuel, oxygen, and people into the central furnace. In terms of indescriminate carnage it had the same effect as an atomic bomb, but over a 2 day period.

Apologists for this atrocity will continue to point to the few factories and soldiers in what was essentially a university city where the population were largely opposed to Hitler. Large scale atrocities were commited by boths sides during WW2 that's just basic history, the 'stanford prison experiment' gives us a glimpse as to why we have been repeating that kind of history for thousands of years.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Even the leaked videos from war crimes and outright murder of civilians and reporters from the US military in recent wars has done nothing. These incidents will soon be forgotten. The only thing that will remain will be the official "truth". People don't want to see criminal acts committed by "their troops". They'll hail to the flag and pretend everything is righteous as fuck.

no accident

[je ne sais quoi]

It was no accident, the Shanghai index fell 64.89 points and people starting blogging that since 6/4/89 was the date of Tiananmen massacre, the stock index coincided with the date, which is a particularly infamous one. The censors then blocked those people for discussing the massacre, which is verboten. The NYT has a more in depth article. Now, the fact that the stock market fell by that exact amount by closing (see here) might be an accident, but the censors were doing exactly their job, censoring people discussing the massacre. As the NYT points out, other stock markets have been hacked and this may have be the case here as well, or some other intentional act. The Chinese government is investigating and you may rest assured that we will likely never know what they find since that would draw attention to why they were investigating in the first place.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's something to be said for both big-endian dates (YYYY-MM-DD) and little-endian dates (DD-MM-YYYY). Big-endian dates sort automatically into chronological order. Little-endian dates deliver the most pertinent information (least likely to be obvious from context) first, so you don't have to read the whole date if you already know the year. The same applies to big-endian times (HH:MM) and little-endian times (MM:HH).

Middle-endian dates like MM-DD-YYYY are still meritless and perverse, though.