Thursday, January 5, 2017

Declassified Cable from Brit Embassy Predicting Tiananmen Massacre Weeks in Advance

Below is a recently declassified cable from the Margaret Thatcher archives.


Of Note: Stuart Schram (1924 – 2012) was an American physicist, political scientist and sinologist who specialized in the study of modern Chinese politics. he knew the Chinese but it is likely he would have presented the above information as a point of fact rather than a warning.

Despite researching Mao and being aware that Mao was responsible for millions of deaths, Schram had "trouble" determining whether Mao was good or bad for China.

Fellow Mao scholar, Roderick MacFarquhar, recalls Schram saying “I agree with the current Chinese view that Mao’s merits outweighed his faults, but it is not easy to put a figure on the positive and negative aspects. How does one weigh, for example, the good fortune of hundreds of millions of peasants in getting land against the execution, in the course of land reform and the 'Campaign against Counter-Revolutionaries,' or in other contexts, of millions, some of whom certainly deserved to die, but others of whom undoubtedly did not? How does one balance the achievements in economic development during the first Five-Year Plan, or during the whole twenty-seven years of Mao’s leadership after 1949, against the starvation which came in the wake of the misguided enthusiasm of the Great Leap Forward, or the bloody shambles of the Cultural Revolution?”

Read the full cable here. It is clear the Tiananmen Massacre was a well thought out strategy by top Chinese officials including Deng Xiaoping.

 -RW

(via Thomas Hancock)

2 comments:

  1. Too bad Wikileaks wasn't around then.

    Is it Thatcher's libertarian obligation to do nothing with the intel and stay out of foreign affairs or to try and alert the leaders of the protest or otherwise prevent the bloodshed from happening?

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    1. Just remember Thatcher had spent 9 years trying to make her own bunch of lazy layabouts pull their socks up.
      http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/06/07/leave-china-alone/

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