The man’s name is Col. Robert Helvey. I’ve posted links elsewhere.

Force was necessary subsquently because of the violent riot and mini-civil war ensued when the students wouldn’t clear the square.

Crud! Should proofread more than once. I meant:

it was about anti-corruption; it was about dissatisfaction of unfilled reform promises. It was about many, many things that closely concerned the average citizens of the China then.

I was not old enough to participate June 4th, but I talked to my parents and elderly in my family who participated. There were many interesting things I heard from their perspective.

At the time, my mother was an graduate student in Nanjin, a city in southern China; and my father was working in our hometown, in northern part of China. They both participated the protests and marches in cities they were in. One common theme I hear, and resonate with this article, is the June 4th movement was not about democracy! At least to many outside Beijing. My mother recounted that period: everyone at her university was excited – her schoolmates, her friends, her professors! “Let’s fight the corruption!”, they yelled. She and her friends didn’t understood democracy, they didn’t care either; they want clean up corruption. That’s all! “Why won’t they let us? What’s wrong with that?!” The movement was not exactly about democracy; it was about anti-corruption; it was not dissatisfaction of unfilled reform promises. It was about many, many things that closeful concerned the average citizens of the China then.

Also to BMY:
So why needed send solders with machine guns and tanks . Would possible the protesters been driven out without firing live bullets?

Another interesting perspective, which I had not heard much in discussions around June 4th. The government’s greatest fear was not the students, though it originated from them. Their greatest fear was that the top officials were beginning to divide in factions amongst themselves about how to lead the country. The military was divided in support of different factions. There was a fear of a civil war!

Some of my mother’s schoolmates from undergrads worked in the navy then. Soon after June 4th, they warned her to fled the South. “Go back to home before it’s too late! There might be a civil war between the North and South, and a lockdown!” She explained, her friends in navy leaked to her that in usual (peaceful) times, the military isn’t loaded with real ammunitions. But after(or around) the June 4th, the navy was fully loaded. Indeed, soon after she left for home, commute between North and South was broken off. There was a undercurrent of a civil war. THAT, was the greatest fear of the party leaders, of Deng XiaoPing.

Deng feared the rebellion from the military.
Right before the June 4th, there were alot of scaffolding of the army. Part of the army from one province would be sent to a far away province, and that province’s army sent to yet another province. Back forth. If the trouble was just the students, or average citizens alone, BMY, you said, they didn’t had any weapons, was there really a necessity to order tanks to come in? The fear was deeper and something more dangerous than that. The fear of a civil war lead by military heads, dangerous undercurrent within the party, a rebillion from the army.

Do I wish there had been a different ending? Do I wish that there was a less so bloody way to deal with the protest? HELL YES! But, above is my understanding of the reasons why the party sent in heavy military in June.

Back then, VOA and BBC were the only “creditble” sources we had. We had very limited knowledge about the west, we only knew that the west was much richer and advanced, and many in China at the time thought democracy must have something to do with their success. I think what happened in China and Russia after 64 has proved that theory to be wrong.

It would be naive to think that the west has nothing to do with 64. The Soviet Union was about to collapse, why would the west stop there?

How “Color Revolution” is done? Here is a Japanese documentary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nLgxTZCylg

“It would be an exaggeration to say the Western forces “stirred up the rebellion” particularly if we mean single-handedly, but they certainly fanned the flames because they weren’t accountable to Chinese people.”
Ever thought of any other entity that was not accountable to the Chinese people at this time? Perhaps the CCP, whose army was sent into Beijing to kill civilians? Or is that accountability in your mind?

+++++
Thanks for making my point for me, overseaschinese. Does the CCP being accountable or not at the time (I don’t to argue this here) make a difference to my argument? How does jumping from one unaccountable host to another make sense? The high cost of revolution demands the highest reward. Was that kind of reward there? It is a high recognition of civic values when you realize that you yourselves hold the first and ultimate responsibility for your welfare, not the CCP perhaps but also not some foreign country. It is too bad that in 1989, too many were so enamored with the West that they thought the West to be saviors, and were ready to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

I think he misunderstood the terms of “public discussion on Six Four” . the discussion of most of his views has been public since even before June 4th 1989 something like the culture revolution style and language of the movement, domestic/international political elements behind the movement, the “students leader’s budgets, some calling for a complete copy the Western experience etc etc .

My understanding of the “public discussion on Six Four” is about that day: what happened and why it happened in that bloody way in that day.

It has been 19 years, my memory dose not keep everything. For sure , the hungry strike, the months long protest, the personal attacking slogans, the months long illegal occupation of the square, the months long class stopping would go nowhere .But I do remember the protesting peak time has past before the end of May. The time of all the workers, element school kids came out to protest had gone. There was no protesting in other cities in early June. There were no mass gathering in Tiananmen. There was once or twice about over a million people in Tiananmen. However they were in April or May I can’t remember exactly but not in June. The majority of the students in Tiananmen in June were traveled from other cities and they were not that many in numbers. It was chaos in some stage and some area of Beijing. But all the work units,the government institutions, the army, the police, the peasants all over the country were all under control. In the most part of Beijing, the police still controlled the traffic. Tiananmen was just a tiny place occupied by teenager students. The students were not smuggling guns into the square to prepare a armed rebellion.
So why needed send solders with machine guns and tanks . Would possible the protesters been driven out without firing live bullets? Would the lost of lives of both civilians and soldiers can be avoided even the students didn’t want to leave? I did see bodies and blood pool in Changanjie and I did see one soldier was chasing up by a group of civilians close to MuQuDi in the early morning of 6/4.

It was a big tragedy. The civilians might need to learn how to protest properly and rationally and the government might need to learn how to deal with protest even riot properly without sending machine guns and tanks. We all need learn from the tragedy and avoid it happens again in our nation.

Perhaps the better translation would be “fanned” the flames. At the very least, I’ve heard second-hand from those who were in Beijing remember with bitterness what they (now) consider false messages coming from Voice of America.

I wasn’t listening to Voice of America, so I don’t have a detailed list of what was said. Perhaps AC or someone else that was there can tell us. But I’ve heard it passed on (started?) rumors claiming Deng Xiaoping had died, that civil war had erupted… only rumors that had the effect of inflaming passions.

And there are still numerous questions about the student movement’s budget…

Whatever 6-4 is, it is not for naught. It was an important inflection point for China and Chinese people all learned a lot, although what lesson they took away can be very different. A generation grew up, and China grew up. Chinese people today are more sophisticated than 20 years ago and seem to have concluded that nobody but themselves will have their interests at heart.

It would be an exaggeration to say the Western forces “stirred up the rebellion” particularly if we mean single-handedly, but they certainly fanned the flames because they weren’t accountable to Chinese people.

Perhaps I have missed something?