1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

The Tiananmen Square protests were a set of national protests in the People's Republic of China which occurred between April 15, 1989 and June 4, 1989, centered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The protests were part of a conflict between Chinese democracy movement and the Chinese Communist Party. The protest started because of the death of the former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Yaobang, who was ousted after protests in Tiananmen in 1987.

In Beijing a majority of the students from the numerous colleges and universities participated with support of their instructors and other intellectuals. The students repudiated their official Communist Party controlled student associations and set up their own autonomous associations. The students viewed themselves as Chinese patriots, as the heirs of the May Fourth Movement for "science and democracy" of May 4, 1919. From its beginning as a memorial to Hu Yaobang, who was seen by the students as an advocate of democracy, the students goals gradually developed over the course of their demonstration from protests against corruption into demands for freedom of the press and an end of the rule of China by the Politbureau and Deng Xiaoping, a Party elder who ruled from behind the scene. Attempts, partly successful, were made to reach out and network with students in other cities and with workers. In Beijing, they were supported by a large fraction of the population, perhaps a majority. At their height, the protests involved over a million people.

Protests and strikes began at many colleges in other cities with many students traveling to Beijing to join the demonstration. Generally the demonstration at Tiananmen Square was well ordered with daily marches of students from various Beijing area colleges displaying their solidarity with the boycott of college classes and with the developing demands of the protest. The main tactic finally hit on was a hunger strike by several hundred to more than a thousand students. Attempts, partly successful. were made to negotiate with the Chinese rulers, who were located nearby in Zhongnanhai a government compound. Foreign media coverage of the protests was extensive and generally favorable, although pessimistic as to the ultimate outcome. Toward the end of the demonstration a statue of the Goddess of Democracy was erected in the Square and came to symbolize the protest to television viewers worldwide.

The Standing Committee of the Politbureau, along with the Party elders, retired but influential former officials of the government and Party, were at first hopeful that the demonstrations would be short-lived or that cosmetic reforms and investigations would satisfy the protestors. They wished to avoid violence if possible and relied at first on their far-reaching Party apparatus in attempts to persuade the students to abandon the protest and return to class. One barrier to effective action was that the leadership itself supported many of the demands of the students, expecially the concern with corruption. In the end, it proved impossible to satisfy the demands of the protestors whose demands had escalated. There was some minor disagreement within the ruling group, but all agreed that the lengthy demonstrations were a threat to the stablility of the country and especially to their continued rule. Abandonment of one party rule was seen by the leadership as a recipe for chaos. The demonstrators were seen as tools of advocates of "bourgeois liberalism" who were pulling the strings behind the scenes.

In the end martial law was declared. This by itself was not sufficient. The demonstations continued with popular support. After several weeks a decision was made to forceably clean the Square of protesters. Entry of the troops into the city was actively opposed by the citizens of Beijing, resulting in an estimated 3 thousand deaths in the city as a whole. There were battles during the entry of the troops into the city with a few military casualties. Extensive roadblocks were constructed by the cititzens of Beijing and progess was slow, but the Square was cleared of demonstrators during the night of June 4. The battle continued on the streets surrounding the Square with protestors repeatedly advancing toward the heavily armed troops who responded with automatic weapons fire. The suppression of the protest was symbolised by the famous footage of a lone protester standing in front of a column of advancing tanks, halting their progress.

Attempts were made during and after the suppression of the demonstation to arrest and prosecute the student leaders, notably Wang Dan and Wuerkaixi. Wang Dan was caught and convicted, then allowed to emigrate to the United States. Wuerkaixi escaped to Taiwan. Within the leadership, Zhao Ziyang who had opposed martial law was removed from power and Jiang Zemin elevated. Members of the government eventually prepared a white paper on the incident which was published in the West as The Tiananmen Papers which gives the government viewpoint on the protests, although it protrays itself as the work of an anonymous dissenter within the govenment.

Some lists of the victims were created from underground sources but no official list of the victims of what became known as the Tiananmen Massacre was made. Because there were numerous eyewitness to the killings Chinese government claims that there were no killings within Tiananmen Square itself and that the total killed was in the low hundreds are not credible.

The Tiananmen Protests seriously damaged the reputation of China in the West. Within China itself, the effects of the protests were more mixed. Economic growth in the 1990's in contrast to collapsing Soviet Union allowed the Chinese government to regain much of the support that it had lost in 1989 although little or no support remains for the Communist Party of China itself and its ideology.

Further Reading

• The Tiananmen Papers, The Chinese Leadership's Decision to Use Force Against their Own People--In their Own Words, Compiled by Zhang Liang, Edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, with an afterword by Orville Schell, PublicAffairs, New York, 2001, hardback, 514 pages, ISBN 1-58648-012-X
• June Fourth: The True Story, Tian'anmen Papers/Zhongguo Liusi Zhenxiang Volumes1-2 (Chinese edition), Zhang Liang, ISBN 9628744364
• Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, Jan Wong, Doubleday, 1997, trade paperback, 416 pages, ISBN 0385482329 (Contains besides extensive autobiographical material an eyewitness account of the Tiananmen Massacre and the basis for a realistic estimate of the number of victims.)