Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1989 Tiān'ānmén Square Protests
In January 1987 the party's conservative gerontocrats ousted the pro-reform party chief
Hu Yaobang and, when he suddenly died in the spring of 1989, Běijīng students began as-
sembling on Tiān'ānmén Square. Officially they were mourning his passing but they
began to raise slogans for political reform and against corruption. The protests snowballed
as the Communist Party leadership split into rival factions, causing a rare paralysis. The
police stood by as the protests spread across the country and workers, officials and ordin-
ary citizens took to the streets. When the military tried to intervene, Beijingers surrounded
the tanks. The students set up tents on Tiān'ānmén Square and went on a hunger strike.
When the premier Li Peng held a dialogue with the students that was aired live on TV, stu-
dent leaders sarcastically upbraided him.
The students created the first independent student union since
1919 and celebrated the anniversary of the May Fourth Move-
ment with a demonstration in which over a million people took
to the streets. For the first time since 1949, the press threw off
the shackles of state censorship and became independent. When
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev entered on a state visit, and
was enthusiastically welcomed as a symbol of political reform,
it seemed as if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), too, would
embrace political change. Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang
led the reformist faction, but the older-generation leaders, led by
Deng Xiaoping, decided to arrest Zhao and retake the city with a
military assault. On the night of 3 June, tens of thousands of
troops backed by tanks and armoured personnel carriers entered
the city from four directions, bulldozing aside the hastily erected
barricades.
History
Books
The City of Heavenly Tranquil-
ity: Beijing in the History of Ch-
ina
(Jasper Becker)
The Penguin History of Modern
China: The Fall and Rise of a
Great Power 1850-2008
(Jonathan Fenby)
The Siege at Peking
(Peter Fleming)
The Dragon Empress
(Marina Warner)
Many people died - some say hundreds, some thousands -
and by the early hours of 4 June the troops were in control of the square. In the crackdown
that followed across the country, student leaders escaped abroad while the Communist
Party arrested thousands of students and their supporters, and conducted a purge of party
members. Yet the 1989 protests remain the largest political demonstrations in Chinese his-
tory.
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