China: Tiananmen Square

It is May 4th, 1989. Later in the year, the Berlin wall will come down, but on this particular day there are roughly 100,000 students and workers gathered on the streets of Beijing, many of them in Tiananmen Square. Fifty years earlier Mao Zedong had stood in this same square and declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China, but these protesters are gathered for a very different reason. They are gathered after the death of Hu Yaobang, a pro-democracy government official, and are protesting for economic change and an end to the Chinese government’s authoritarianism. The protests, which started on April 15th, have lasted for three weeks. In another month the Chinese government will send tanks and soldiers into the square, ending the protest and resulting in the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Although they culminated in the brutality of the massacre, the roots of the event lie in decades of civil, economic, and political unrest. The late 80s were a time when many communist regimes around the world were faltering or already crumbled. Communism, in its then-incarnation, was seeing a great weakening of influence, and the relaxing of many political and economic rules by Deng Xiaoping (who was then the de facto leader of the Communist Party) in 1978 had given the Chinese people a faint idea of what life could be like under a different political system. The students also wanted an end to the government nepotism taking place among the Communist Party elders, who were hardline socialists and who were themselves in a tug-of-war with the reform-minded Xiaoping.

There had been previous pro-democracy protests in China. Students gathered in 1986 to protest the government’s slow pace of democratization. These protests were seen by party elders as a sign that liberalization was causing social unrest, and as a result Hu Yaobang, who was blamed for the protests, was forced not only to resign but to write an embarrassing letter of self-incrimination as well. Part of the reason for the 1989 protests was not only to memorialize Yaobang’s death, but also to challenge the disgraceful way in which the Communist Party handled his forced retirement.

In late April many political leaders who were sympathetic to the protesters were placed under house arrest. Fearing a lack of action from local military—many in the Beijing-area military units commiserated with the protesters—the government called in military units from neighboring provinces. These units’ geographical and social distance from the city-dwelling Beijing protesters was later viewed as a large contributing factor to the indiscriminate and brutal nature of the massacre.

A month before the massacre, in early May, the students had begun a hunger strike. The Chinese people viewed this as a move of solidarity—not only was there widespread hunger in China, but the move was seen as a selfless sacrifice toward bettering the country. The protest was also viewed with hope by the foreign media, who were present in large numbers in the country due to a visit by Mikhail Gorbachev. Still, though hopeful, foreign correspondents were doubtful that the protests would have the desired result.

On May 19th, in what would become his last public appearance, Zhao Ziyang would give sympathetic a speech to the assembled protesters urging them to end their hunger strike. Ziyang, who was the General Secretary of the Communist Party, was aligned with Xiaoping in his pro-market stance. Soon after this speech to the students he was placed under house arrest, where he would remain until his death, sixteen years later. This would be one of the last instances in which talks or negotiations were held between the government and the protesters. The next day the government declared a state of martial law, and late on the night of April 3rd the Chinese army began their move into the square.

The suppression was brutal and immediate. Soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Protesters were crushed under the treads of APCs and tanks. Those who tried to hide were beaten, and even those who left the square were often assaulted by soldiers who met them on their way out. A little over seven hours later, by 5:40 a.m., the square was empty.

On the following day, June 5th, a lone protester stood in front of a line of tanks which were driving out of the square. The tank drivers, who refused to run him over, repeatedly attempted to drive around, but each time he moved back into their path. He became known as the “Tank Man,” and became an iconic symbol of the spirit of revolution that existed in the Chinese people. After repeatedly blocking the tanks he was removed by the secret police and presumably executed, though the Chinese government denies this claim. His real name and whereabouts are unknown, yet the chilling photographs and video footage of the event remain as some of the most poignant and inspiring symbols of the protest.

Estimates on the number of casualties vary. The Chinese government’s official figure is 241 dead, but the Chinese Red Cross estimates more than 2,500, while Amnesty International believes the number to be closer to 1,000.

Worldwide, reactions to the massacre and crackdown were overwhelmingly negative. Some countries, such as East Germany, North Korea, Cuba, and Pakistan issued support for the Chinese Government. Most, though, condemned the government’s actions. Many, such as Japan, suspended all loans to the country. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President George H.W. Bush strongly criticized the killing of unarmed civilians. Bush cancelled all military sales to the Chinese government, and large protests took place throughout the U.S.

After the protest the Chinese government began a crackdown aimed at students, workers, and sympathetic party members. Many were detained or put under house arrest, some convicted and sentenced to long stays in prison. The press freedoms which had existed following 1978 were rescinded, and many journalists found themselves fired, arrested, or blacklisted. In addition, many of the protestors who were detained were economically stigmatized, unable to find work.

For the most part the Chinese government ignored the condemnation issuing from the outside world. In many ways the crackdown had the opposite effect than what the students had originally protested for, with many intended economic and political reforms being pushed aside in the wake of the social upheaval. The biggest effect from without came with economic sanctions from many large loan countries as well as the World Bank. Additionally, Chinese tourism revenue dropped more than a quarter of a billion dollars, and military spending within the country almost doubled. Still, the Communist Party maintained their hold on the country.

Over the course of the following years the Chinese government began systematically removing all mention of the protests and ensuing crackdown from media archives and literature. No protests of similar type or size have occurred in China since the Tiananmen Square protests, and the country remains in a political haze. Today the subject, along with most political subjects in China, is considered taboo, and is not taught in any of the country’s history curriculums—students in China usually learn about the protests from foreign sources, if at all.