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Naming of incident The incident is named after the location of the movement in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Some historians also call it "the Beijing massacre". In the Chinese language, the incident is most commonly known as the June Fourth Movement () or June Fourth Event (). The former is in conformity with the other two great protest actions that occurred on Tiananmen Square: the May Fourth Movement of 1919, and the April Fifth Movement of 1976. In some contexts, "June fourth Movement" refers more generally to all the student and civil unrest which occurred throughout China, in addition to the events in Beijing and specifically Tiananmen Square. Background Since 1978, Deng Xiaoping had led a series of economic and political reforms which had led to the gradual implementation of a market economy and some political liberalization that relaxed the system set up by Mao Zedong. By early 1989, these economic and political reforms had led two groups of people to become dissatisfied with the government. The first group included students and intellectuals, who believed that the reforms had not gone far enough and that China needed to reform its political systems, since the economic reforms had only affected farmers and factory workers; the incomes of intellectuals lagged far behind those who had benefited from reform policies. They were concerned about the social and political controls that the Communist Party of China still had. In addition, this group saw the political liberalization that had been undertaken in the name of glasnost by Mikhail Gorbachev. The second group were those, including urban industrial workers, who believed that the social and political reforms had gone too far. The loosening of economic control had begun to cause inflation and unemployment, which threatened their livelihood. In 1989, the primary supporters of the government were rural peasants who had seen their incomes increase considerably during the 1980s as a result of the Party's reforms. However, this support was limited in usefulness because rural peasants were distributed across the countryside. In contrast to urban dwellers who were organized into schools and work units, peasant supporters of the government remained largely unorganized and difficult to mobilize. The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 were in large measure sparked by the death of former Secretary General Hu Yaobang. Hu Yaobang's "resignation" from the position of Secretary General of the CPC had been announced on January 16, 1987. His forthright calls for "rapid reform and his almost open contempt of Maoist excesses" had made him a suitable scapegoat in the eyes of Deng Xiaoping and others, after the pro-democracy student protests of 1986–1987 (Spence 1999, 685). Included in his resignation was also a "humiliating self-criticism", which he was forced to issue by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Hu Yaobang's sudden death, due to heart attack, on April 15, 1989 provided a perfect opportunity for the students to gather once again, not only to mourn the deceased Secretary General, but also to have their voices heard in "demanding a reversal of the verdict against him" and bringing renewed attention to the important issues of the 1986–1987 pro-democracy protests and possibly also to those of the Democracy Wall protests in 1978–1979 (Spence 1999, 697). Protests begin
Protests escalate On May 4, approximately 100,000 students and workers marched in Beijing making demands for free media reform and a formal dialogue between the authorities and student-elected representatives. The government rejected the proposed dialogue, only agreeing to talk to members of appointed student organizations. On May 13, two days prior to the highly-publicized state visit by the reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, huge groups of students occupied Tiananmen Square and started a hunger strike, insisting the government withdraw the accusation made in the People's Daily editorial and begin talks with the designated student representatives. Hundreds of students went on hunger strikes and were supported by hundreds of thousands of protesting students and part of the population of Beijing, for one week. 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 students sang "The Internationale," the world socialist anthem, on their way to and within the square. The students even showed a surprising gesture of respect to the government by helping police arrest three men from Hunan Province who had thrown ink on the large portrait of Mao that hangs from Tiananmen, just north of the square. One of these men, Yu Dongyue, remained in prison until February 2006. Years of torture and bouts of solitary confinement left Yu mentally ill and barely recognisable to his friends and family. Lu Decheng, another of the three who defaced Mao's portrait with paint, was sentenced to life in prison. Despite being paroled in 1998, Lu remained a pariah in his own country, constantly hounded by China's secret police. In November 2004 Lu slipped out of China across the Burmese border, and made his way to Thailand. Months later Chinese agents nabbed Lu and turned him over to the Thai immigration police, intending to have him extradited back to China for more jail time. In April 2006 Lu legally escaped to Canada with a permanent resident visa granted for political asylum.• The students ultimately decided that in order to sustain their movement and impede any loss of momentum a hunger strike would need to be enacted. The students' decision to undertake the hunger strike was a defining moment in their movement. The hunger strike began in May 1989 and grew to include "more than one thousand persons" (Liu 1994, 315). The hunger strike brought widespread support for the students and "the ordinary people of Beijing rallied to protect the hunger strikers...because the act of refusing sustenance and courting government reprisals convinced onlookers that the students were not just seeking personal gains but (were) sacrificing themselves for the Chinese people as a whole" (Calhoun 1994, 113). Partially successful attempts were made to negotiate with the PRC government, who were located nearby in Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters and leadership compound. Because of the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev, foreign media were present in mainland China in large numbers. Their coverage of the protests was extensive and generally favorable towards the protesters, but pessimistic that they would attain their goals. Toward the end of the demonstration, on May 30, 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 Politburo, along with the party elders (retired but still-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 protesters. 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 their studies. One barrier to effective action was that the leadership itself supported many of the demands of the students, especially the concern with corruption. However, one large problem was that the protests contained many people with varying agendas, and hence it was unclear with whom the government could negotiate, and what the demands of the protesters were. The confusion and indecision among the protesters was also mirrored by confusion and indecision within the government. The official media mirrored this indecision as headlines in the People's Daily alternated between sympathy with the demonstrators and denouncing them. Among the top leadership, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was strongly in favour of a soft approach to the demonstrations while Li Peng was seen to argue in favour of a crackdown. Ultimately, the decision to crack down on the demonstrations was made by a group of Party elders who saw abandonment of single-party rule as a return of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Although most of these people had no official position, they were able to control the military. Deng Xiaoping was chairman of the Central Military Commission and was able to declare martial law; Yang Shangkun was President of the People's Republic of China, which, although a symbolic position under the 1982 Constitution, was legally the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The Party elders believed that lengthy demonstrations were a threat to the stability of the country. The demonstrators were seen as tools of advocates of "bourgeois liberalism" who were pulling the strings behind the scenes, as well as tools of elements within the party who wished to further their personal ambitions. The crackdown
Number of deaths The number of dead and wounded remains unclear. An unnamed Chinese Red Cross official at the time reported that 2,600 people were killed and 30,000 were injured. Two days later, Yuan Mu, the speaker of the State Council, estimated that 300 soldiers and citizens died, 5,000 soldiers and 2,000 citizens injured, 400 soldiers lost contact, and that many of the soldiers were burned alive by the protesters. Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and State Council later claimed that tens of PLA soldiers died and more were injured. The Preparatory Committee of Autonomous Associations of Tsinghua University claimed that 4,000 died and 30,000 were injured. Chen Xitong, Beijing mayor, reported after the event that 36 students and tens of soldiers died, amounting to a total of 200 dead, with 3,000 civilians and 6,000 soldiers injured.• Foreign reporters that witnessed the incident have claimed that at least 3,000 people died. Some lists of casualties were created from underground sources with numbers as high as 5,000. In contrast, before the government in Beijing had completely re-established control over the news media in China, a monitored English language broadcast from Beijing stated that at least 3,000 students died in the massacre. At the same time, the Chinese Red Cross reported that they had counted 2,600 people dead - and they still were counting. As both sources are impossible to verify given that access to objective information was impossible under martial law, the discrepancy between the numbers of individuals killed is unresolved. Despite the discrepancy, observers outside China (as well as some inside China) generally agree that at least 400 and perhaps over 1,000 were killed, as quoted by western media such as Los Angeles Times - but cannot agree on the number of people who were injured. The Chinese government has maintained that there were no deaths within the square itself, which appears to outside observers to be technically correct, as the Square itself was evacuated peacefully. Arrests and purges During and after the demonstration, authorities attempted to arrest and prosecute the student leaders of the Chinese democracy movement, notably Wang Dan, Chai Ling, Zhao Changqing and Wuer Kaixi. Wang Dan was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison, then allowed to emigrate to the United States on the grounds of medical parole. As a lesser figure in the demonstrations, Zhao was released after six months in prison. However, he was once again incarcerated for continuing to petition for political reform in China. Wuer Kaixi escaped to the R.O.C. in Taiwan. He is now married and he holds a job as a political commentator on national Taiwan television . Chai Ling escaped to France, and then to the United States. Chinese authorities summarily tried and executed many of the workers they arrested in Beijing. In contrast, the students - many of whom came from relatively affluent backgrounds and were well-connected - received much lighter sentences. Even Wang Dan, the student leader who topped the most wanted list, spent only seven years in prison. The Party leadership expelled Zhao Ziyang from the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of China, because he opposed martial law, and Zhao remained under house arrest until his death. Hu Qili, the other member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China who opposed the martial law but chose not to vote instead of vetoing was also removed from the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, but he was able to retain his party membership, and after "Changing his opinion", he was reassigned as vice-minister of Machine-Building and Electronics Industry. The other member who opposed the martial law by not voting instead vetoing it like Zhao Ziyang did was Qiao Shi, who was saved by his distant biological relationships with Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo because the need for Taiwan issue: although Qiao Shi was also kicked out of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, he was transferred to a different job with equal rank, though the post was mostly ceremonial. Other reform minded Chinese leaders such as Wan Li was also put under house arrest immediately after he stepped out of the airplane at Beijing Capital International Airport upon returning from his shortened trip abroad, with the official excuse of "health reason". When Wan Li was released from his house arrest after he finally "changed his opinion", he too, like Qiao Shi, was transferred to a different position with equal rank but mostly ceremonial role. The event elevated Jiang Zemin - then Mayor of Shanghai who was not involved in this event - to become PRC's President. Members of the government prepared a white paper explaining the government's viewpoint on the protests. An anonymous source within the PRC government smuggled the document out of China, and PublicAffairs published it in January 2001 as the Tiananmen Papers. The papers include a quote by Communist Party elder Wang Zhen which alludes to the government's response to the demonstrations. Two CCTV presenters who reported the events of June 4 in the "News Network" program were fired soon after the event. Wu Xiaoyong, the son of a Communist Party of China Central Committee member, and former PRC foreign minister and vice premier Wu Xueqian were removed from the English Program Department of Chinese Radio International. Qian Liren, director of the People's Daily (the newspaper of the Communist Party of China), was also removed from his post because of reports in the paper which were sympathetic towards the students. Media coverage The Tiananmen Square protests damaged the reputation of the PRC in the West. Western media had been invited to cover the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev in May, and were thus in an excellent position to cover some of the government crackdown live through networks such as the BBC and CNN. Protestors seized this opportunity, creating signs and banners designed for international television audiences. Coverage was further facilitated by the sharp conflicts within the Chinese government about how to handle the protests. Thus broadcasting was not immediately stopped. CNN was eventually ordered to terminate broadcasts from the city during the crackdown, and although the networks attempted to defy these orders and were able to cover the protests via telephone, the government was able to shut down the satellite links. Nonetheless, the image of "the unknown rebel", in particular, was quickly broadcast on international news programs. Images of the protests - along with the collapse of Communism that was occurring at the same time in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe - would strongly shape Western views and policy toward the PRC throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century. There was considerable sympathy for the student protests among Chinese students in the West. Almost immediately, both the United States and the European Union announced an arms embargo, and China's image as reforming country and valuable ally against the Soviet Union was replaced by that of a repressive authoritarian regime. The Tiananmen protests were frequently invoked to argue against trade liberalization with mainland China and by the United States' Blue Team as evidence that the PRC government was an aggressive threat to world peace and US interests. Among overseas Chinese students, the Tiananmen Square protests triggered the formation of Internet news services such as the China News Digest and the NGO China Support Network. In the aftermath of Tiananmen, organizations such as the China Alliance for Democracy and the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars were formed, although these organizations would have limited political impact beyond the mid-1990s. The incident also made its way into a number of pop songs. It was mentioned in Billy Joel's history-themed song "We Didn't Start the Fire" ("China's under martial law"); it was also the subject of Joan Baez' 1989 song "China" and "The Tiananmen Man" by Nevermore. The song "Watching TV" from Roger Waters' 1992 solo album Amused to Death explores the influence of mass media on the protests. More recently, it was the subject of the 2005 song "Hypnotize" by System of a Down. The Cure also performed a version of their own song "Faith" on the same day as the disaster, dedicated to the people who died. Impact on domestic political trends
Economic impact One reason for this was that the Tiananmen protests did not mark the end of economic reform. Granted, in the immediate aftermath of the protests, conservatives within the Communist Party attempted to curtail some of the free market reforms that had been undertaken as part of Chinese economic reform, and reinstitute administrative controls over the economy. However, these efforts met with stiff resistance from provincial governors and broke down completely in the early 1990s as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Deng Xiaoping's trip to the south. The continuance of economic reform led to economic growth in the 1990s, which allowed the government to regain much of the support that it had lost in 1989. In addition, none of the current PRC leadership played any active role in the decision to move against the demonstrators, and one major leadership figure Premier Wen Jiabao was an aide to Zhao Ziyang and accompanied him to meet the demonstrators. Today there are economic "sectors" in which business can thrive and this has improved the lives of many Chinese and opened up economic freedom and access to goods. The students leaders at Tiananmen were unable to produce a coherent movement or ideology that would last past the mid-1990s. Many of the student leaders came from relatively well off sectors of society and were seen as out of touch with common people. A number of them were socialists and wanted to revert China back to the socialist road. Many of the organizations which were started in the aftermath of Tiananmen soon fell apart due to personal infighting. Several overseas democracy activists were supportive of limiting trade with mainland China which significantly decreased their popularity both within China and among the overseas Chinese community. A number of NGOs based in the U.S., which aim to bring democratic reform to China and relentlessly protest human rights violations that occur in China, remain. One of the oldest and most prominent of them, the China Support Network (CSN), was founded in 1989 by a group of concerned Americans and Chinese activists in response to Tiananmen Square. A generation gap Growing up with little memory of Tiananmen and no memory of the Cultural Revolution, but with a full appreciation of the rising prosperity and international influence of the PRC as well as the difficulties that Russia has had since the end of the Cold War, many Chinese no longer consider immediate political liberalization to be wise, preferring to see slow stepwise democratization instead. Many young Chinese, in view of PRC's rise, are now more concerned with economic development, nationalism, the restoration of China's prestige in international affairs, and perceived governmental weakness on issues like the political status of Taiwan or the Diaoyu Islands dispute with Japan. Among intellectuals in mainland China, the impact of the Tiananmen protests appears to have created something of a generation gap. Intellectuals who were in their 20s at the time of the protests tend to be far less supportive of the PRC government than younger students who were born after the start of the Deng Xiaoping reforms. Among urban industrial workers, the continuation of market reforms in the 1990s brought with it higher standards of living as well as increased economic uncertainty. Protests by urban industrial workers over issues such as unpaid wages and local corruption remain frequent with estimates of several thousand of these protests occurring each year. The Communist Party of China appears unwilling to suffer the negative attention of suppressing these protests provided that protests remain directed at a local issue and do not call for deeper reform and do not involve coordination with other workers. In a reversal of the situation in 1989, the centre of discontent in mainland China appears to be in rural areas, which have seen incomes stagnate in the 1990s and have not been involved in much of the economic boom of that decade. However, just as the lack of organization and the distribution of peasants prevented them from becoming mobilized in support of the government in 1989, these factors also inhibit mobilization against the government in the early-21st century. Taboo in China The topic is still a political taboo in mainland China, where any public discussion of it is regarded as inappropriate. The only media coverage takes the Communist Party of China's view: that it was a necessary action to ensure stability. It is common for Chinese, especially younger Chinese who live far from Beijing, to be entirely unaware of the Tiananmen protests. Every year there is a large rally in Hong Kong, where people remember the victims and demand that the CPC's official view be changed. However, petition letters over the incident have emerged from time to time, notably from Dr. Jiang Yanyong and Tiananmen Mothers, an organization founded by a mother of one of the victims killed in 1989. Tiananmen Square is tightly patrolled on the anniversary of June 4 to prevent any commemoration. After the PRC Central Government reshuffle in 2004, several cabinet members mentioned Tiananmen. In October 2004, during President Hu Jintao's visit to France, he reiterated that "the government took determined action to calm the political storm of 1989, and enabled China to enjoy a stable development". He insisted that the government's view on the incident would not change. In March 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao said in a press conference that during the 1990s there was a severe political storm in the PRC, amid the breakdown of the Soviet Union and radical changes in Eastern Europe. He stated that the Communist Central Committee successfully stabilized the open-door policy and protected the "Career of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics". In 2005, Li Ao, a Taiwanese political activist and TV celebrity, gave a guest lecture at Peking University. He hinted at the 1989 protests by referring to the Bonus March Incident• in the United States nearly 50 years earlier. In the speech, he asserted that any national government in the world would resort to using military force when their rule is threatened. In January 2006, Google agreed to censor their mainland China site, Google.cn, to remove information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre *, as well as other topics such as Tibetan independence, the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and the political status of Taiwan, confirming that Tiananmen is still an issue the government wants to avoid. The uncensored Wikipedia articles on the 1989 protests, both in English and Chinese, have been attributed as a cause of the blocking of Wikipedia by the government in mainland China. US-EU arms embargo The United States and European Union embargo on weapons sales to the PRC, put in place as a result of the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests still remains in place 17 years later. The PRC has been calling for a lifting of the ban for many years and has had a varying amount of support from members of the Council of the European Union. In early 2004, France spearheaded the movement within the EU to lift the ban. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder publicly added his voice to that of French President Jacques Chirac to have the embargo lifted. The arms embargo was discussed at a PRC-EU summit in the Netherlands on December 7-9, 2004. In the runup to the summit, the PRC had attempted to increase pressure on the EU Council to lift the ban by warning that the ban could hurt PRC-EU relations. PRC Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui called the ban "outdated", and he told reporters, "If the ban is maintained, bilateral relations will definitely be affected." In the end, the EU Council did not lift the ban. EU spokeswoman Françoise le Bail said there were still concerns about the PRC's commitment to human rights. But at the time, the EU did state its commitment to work towards lifting the ban. Bernard Bot, Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, which held the EU's rotating presidency at that time, said, "We are working assiduously but...the time is not right to lift the embargo." Following the summit, the EU Council confirmed that it had the political will to continue to work towards lifting the embargo. PRC Premier Wen Jiabao said after the meeting that the embargo did not reflect the partnership between the PRC and the EU. The PRC continued to press for the embargo to be lifted, and some member states began to drop their opposition. Jacques Chirac pledged to have the ban lifted by mid-2005. However, the Anti-Secession Law of the People's Republic of China passed in March 2005 increased cross-strait tensions, damaging attempts to lift the ban, and several EU Council members changed their minds. Members of the U.S. Congress had also proposed restrictions on the transfer of military technology to the EU if they lifted the ban. Thus the EU Council failed to reach a consensus and although France and Germany pushed to have the embargo lifted, no decision was agreed upon in subsequent meetings. Britain took charge of the EU Presidency in the summer of 2005, making the lifting of the embargo all but impossible for the duration of the term. Britain had always had some reservations on lifting the ban and wished to put it to the side, rather than sour EU-US relations further. Perhaps more importantly, the failure of the European Constitution and the ensuing disagreement over the European Budget and Common Agricultural Policy has superseded the matter of the embargo in importance. Britain wanted to use its presidency to push for wholesale reform of the EU, so the lifting of the ban will become even more unlikely. The election of a new European Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso, has also made a lifting of the ban more difficult. At a meeting with Chinese leaders in mid-July 2005, he said that China's poor record on human rights would slow any changes to the EU's ban on arms sales to China. Political will may be changing in countries that are more in favor of lifting the embargo. Schröder lost the 2005 German federal election to Angela Merkel, who became chancellor on November 22, 2005, and is strongly against lifting the ban. Other opposition leaders are against lifting the ban. Jacques Chirac will find it difficult to remain president in 2007—he may not even be a successful candidate, due to losing the French vote over the European Constitution. Nicolas Sarkozy is a strong contender for the French presidency and is not as much in favor of lifting the ban as Chirac is. In addition, the European Parliament has consistently opposed the lifting of the arms embargo to the PRC. Though its agreement is not necessary for lifting the ban, many argue it reflects the will of the European people better as it is the only directly elected European body—the EU Council is appointed by member states. The European Parliament has repeatedly opposed any lifting of the arms embargo on the PRC: This arms embargo has limited China's options from where it may seek military hardware. Among the sources that were sought included the former Soviet bloc that it had a strained relationship with as a result of the Sino-Soviet split. Other willing suppliers have been Israel and South Africa. Compensation Although the Chinese government never acknowledged wrongdoing when it came to the incident, in April 2006 a payment was made to the family of one of the victims, the first publicized case of the government offering redress to a Tiananmen-related victim's family. The payment was termed a "hardship assistance", given to Tang Deying (唐德英) whose son, Zhou Guocong (） died at the age of 15 while in police custody in Chengdu on June 6 1989, two days after the Chinese Army dispersed the Tiananmen protestors. The woman was reportedly paid 70,000 yuan (approximately $8,700 USD). This has been welcomed by various Chinese activists, but was regarded by some as a measure to maintain social stability and not believed to herald a changing of the Party's official position.• See also Footnotes | |||||||||||||||
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