Tiananmen Square

On 15 April 1989, the former reform-minded General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hu Yaobang (1915–89), died of a massive heart attack. Several hundred people gathered in Tiananmen Square to lay wreaths and flowers, and about five thousand students began a sit-in. Some of the students were beaten by police on April 20, and the next day more than 200,000 students and citizens marched to the Square to protest the incident. Student representatives demanded the posthumous rehabilitation of Hu in a petition that was presented at the Great Hall of the People just west of the Square. When their request to meet with Premier Li Peng was ignored, thousands of students at thirty-seven universities in Beijing boycotted classes, and the protest escalated into a prodemocracy movement.

On 25 April, Li Peng and other officials went to the home of the PRC's (People's Republic of China) paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, to report on the situation. Deng's response formed the basis of an editorial that appeared in People's Daily the following [Page 1542]day. The article accused a “handful of plotters” of being “unpatriotic,” and of creating turmoil with the aim of overthrowing the Party leadership and the socialist system.

The next day, students from over forty universities marched to Tiananmen Square to protest the editorial. On 4 May, about 200,000 people celebrated the seventieth anniversary of the 1919 pro-democracy May Fourth Movement, demanding accelerated political and economic reform. Zhao Ziyang, who had replaced Hu Yaobang in 1987 as Party General Secretary, spoke sympathetically of the students to directors of the Asian Development Bank, essentially contradicting the editorial. The government and Party leadership were split on how to handle the crisis. Meanwhile, about two thousand students staged a hunger strike at the Square beginning on 13 May. When Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Beijing for a summit meeting with Deng Xiaoping on 15 May, the government was forced to redirect the welcoming ceremony away from the Square. On 20 May, martial law was declared in Beijing, but for two weeks over a million students, workers, army personnel, civil servants, and others blocked the advance of 150,000 to 200,000 troops towards the city. Zhao Ziyang was stripped of his power on 21 May and ten days later replaced by Jiang Zemin, the Shanghai Party chief. On June 3 and 4, People's Liberation Army (PLA) tanks and armored carriers rolled in, clearing the Square and killing scores of people.

This entry deals with the role of the central leadership in the decision making that led up to June 3 (and not with the student organizers or the protest movement). Although the central leadership was divided during the course of the crisis, it made three major decisions: (1) to remove Zhao Ziyang as Party General Secretary, (2) to declare martial law, and (3) to send in troops to clear the Square. Since these leadership decisions ultimately led to the bloodshed of June 1989, the character of the decision-makers and the process by which they arrived at their decisions need to be explained.

...