Tiananmen Square Protests 1989: Democracy Movement and Crackdown

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a seven-week movement in which students, joined by workers and other citizens, occupied the central square of Beijing to demand political reform. They ended on the night of 3-4 June 1989, when the Chinese government sent the army into the capital and troops opened fire on crowds, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of people. The crackdown shaped the course of modern China and remains one of the most censored subjects in the country.

Background

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping launched economic reforms that opened China to markets and foreign investment. The reform and opening-up policy raised living standards, but by the late 1980s it had also produced high inflation, visible corruption among officials and their relatives, and frustration among university graduates whose prospects lagged behind their expectations.

Debate about political change was unusually open in the 1980s. Intellectuals discussed democracy and press freedom, and a wave of student demonstrations in late 1986 led to the forced resignation of the party’s general secretary, Hu Yaobang, in January 1987. Hu was widely seen as sympathetic to reform. His successor, Zhao Ziyang, also favoured economic liberalisation, while Premier Li Peng and many party elders were more conservative.

Internationally, communist systems were under strain. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), and in Poland and Hungary communist governments were negotiating with opposition movements.

How the protests began

Hu Yaobang died of a heart attack on 15 April 1989. Students from Beijing’s universities began laying wreaths at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, and the mourning quickly turned into demonstrations calling for dialogue with the government, freedom of the press and action against corruption. On the night before Hu’s state funeral on 22 April, tens of thousands of students gathered in the square.

On 26 April the official newspaper People’s Daily published an editorial describing the movement as planned “turmoil” aimed at the party. The editorial, which reflected Deng Xiaoping’s views, angered students who saw themselves as patriotic. On 27 April a very large march broke through police lines, and many Beijing residents cheered the students on. Further demonstrations marked the anniversary of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 on 4 May.

Hunger strike and martial law

On 13 May several hundred students began a hunger strike in the square, and the number taking part grew into the thousands. The timing was deliberate: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrived on 15 May for the first Sino-Soviet summit in three decades. The welcome ceremony had to be moved away from Tiananmen Square, embarrassing the leadership in front of the world’s media, who had come to Beijing to cover the visit.

At the protests’ peak in mid-May, crowds in and around the square were estimated at up to a million people, and demonstrations spread to dozens of other cities, including Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi’an and Wuhan. Workers formed an independent union, a direct challenge to a party that claimed to represent the working class.

Within the leadership, Zhao Ziyang argued for conciliation, while Li Peng and senior elders backed by Deng favoured force. In the early hours of 19 May Zhao visited the hunger strikers and told them, in tears, that he had come too late. It was his last public appearance. Martial law was declared in parts of Beijing from 20 May, but troops trying to enter the city were stopped by residents who blocked roads with buses and their own bodies. On 30 May art students erected a statue called the Goddess of Democracy facing the portrait of Mao on Tiananmen Gate.

The crackdown of 3-4 June

On the evening of 3 June, army units with armoured vehicles advanced on the city centre from several directions under orders to clear the square by dawn. The heaviest killing took place on the western stretch of Chang’an Avenue, around Muxidi, where troops fired into crowds of residents trying to block their path. Soldiers were also killed, and some military vehicles were set on fire by crowds.

By the early hours of 4 June the square was surrounded. After negotiations led by a small group of intellectuals, including the singer Hou Dejian and the writer Liu Xiaobo, the remaining students, several thousand in number, left the square at around dawn. Shooting continued in the surrounding streets during 4 June and in the days that followed.

On 5 June an unidentified man stood alone in front of a column of tanks on Chang’an Avenue, blocking their path for several minutes. Images of the scene, taken by several foreign photographers and television crews from hotel balconies, became known as “Tank Man” and are among the most widely recognised photographs of the twentieth century.

Key people

• Deng Xiaoping – China’s paramount leader, who approved martial law and the use of the army.
• Li Peng – Premier, who announced martial law and became the public face of the hard line.
• Zhao Ziyang – Party general secretary, who opposed martial law and was purged.
• Hu Yaobang – Former party leader whose death on 15 April sparked the protests.
• Student leaders – Figures such as Wang Dan, Wu’er Kaixi and Chai Ling became internationally known; most were later on government wanted lists.

Death toll and aftermath

The number of people killed has never been established. Chinese officials gave a figure of around 200-300 deaths, including soldiers. Independent estimates by journalists, diplomats and researchers range from several hundred to several thousand. The group of bereaved parents known as the Tiananmen Mothers has documented the names of around 200 victims, while stressing that the true total is higher.

In the weeks after the crackdown the authorities arrested thousands of people, issued wanted lists for student leaders and intellectuals, and carried out a number of executions, mainly of workers accused of violence against troops. A clandestine network later known as Operation Yellowbird helped several hundred activists escape through Hong Kong.

Zhao Ziyang was removed from office and replaced as party leader by Jiang Zemin, then party secretary of Shanghai. Western governments imposed sanctions; the arms embargo adopted by the European Community in June 1989 remains in place. After a pause, Deng relaunched market reforms in 1992, and the party’s approach became one of rapid economic growth combined with tight political control.

Protests outside Beijing were also suppressed. In Chengdu, in Sichuan province, clashes between police and crowds on 4-6 June left a number of people dead. In Shanghai, the city’s party chief Jiang Zemin had already closed a liberal newspaper, the World Economic Herald, and the movement there was ended largely without army violence, an outcome that helped recommend him to Deng as the new party leader. The writer Liu Xiaobo, who had helped negotiate the students’ exit from the square, was jailed several times in later years; he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while in prison and died in custody in 2017.

Myths and facts

Myth: most people were killed inside Tiananmen Square itself. Most documented deaths occurred on the avenues and side streets leading to the square, particularly in western Beijing. Many witnesses report that the students who remained in the square at dawn on 4 June were allowed to leave, although shooting occurred nearby.

Myth: Tank Man was crushed by the tanks. The footage shows the lead tank stopping and trying to manoeuvre around him. He was pulled away by bystanders. Who he was and what became of him has never been confirmed.

Myth: it was only a student protest. Students started the movement, but workers, journalists, civil servants and ordinary residents joined in large numbers, and most of those killed on 3-4 June were Beijing residents rather than students.

Timeline

• 1989, 15 April: Former party leader Hu Yaobang dies; students begin mourning in Tiananmen Square.
• 1989, 26 April: People’s Daily editorial condemns the movement as “turmoil”.
• 1989, 27 April: A huge student march breaks through police lines in Beijing.
• 1989, 13 May: Students begin a mass hunger strike in the square.
• 1989, 15-18 May: Mikhail Gorbachev visits Beijing for the Sino-Soviet summit.
• 1989, 19 May: Zhao Ziyang visits the hunger strikers; martial law is announced that night.
• 1989, 30 May: The Goddess of Democracy statue is unveiled in the square.
• 1989, 3-4 June: The army clears central Beijing; the square is emptied at dawn on 4 June.
• 1989, 5 June: The Tank Man confronts a column of tanks on Chang’an Avenue.

Legacy

Within China, the events are officially described as a necessary response to “political turmoil”, and public commemoration is forbidden. Each year around 4 June, censorship intensifies online. For three decades Hong Kong held large candlelight vigils in Victoria Park; these were banned from 2020, first on public-health grounds and then amid wider restrictions on political activity.

Abroad, the crackdown sharply contrasted with events in Europe later in 1989, where communist governments fell largely without bloodshed during the revolutions of 1989. Chinese leaders drew the opposite lesson from the Soviet collapse, concluding that allowing political liberalisation could destroy the party.

Why it matters

The Tiananmen crackdown decided the direction of the world’s most populous country for decades: economic opening would continue, but political reform would not. It remains a defining test of memory and censorship, and the image of a lone man facing a line of tanks endures as a global symbol of individual courage against state power.