36 years ago tanks of the Chinese army destroyed the protest camp of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and ended a huge social movement
While I was living in China there were the “three Ts” you should not talk about: Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square massacre. Still the numbers 6 and 4 are banned together – as the picture of an unpolitical hug of two Chinese runners was censored 2023. The reason was that they were wearing the numbers.
Chinas situation during the 1980s
The so-called Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were one in many protests and uprisings during the 1980s. After the end of the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s death in 1976 China’s Communist Party (CCP) was fighting to get itself and the country into new balance. Programs as 拨乱反正 ‘Eliminating chaos and returning to normal’ were aimed to return a torn country into one united under the CCP’s rule. 改革开放 ‘reform and opening up’ was aimed to open the socialist country for marked economy, so-called 中国特色社会主义 ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’.
These reforms meant brutal changes for many workers. The iron rice bowl, 铁饭碗, was the guarantee for the workers to be employed for a lifetime and provide for them, and, most often their children.
These changes were answered with protests and uprisings by many workers. Forms of protests differed from wall newspapers to clashes with the police.
Calls for social changes were articulated in China as well as in States of the Soviet Union during the 1980s.
The Protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of the spring of 1989 were either only on Tiananmen Square not were student their only participants.
Students were involved, but is was a protest carried out by many – and not only in Beijing.
The death of Hu Yaobang on April 15th 1989 sparked a new protest. What began as small groups of people on of the best known squares in the political heart of the capitol swelled swiftly to hundreds of people. Student organisations were followed by workers.
On April 22nd riots happened in the cities of Changsha and Xi’an, the situation boiled even hotter in the following days.
The ‘flying tigers’, motor-cyclers, became important messengers and later saviours for those in need. Citizens brought food and other supplies to the people that occupied Tiananmen Square and other places in many cities in China.
April 27th 1989
Organized students, numbers in between 50,000 and 100,000 are called, marched from all Beijing’s universities to Tiananmen Square. They did not let the police stop them, they broke through barriers, supported by workers and other citizens.
May the 4th and the visit of Gorbachev
As May draw nearer the students stressed their connections to the historical May 4th Movement – a movement the CCP was seen its ancestry in, too.
There were several attempts of the government to get into a dialogue with the students. Especially because the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikael Gorbachev, was going to visit Beijing, arriving at May 15th.
Two days before, students started a hunger strike in the political centre of the Chinese capitol. The heads of the CCP were raving behind closed doors.
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More than 300,000 people crowded the huge square, opposing their communist leaders, often with communist slogans, singing “The International”.
Deng Xiaoping demanded the square to be cleared for the Soviet Union leaders visit. The students stayed. Gorbachev was greeted officially on his visit at the airport, not at Tiananmen Square.
But the press coverage became huge. As well in the national as in the international press.
Grassroots organisations and sub-organisations of the CCP encouraged their members to join the protest. All-over China protests erupted.
Martial law and the people’s reaction
On May 20th the CCP declared martial law and mobilised at least 30 divisions from different regions of China. As the army entered the city of Beijing, it was stopped by the citizens.
Many Chinese did not want to People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to clash with the youth that fought for all of their freedom. The PLA was honoured by the Chinese people, the PLA fought for the freedom of China and all the people, it brought them freedom and saved them. The PLA were heroes.
But they would not let them come close to the protests. They wanted to save the protesters, to save the small flowers of hope that began to bloom, and they did not want their heroes to become slaughterers.
On May 24th the CCP had to call the army back from the city. Many believed they had won. That a united China had won.
But the situation on the square as well as in the government tensed.
The bloody end of a movement June 4th
Learning from their first try to bring in the army, the government tried to bring in plain-clothed soldiers in buses.
When citizens discovered it, soldiers were attacked.
The student leaders called for help of their supporters, to erect road-blocks and be ready to come to help.
In the morning of June 3rd the army started to move from their compounds to the city centre. After the first clashes with citizens the army used life-ammunition.
That action destroyed many people’s belief in the army – their heroes and supporters. People could often not believe that a communist army would turn against their sisters and brothers. But they did. And that tore a membrane in the connection between the army and the people that is still noticeable in China.
Citizens reacted by attacking the army with anything resembling a weapon, with stones, sticks and some molotov cocktails. Soldiers shot protesters and bystanders, soldiers were beaten to death by citizens.
Early in the morning of June 4th soldiers arrived at the Tiananmen Square. They were met by protesters who opposed the military by sheer numbers and swarm tactics.
The square was cleared and one of its symbols, the Goddess of Democracy, crushed, the action full of symbolism by itself, by the army.
The movement was destroyed and followed by hard repression by the Chinese government. While it was called a student movement in the West, workers were often hit hardest.
The support of ordinary people was pictured by Tank Man, a man with shopping bags that was opposing tanks alone on the streets.
When people say, the crumbling of the state-socialist states started in 1989 in Germany, I always oppose. I believe it started in China. And I do not know what would have happened to the protesters in Germany if the soldiers had not seen their mates in China shooting their comrades on the streets.