The events in Tiananmen Square are a series of anti-government protests in the People's Republic of China in April-June 1989, which were caused by the lack of social and political democratization and the monopoly of power by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the active liberalization of the country's economic life. Information about perestroika in the USSR and changes in the countries of the socialist camp played a significant role in the formation of dissatisfaction with the government's policy.
On April 15, 1989, on the day of the death of former general secretary of the CPC Central Committee Hu Yaobang (1915-1989), a supporter of democratization, hundreds of Beijing students gathered on university campuses and in Beijing's central Tiananmen Square to honor his memory.
On April 23, the establishment of the Beijing Independent Students Union was announced to support a general strike at the universities. The students demanded the democratization of political life, freedom of the media and the fight against corruption in the party. On April 26, with the approval of the chairman of the Central Military Commission of the PRC, Deng Xiaoping, the students were branded in the party press as counter-revolutionaries. However, in early May, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Zhao Ziyang characterized the student movement as patriotic and invited the protesters to enter into dialogue.
On May 13, about 300,000 protesters launched a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, demanding official recognition of the justice of their demands. The workers joined the protesters (on May 19, the establishment of the Independent Association of Peking Workers, which supported the protests, was announced), members of grassroots party and Komsomol organizations, and others. The demonstrations covered over 400 cities in China.
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The events in Tiananmen Square took place on the eve of the most important state visit to the PRC of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev (May 15-18), with the aim of normalizing relations between the Soviet Union and China.
In the center of Beijing, the Soviet leader was to lay a wreath at the monument to national heroes. Students prepared to welcome him and even made posters in Russian for this: "Democracy is our common dream!"
However, Mikhail Gorbachev did not come to Tiananmen Square and to all correspondents' questions about his attitude to what was happening he invariably answered that this was an internal matter of China.
Soon the peaceful action gave way to pogroms, riots broke out in several large cities. The Chinese capital was effectively at the mercy of the protesters - they took possession of weapons, killed police officers and soldiers, burned buses and shops.
On May 17-19, at the meetings of the CCP leaders chaired by Deng Xiaoping, despite the opposition of Zhao Ziyang, it was decided to send troops into the city.
On the morning of June 3, the unarmed forces of the People's Liberation Army of China were stopped by protesters, but in the evening of the same day, army units with tanks approached the square. The peaceful protest resulted in a violent armed clash. The protesters set fire to tanks and armored personnel carriers, making it difficult for them to further advance across the square. The soldiers fired indiscriminately at the demonstrators.
On June 4, the Tiananmen Square protests were suppressed. In Shanghai, protests continued until June 7, and Jiang Zemin, the head of the CPC City Committee, managed to take control of the situation without resorting to violence. In Chengdu, protests were crushed by troops on June 5-6.
As a result of clashes in the center of Beijing, not only students and military personnel, but also other residents of China were killed. The exact number of victims is still controversial.
Officially, 241 deaths and 7,000 wounded were announced. According to other estimates, the number of victims was up to a thousand. After the suppression of the protests, arrests followed (more than 1.5 thousand people; eight people were sentenced to death); many of the participants in the speeches were stripped of their Chinese citizenship and expelled.
Many participants in the Tiananmen events managed to escape from China. Many dissidents fled to Hong Kong, then a British colony. This process was so active that it was called the "underground railroad" in Hong Kong.
In the West and in dissident circles in China itself, the events on Tiananmen Square are regarded as "demonstrations for democracy", official Beijing speaks of these events as an attempt at "counter-revolutionary insurgency."
In 2004, President of the People's Republic of China Hu Jintao said that official Beijing did not intend to change its attitude towards the events of 1989. He noted that the measures taken during that period played "decisive importance" for the successful economic growth of the PRC in subsequent years.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources