Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989
New Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (in office 13 September 1982 – 2 November 1987), developed the concept of Socialism with Chinese characteristics local market economy around 1984, but the policy stalled.
The first Chinese student demonstrations, which directly preceded the Beijing protests of 1989, took place in December 1986 in Hefei. The students called for campus elections, the chance to study abroad and greater availability of western pop culture. Their protests took advantage of the loosening political atmosphere and included rallies against the slow pace of reform. Chairman Hu Yaobang, a protégé of Deng Xiaoping and a leading advocate of reform, was blamed for the protests and forced to resign as the CCP General Secretary in January 1987. In the "Anti Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign", Hu would be further denounced.
The Tiananmen Square protests were sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang on 15 April 1989. By the eve of Hu's state funeral, some 100,000 students had gathered at Tiananmen square to observe it; however, no leaders emerged from the Great Hall. The movement lasted for seven weeks.
Gorbachev's visit to China on 15 May during the protests brought many foreign news agencies to Beijing, and their sympathetic portrayals of the protesters helped galvanize a spirit of liberation among the Central, South-East and Eastern Europeans who were watching. The Chinese leadership, particularly Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, having begun earlier than the Soviets to radically reform the economy, was open to political reform, but not at the cost of a potential return to the disorder of the Cultural Revolution.
The movement lasted from Hu's death on 15 April until tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. In Beijing, the military response to the protest by the PRC government left many civilians in charge of clearing the square of the dead and severely injured. The exact number of casualties is not known and many different estimates exist.
Read more about this topic: Revolutions Of 1989
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