On May 4, approximately 100,000 students and workers marched in Beijing making demands for free media reform and a formal dialogue between the authorities and student-elected representatives. The government rejected the proposed dialogue, only agreeing to talk to members of appointed student organizations. On May 13, two days prior to the highly-publicized state visit by the reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, huge groups of students occupied Tiananmen Square and started a hunger strike, insisting the government withdraw the accusation made in the People's Daily editorial and begin talks with the designated student representatives. Hundreds of students went on hunger strikes and were supported by hundreds of thousands of protesting students and part of the population of Beijing, for one week.
Protests and strikes began at colleges in other cities, with many students traveling to Beijing to join the demonstration. Generally, the demonstration at Tiananmen Square was well-ordered, with daily marches of students from various Beijing area colleges displaying their solidarity with the boycott of college classes and with the developing demands of the protest. The students sang "The Internationale", the world socialist anthem, on their way to and within the square.[3] The students even showed a surprising gesture of respect to the government by helping police arrest three men from Hunan Province, including Yu Dongyue, who had thrown ink on the large portrait of Mao that hangs from Tiananmen, just north of the square.[4][5]
The students ultimately decided that in order to sustain their movement and impede any loss of momentum a hunger strike would need to be enacted. The students' decision to undertake the hunger strike was a defining moment in their movement. The hunger strike began in May 1989 and grew to include "more than one thousand persons" (Liu 1994, 315). The hunger strike brought widespread support for the students and "the ordinary people of Beijing rallied to protect the hunger strikers...because the act of refusing sustenance and courting government reprisals convinced onlookers that the students were not just seeking personal gains but (were) sacrificing themselves for the Chinese people as a whole" (Calhoun 1994, 113).
On May 19 at 4:50 am, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang (simplified Chinese: 赵紫阳; traditional Chinese: 趙紫陽) went to the Square and made a speech urging the students to end the hunger strike. Part of his speech was to become a famous quote, when he said, referring to the older generation of people in China, "We are already old, it doesn't matter to us any more." In contrast, the students were young and he urged them to stay healthy and not to sacrifice themselves so easily. Zhao's visit to the Square was his last public appearance.
Partially successful attempts were made to negotiate with the PRC government, who were located nearby in Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters and leadership compound. Because of the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev, foreign media were present in mainland China in large numbers. Their coverage of the protests was extensive and generally favorable towards the protesters, but pessimistic that they would attain their goals. Toward the end of the demonstration, on May 30, a statue of the Goddess of Democracy was erected in the Square and came to symbolize the protest to television viewers worldwide.
The Standing Committee of the Politburo, along with the party elders (retired but still-influential former officials of the government and Party), were, at first, hopeful that the demonstrations would be short-lived or that cosmetic reforms and investigations would satisfy the protesters. They wished to avoid violence if possible, and relied at first on their far-reaching Party apparatus in attempts to persuade the students to abandon the protest and return to their studies. One barrier to effective action was that the leadership itself supported many of the demands of the students, especially the concern with corruption. However, one large problem was that the protests contained many people with varying agendas, and hence it was unclear with whom the government could negotiate, and what the demands of the protesters were. The confusion and indecision among the protesters was also mirrored by confusion and indecision within the government. The official media mirrored this indecision as headlines in the People's Daily alternated between sympathy with the demonstrators and denouncing them.
Among the top leadership, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was strongly in favour of a soft approach to the demonstrations while Li Peng was seen to argue in favour of a crackdown. Ultimately, the decision to forcefully intervene on the demonstrations was made by a group of Party elders who saw abandonment of single-party rule as a return of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.[citation needed] Although most of these people had no official position, they were able to control the military. Deng Xiaoping was chairman of the Central Military Commission and was able to declare martial law; Yang Shangkun (simplified Chinese: 杨尚昆) was President of the People's Republic of China, which, although a symbolic position under the 1982 Constitution, was legally the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The Party elders believed that lengthy demonstrations were a threat to the stability of the country. The demonstrators were seen as tools of advocates of "bourgeois liberalism" who were pulling the strings behind the scenes, as well as tools of elements within the party who wished to further their personal ambitionsPerhaps the most important story of summer 1989 was the massacre of student demonstrators in Beijing, China. As a story it is most instructive in how the U.S. media consistently misleads public opinion. The same corporate press that effusively praised Chinese Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatism in moving China into capitalist-style economic organization turned right around and started denouncing "hard-liners" and "conservatives," who only weeks before were described as "reformers" and "pragmatists." It is the nature of the corporate media that its use of blitz style publicity, photos and headlines and repeated cliches makes it easy to have historical amnesia.
Time magazine had named Deng Xiaoping Man of the Year twice in congratulatory tones. Blatant capitalist propaganda sang the praises of Deng Xiaoping. Named "Success Story of the Year for 1985" by Success magazine editor- in-chief Scott DeGarmo, Deng Xiaoping was said to make "a Horatio Alger hero look like a piker."
Deng Xiaoping is the most powerful leader in China. Deng, Yang Shangkun and Li Peng appear to be mainly responsible for the massacre.
The wake of the Tiananmen massacre left an apparent power struggle in the Chinese Communist Party heirarchy. Jiang Zemin, a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo --the highest committee in the Communist Party --who is little known to Western China-watchers emerged as the new Communist Party leader called General Secretary to replace Zhao Ziyang, who received blame as a "splittest" in the party who broke party discipline and bore responsibility for China's economic problems. Like Hu before him, Zhao appeared soft on the student demonstrators and met with students in the square when his purge was already imminent. After taking over Zhao's job, Jiang issued the formal opinion of the CCP that the Tiananmen rebellion was a " counterrevolutionary rebellion aimed at negating the leadership of the Communist Party of China and overthrowing the socialist system." (AP in Ann Arbor News, 9/26/89, 1) Scaring Westerners even more, Jiang said China was having "a serious class struggle." (New York Times, 9/30/89, 5) He said the rebellions "aimed at overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party's leadership and subverting the socialist system, at (sic.) turning China into a bourgeois republic and reducing it once again to a dependency of the Western capitalist powers." (Ibid.) This is the most radical rhetoric out of the CCP in over ten years. It does not mean much in terms of the economy though; it's just a new type of justification for repression.
Jiang also admitted some problems have become worse in recent years including "abuse of power for personal gains, corruption and degeneration, which result in alienation from the masses of people." (Ibid.) Despite the tough talk, Jiang is one of the parents of children studying in the United States. 70,000 have taken the privilege and failed to return to China. (Ibid.)
For being replaced by Jiang, Zhao receives a higher salary and better treatment than Jiang Zemin. (Ibid., 7) Such is admittedly crude evidence, but it supports the theory that Jiang, Zhao, Li and Deng are all part of the same state capitalist class. They don't imprison or kill each other for their disagreements, just students.
Students started their demonstrations this year in Beijing with a commemoration of former party leader Hu Yaobang, who died. Hu had lost his job for being soft on the student movement in the past.
Toward the end of April, the CCP ordered the students to stop their disturbances in the streets, but hundreds of thousands ignored the CCP and continued their demonstrations. They maintained an occupation of Tiananmen Square for weeks and started a hunger strike which garnered widespread sympathy. By May 20th, one million people helped occupy the square. The government had reason to fear the movement's attacks on government corruption. The children of government leaders in particular were seen becoming wealthy and travelling abroad because of their special privileges. Out of 28 people with wealth exceeding 10 million Chinese dollars, 26 were found to be children of top officials in one investigation. One scholar found that a majority of those participants in the Cultural Revolution (1966- 1976) were ready for another campaign against government corruption. (Forward Motion, September 1989, 33)
One common poster in the demonstrations said that "Mao's son died in Korea." This referred to the fact that Mao gave his son no particular privilege. He died fighting for the communists in North Korea when China aided Korea in fighting the Western imperialist invasion.
Something of a Mao revival occurred with demonstrators carrying posters of Mao, especially outside Beijing. This is not to say that all the demonstrators sang the communist song "Internationale," which some did. There was also an important section of the movement dedicated to copying the West as the mock Statue of Liberty brought to Tiananmen proved.
This article addresses the broad historical amnesia being promoted by the press concerning Tiananmen and Maoism. For its part, MIM has denounced Deng from the beginning of MIM's existence in 1983. While Deng was popular in both phony communist and Western capitalist circles, MIM saw him for what he was--a bourgeois dictator. Yet, some people fooled by the bourgeois media think Deng is a Maoist or that we Maoists are responsible for the Beijing massacre. They taunt us with the Beijing massacre or tell us to move to China or other state-capitalist societies. Actually it is the critics of Maoism responsible for the massacre in Beijing. No truly Maoist people's army would have massacred its people. This article is to clear up the record.--July 27, 1992
From MIM Notes 38, 1989
by mc5
On the weekend of June 3rd-4th, the Beijing regime shot down hundreds of student-led demonstrators opposed to government corruption and dubbed as pro-democracy by the Western press.
The figures for the death tolls are estimates. According to USA Today, the figure was at least 500 deaths. (USA Today, 6/5/89, 1) In the following days there were crackdowns in other cities as well. Estimates of people killed in the whole crackdown in China ranged into the thousands. (New York Times, 10/19/89, 5) In the ensuing struggle the students retaliated with violence. AP published the photo of a military vehicle driver killed by students after he rammed into them with his vehicle. (USA Today, 6/5/89, 6a)
Apparently, the urban areas largely supported the students while the countryside was silent. "In Beijing a poll indicated that 93.3 percent of the residents believed that the student demonstrators' goals were reasonable, compared with 1.5 percent who thought they were unreasonable. The rest had no opinion." (NYT, 8/5/89, 2)
The massacre has reportedly created a small, perhaps permanent armed resistance. Two or three times a week, soldiers in Beijing are attacked by snipers according to diplomats. The so-called guerrillas may be relatives of those massacred. (NYT, 8/2/89, 7)
Citizens seized 1,000 guns from soldiers during the Tiananmen uprising that have not been turned in. (Ibid.)
Demonstrations of thousands occurred across the world in protest of the massacre. The largest demonstrations were in Hong Kong. Under pressure the U.S. government supposedly halted in $685 million in arms shipments. It did not cut off diplomatic ties or impose economic sanctions. (The Plain Dealer, 6/6/89, 1) It did cut high-level non-diplomatic exchanges and got the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to postpone loans to China. (New York Times, 9/30/89, 5)
The reason that the U.S. government did not do more is that the U.S. imperialists obtain electronic intelligence information from China in the kind of alliance against the Soviet bloc that the U.S. seeks to preserve at any cost.
