1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

Protests led by students and workers, known in China as the June Fourth Incident, were held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government initiated martial law in late May and deployed troops to occupy the square on the night of 3 June in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising. The Chinese government terms the events as the political turmoil between the spring and summer of 1989. The protests were initiated by the death of former pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989, amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China. The movement's goals reflected anxieties among the people and political elite about the nation's future. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation. Although the protests were highly disorganised with varying goals, student protestors called for reforms including the rollback of the removal of iron rice bowl jobs, greater political accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. Workers' protests were generally focused on economic issues, specifically inflation and the erosion of welfare. These groups united around anti-corruption demands, adjusting economic policies, and protecting social security. At the height of the protests on May 17, about one million people were assembled in the square. As the protests developed, Chinese authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership. By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanised support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. On 20 May, the State Council declared martial law, and as many as 300,000 troops were mobilized to Beijing, but were halted by mass nonviolent resistance from the protestors and Beijing's civilian population. After several weeks of standoffs and confrontations between the army and demonstrators, a 1 June meeting among the CCP's leadership decided to clear the square. Chinese troops advanced into central parts of Beijing through the city's major highways in the early morning hours of 4 June, and engaged in bloody clashes with demonstrators attempting to block them, in which many people – demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers – were killed or injured. The vast majority of killings were clustered in Beijing's western suburbs along the Chang'an Avenue. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundreds to the low thousands, with thousands more wounded. The event had both short and long term consequences. Western countries imposed arm embargoes on China and various Western media outlets labeled the crackdown a massacre. In the aftermath of the protests, the Chinese government suppressed other protests around China, carried out mass arrests of protesters which catalysed Operation Yellowbird, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic and foreign affiliated press, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests. The government also invested heavily into creating more effective police riot control units. More broadly, the suppression ended the political reforms which began in 1986 as well as the New Enlightenment movement, and halted the policies of liberalisation of the 1980s, which were only partly resumed after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992. Considered a watershed event, reactions to the protests set limits on political expression in China that have lasted up to the present day. The events remain one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.