Tiananmen Square, 1989

Chinese Political History II: Reform, Opening & the Rise of Modern China

Chapter 3 · Tiananmen Square, 1989

Chapter 1 described a decade of reform that loosened economic controls; Chapter 2 mapped the institutions that stayed under party leadership. In spring 1989 the two collided. This chapter follows the main events and then asks the institutional question the earlier chapters set up: how did a leadership committee that was supposed to decide collectively end up deciding through a few senior men who held no post on it? Sources for the internal decision-making are limited and partly disputed, and this chapter says so where it matters. The number of dead is also uncertain, and it is given below as a range, with the sources behind each figure.

From a Funeral to a Square

Date (1989)Event
15 AprilHu Yaobang, the former general secretary removed from that post in 1987, dies of a heart attack. Students gather in Tiananmen Square to mourn him.
22 AprilState funeral; it lasts about 40 minutes as emotion runs high in the square.
23 AprilThe Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation is formed. Zhou Yongjun is elected chair; Wang Dan and Wu'erkaixi emerge as leaders.
26 AprilA People's Daily editorial condemns the demonstrations as "turmoil." Accounts differ on who drove it; one summary attributes it to Li Peng.
MayA student hunger strike begins. Gorbachev visits Beijing on 15–18 May, and by 17 May about a million people are reported to be in the square.
19 MayZhao Ziyang, the general secretary, visits the square in the early hours and tells the students "We came too late. We are sorry," urging them to end the hunger strike.
20 MayMartial law is declared. Up to 300,000 troops are reported to have been mobilized to Beijing.
3–4 JuneThe army clears the square and the approach roads. The largest number of killings is reported in Beijing's western suburbs along Chang'an Avenue.
5 JuneAn unidentified man briefly stands in front of a column of tanks. The image is among the best known of the century, and it remains censored in China.
Where the Square Was and Was Not The chapter's date table says "clears the square and the approach roads" because the fatal violence was not concentrated in the square itself. The sources I checked place most killings along Chang'an Avenue in the western suburbs. Saying "the massacre in the square" is common, but it compresses where and when it happened.

How the Leadership Actually Decided

Under the Chapter 2 structure, martial law was a matter for the Politburo Standing Committee. Only some of what happened inside it is documented. According to accounts drawn from Zhao Ziyang's memoir and other sources, on the night of 17 May the five Standing Committee members did not agree: Li Peng and Yao Yilin supported martial law, Zhao Ziyang and Hu Qili opposed it, and Qiao Shi abstained. The accounts say there was no clear majority until Deng Xiaoping, chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Yang Shangkun, its vice chairman, were brought in and sided with Li Peng.

Formal Body, Informal Tie-Break If those accounts are right, the decision went to two men whose formal posts were military, not on the Standing Committee at all. That fits the Chapter 2 distinction between the formal ladder and working power, and it echoes Chinese Political History I Chapter 10, where Deng held real influence without Hua's titles. It also shows why the "collective leadership" label can hide how a deadlock is resolved.
How Much to Trust the Inside Story Two sources carry most of the weight. Prisoner of the State, Zhao's memoir, was published in 2009 and draws on recordings he made under house arrest between 1999 and 2000. The Tiananmen Papers (English edition, January 2001) presents itself as a compilation of secret documents, but its editors never received originals, only reformatted versions, and the government calls it a fabrication. Treat the vote as reported, not as proven, and note that the memoir is the account of the man who lost.

The Casualty Question

No single figure is agreed. A summary source gives three sets of numbers.

SourceFigure
Official Chinese government tally241 dead
Independent estimates300 to 2,700 dead
Modern scholarship (as summarized)700 to 2,600 dead

The same source says thousands more were wounded and that estimates of the dead run from several hundred to the low thousands. The ranges depend on what is counted (civilians only, or soldiers too; the square or the whole city) and on who could collect the data at the time. I have not tried to reconcile them; a careful statement is that the number is not known precisely and that the official one is the lowest.

Aftermath

  • Zhao Ziyang. Deng decided to remove him. The Fourth Plenum on 23–24 June dismissed him from all his posts, and he was held under house arrest at No. 6 Fuqiang Hutong in Beijing for about fifteen years. He died on 17 January 2005, aged 85.
  • Succession. Deng promoted Jiang Zemin to lead the party after the crackdown. Chapter 4 picks up this leadership.
  • Repression. The government carried out mass arrests. "Operation Yellowbird" helped several protest leaders escape.
  • Memory. The Tank Man image and the events themselves remain censored in mainland China.
What This Chapter Does Not Do It does not give a full day-by-day account of the protests or of the army's movements, and it does not weigh the contested motives of the student leaders. It keeps to the events that bear on the course's question: how reform-era institutions handled a crisis, and what the outcome did to the leadership that followed.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Using the Chapter 2 structure, explain why the martial-law decision could not be treated as an ordinary Standing Committee vote, and say what the reported 17 May split implies about who held decisive power.

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Exercise 2

A student essay says "several hundred students were killed in the square on 4 June." Identify what is imprecise or unsupported in that sentence and rewrite it as a careful, sourced statement.

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Exercise 3

Rate the reliability of Zhao's memoir and The Tiananmen Papers as sources for the 17 May decision, and say what you would need to see before treating the reported vote as established.

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Quick Reference

  • 15 April: Hu Yaobang dies; 22 April: funeral; 26 April: "turmoil" editorial
  • 15–18 May: Gorbachev in Beijing; about a million people in the square by 17 May
  • 19 May: Zhao's visit, "We came too late"; 20 May: martial law, up to 300,000 troops
  • 17 May (reported): Standing Committee split, Li Peng and Yao Yilin for; Zhao and Hu Qili against; Qiao Shi abstaining; Deng and Yang Shangkun added and sided with Li Peng
  • 3–4 June: army clears the square; most killings reported along Chang'an Avenue
  • Dead: official 241; independent 300–2,700; scholarship 700–2,600; thousands wounded
  • Aftermath: Zhao dismissed 23–24 June, house arrest to death on 17 January 2005; Jiang Zemin promoted; memoir published 2009
  • Source caution: memoir is the loser's account; Tiananmen Papers authenticity unresolved