-By Harsh Pandey

Tiananmen Square is a historical sight in China. It has witnessed multiple grandeur events from the royal times to the Communist era in China’s long history. Nevertheless, after 1989, it started being remembered for an infamous incident that took a long time to unfold and was huge in its magnanimity, and China is still in its shadows. This is why there is a profound censorship over the content which mentions the Tiananmen Square Massacre. On 4th June 1989, China’s People’s Liberation Army fired up on students’ protests against China’s authoritarian politics. Thirty-five years on, apart from the famous image of a man protesting against the series of tanks, precise data about the violence did not come out. For the current regime of China, the utmost task is keeping its citizens in collective amnesia about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. There is an estimate that several hundred to several thousand people died because of the use of force by the Chinese regime. At the 35th anniversary of this incident, it is essential to reflect upon what has prompted these protests, how they shaped China’s future in the coming years, and how much of a profound impact they will have on China’s future.

Prelude of the Tiananmen

Like all events, there was a past working on Tiananmen, on the local level in China’s domestic politics and at the Global level where the Cold War was unfolding on the bigger canvas of the world. Communists won the Chinese Civil War, and the CPC, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, started ruling China as a party state. The Chinese Communist Party came into power by maintaining a sizable agrarian base, claiming to be the peasants’ representatives. In the subsequent years after the revolution, Mao’s specific policies targeted the landowners in China along with the political rivals of Mao. From 1966 to 1976, the Mao-led Cultural Revolution caused the death of around one to two million people. However, after the death of Mao, the state of China was chaotic when Deng Xiaoping became the paramount leader of China.

Unlike Mao, Deng was not interested in the goals of the revolution but in putting order in the chaotic Chinese society after the Cultural Revolution. He launched economic reforms in China, which was actively supported by the United States of America. In the global arena, too, the impacts of the Cold War were visible, and China helped the USA in the Vietnam War, where Vietnam was supported by the USSR (USSR and China were thought to be the biggest allies considering the Communist bonhomie).

Deng’s reforms did precisely the opposite of what Mao did in his reign; for example, Mao collectivized the agricultural farms, and Deng decollectivized them. Mao purged the private property owners and entrepreneurs Deng encouraged. In general, these reforms were well received in the country, but they created other issues like inflation, favouritism and nativism in China’s economic reforms, which very soon developed the gap between haves and have-nots, which was not so much there. CPC cadres were the first beneficiaries of these reforms because of the cadre privileges. It created a state of panic among the Chinese masses in the late 80s. Reforms also paved the way for Western thoughts to come to the universities of China. The most notable example is Fang Lizhi, who returned from Princeton University and visited many universities in China, talking about liberty, democracy, and human rights.

Protests of 1989

The CPC government in China was facing pressure everywhere, from peasants to the working class and students. Hu Yaobang, who was the leader of the CPC at that time, was forced to resign, and he died of a heart attack on 15th April 1989. Hu was a reform-minded person who was liked by the protestors, particularly by the students. Since late April 1989, many protests have started erupting in honour of Hu in many of the prominent university campuses of China, namely Peking, Nanjing, Beijing Normal University, and many other campuses across China. Students began their charter of demands, which mentioned CPC corruption, the provision of greater freedom of speech, and the cessation of media censorship. Other groups have also started demanding multiple things, including political reforms and respite from bad economic affairs.

Quelling of Protests

The government signalled that it wanted to talk to the protestors, but in reality, it was buying time for the opportunity to attack. On 20th May, Martial law was declared, which got vehement opposition from the masses where millions of people came to the streets of China in the support of protestors. On the night of 3rd to 4th June, thousands of armed troops of the People’s Liberation Army were sent to the heart of the city to clear the streets of demonstrators and ‘restore order’.

Armed forces started firing on protestors and ordinary people who were watching them without any warning. According to John Gittings of The Guardian, ’ The first casualty in the square was rushed away – a girl with her face smashed and bloody, carried spread-eagled towards the trees. Another followed – a youth with a bloody mess around his chest.’

Protestors had no place to flee, and the Tiananmen was a warzone, except the other side had no weapon to protect themselves. Dying protestors were being filled in body bags for the last rites. Many protestors who were captured by the security forces were executed within a week. Other than Tiananmen, protests in all parts of China were quelled harshly. In fact, the current President of China, Xi Jinping, was the Party Secretary of Fujian Province of China and harshly quelled the protests in the province, resulting in his promotion.

After 35 Years

Chinese economic power grew over the years, resulting in more state control over citizens. Tiananmen is a banned subject in China, and in the age of the internet, it makes sure that the websites and applications designed in China use algorithms to censor massacre-related content. Chinese educational institutions do not teach their students about the history of the massacre. Many family members of the victims who died in the protests have requested Xi for an official reckoning over the massacre. Nevertheless, it is improbable that Xi will be doing anything like that as he is part of the same structure that led to the massacre. It is also essential to note that the USA and the West, busy winning the Cold War, did not pay much attention to the atrocities of Tiananmen. Thirty-five years after the ban on foreign press, the flow of information is minimal, and we do not know the actual situation of the people protesting against the CPC’s regime. In hindsight, perhaps it was the only chance for effective reform within China, which could have led us into a very different world than the one we live in.

The author is a PhD Candidate at the School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi. He is also a Life Member of the International Centre for Peace Studies, New Delhi.

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