BEYOND THE SQUARE

“To rebel is justified”, Mao declared, but after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the Party vowed never to let rebellion happen again. Tiananmen was the cost of that promise. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the subsequent military crackdown remain a defining moment in modern Chinese history, showing the tension between  the will of people longing for democratic freedom and the regime bent on enforcing authoritarian control.  

On the dawn of June 4, 1989, the Chinese government unleashed a violent military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. What began as a student-led movement mourning the death of party reformist leader Hu Yaobang escalated into a nationwide demand for democratic reforms, freedom of speech, and government accountability. The brutal suppression, resulting in hundreds to thousands of deaths, shocked the world and tarnished the CPC’s strategy of prioritizing their power and “stability” over political liberalization. The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the CPC’s violent response are not merely a one-time crackdown. They mark a turning point that reshaped China’s political trajectory, as it established a model where market reforms could advance but only under the tight political control. Beyond the remembrance of a violent crackdown, Tiananmen matters because of what it revealed and what it threatened. As we approach the thirty sixth anniversary in 2025, Tiananmen Square remains a potent symbol of resistance against authoritarianism and a stark reminder of the human cost of repression.

China’s Political and Economic Landscape Pre-1989

Western media often has framed the Tiananmen protests only as a pro-democracy uprising, but a deeper look reveals other underlying causes behind the tragedy. At its core, the movement was a broad uprising against a system increasingly seen as unjust and unaccountable. The protests were not just a student movement, they drew in workers, intellectuals, and ordinary city residents, creating a broad coalition with shared grievances about corruption, inequality, and a lack of political accountability. This diversity made the movement especially threatening to the Party, as it revealed the possibility of a united front outside state control. The brutal reaction to that protest set the stage for the CPC’s governance model for the decades that followed, even today.

To understand the significance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, one must place them within the broader context of China’s political and economic transformation in the decade following Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. This period marked a dramatic shift as under Deng Xiaoping, China opened its economy to the world and embraced limited liberalization, while maintaining a rigidly authoritarian political structure. It was precisely this imbalance between growing economic freedoms and stagnant political reform that fuelled growing discontent, especially among the youth. Mao’s death in 1976 signalled not only the end of an era but also the collapse of a political model rooted in perpetual class struggle and orthodoxy. The catastrophic outcomes of the Great Leap Forward, which caused a famine that killed around thirty six million, and the Cultural Revolution, which devastated China’s intellectual and professional communities, had left the country socially and economically weakened.

After Mao Zedong’s death, Deng Xiaoping stepped into the spotlight and quickly reshaped China’s direction. At the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee in 1978, he began pushing through a series of bold economic reforms that broke from decades of central planning. One of the most significant early changes was the household responsibility system, which allowed families in the countryside to farm individual plots instead of working collectively. This move revitalized agriculture, gave rural households a direct stake in their output, and led to sharp increases in food production.

At the same time in 1979, Deng opened select regions like Shenzhen and Zhuhai to foreign investment. These SEZs became symbols of China’s new openness and willingness to  promote economic system reform. The results were dramatic between 1978 and 1989 when millions of people were lifted out of poverty, and a new urban class began to take shape. But while the economy was booming, the benefits were not evenly shared, and became one of the underlying causes for growing public frustration. One policy that aggravated this growing frustration was the dual-track pricing system (双轨制 or shuangguizhi). It was introduced to ease China’s shift from a planned economy to a market one. It allowed goods to be sold at both state-set and market prices to ease the shift to a market economy. While stabilizing the transition, it also enabled widespread corruption as insiders profited from price differences —and the people noticed. The image of Party officials as selfless revolutionaries began to fade. 

In its place grew a widespread belief that power and privilege were being abused for personal gain. By the late 1980s, corruption scandals (which continue till today) were common knowledge, and resentment was growing not just among rural residents, but also among students and urban workers who saw prices rise while their wages stayed the same. 

Inflation became another cause of discontent. By 1988, consumer prices especially in cities had jumped nearly 20%, squeezing household budgets and adding to a sense of economic anxiety. At the same time, state-owned enterprises were starting to shed jobs and benefits, creating fear that the "iron rice bowl", which was the lifelong job security and welfare benefits guaranteed under Mao, was breaking apart. This mix of fast growth, uneven opportunity, rising prices, and official corruption created a deep unease. The frustration brewing in cities and on campuses was about fairness, and who was really benefiting from the changes. The events of Tiananmen Square still matter because it showed the limits of China’s political system and the lengths the party will go to preserve its monopoly on power.

The Shadow of the Cultural Revolution

The generation of students who gathered at Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 had grown up in the long shadow of one of China’s most traumatic political events, the Cultural Revolution. Many of them were children during that decade of upheaval, when schools were shuttered, intellectuals persecuted, and violence sanctioned in the name of revolutionary purity. Their formative years were marked by chaos, politicized violence, and the destruction of trust in institutions. As universities reopened and academic life cautiously resumed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of these students entered higher education with a deep desire to rebuild what had been lost. 

They were the first cohort to benefit from Deng’s limited relaxation of censorship and the reintroduction of political science, philosophy, and international studies into academic curricula. This revival was supported by the re-establishment of the Chinese Association of Political Science in 1980, following Deng Xiaoping’s call for China to catch up in social science research. Influential intellectuals like Fang Lizhi, an outspoken advocate for academic freedom and democratic ideals who later inspired the Tiananmen Square protesters helped create a cautiously open environment where students could explore new ideas about governance and society despite ongoing political restrictions. 

However, this trauma of the Cultural Revolution was not confined to the student body. It haunted the Communist Party leadership as well, where senior leaders like Deng Xiaoping (three times) and Li Peng had themselves been targets of purges during Mao’s campaigns. For them, mass mobilization held dangerous associations. They remembered how quickly idealistic movements could spiral into uncontrollable political violence. Zhao Ziyang too, having personally experienced the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, understood the dangers of widespread unrest. Unlike the hardliners, he sympathized with the students demands for political reform and advocated for dialogue and a peaceful resolution while emphasizing the need for the protests to end without violence to avoid chaos. Despite Zhao’s more conciliatory approach, many in the Party leadership saw the 1989 student movement as a dangerous repetition of past events. Thus, when students began organizing hunger strikes, marching with banners, and demanding dialogue with the state, the CPC did not merely see an appeal for reform. 

They saw a potential unravelling of the social order and a possible resurrection of the chaos of the late 1960s. The loss of the party’s control was viewed as something that would inevitably lead to chaos. The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and their violent suppression drastically affected the political, economic, social, and international trajectories of China. More stringent measures were put in place to censor and surveil the population, including massive investments into enhancing riot control capabilities after 1989. After the crackdown, political consequences swiftly followed. Jiang Zemin, who was the then Shanghai Party Secretary, was elevated to General Secretary of the CPC, which signalled a shift toward more hardline governance. Public discussion of the protests was banned, and the official narrative was reshaped to depict the crackdown not as a tragedy, but as a necessary step to restore order and preserve national stability. The event remains a taboo subject even till date reminding us that the CPC maintains power not only through force but also by controlling history.

Hu Yaobang’s Death and the Student Movement

The Tiananmen Square protests unfolded over seven weeks, from April 15 to June 4, 1989, initially as a gathering of students mourning the death of Hu Yaobang. On April 15, thousands of students convened in Tiananmen Square to pay tribute to Hu, whose passing symbolized the loss of hope for political openness among many young Chinese. On April 17 about 3,000 Peking University students marched to the square. During Hu Yaobang’s funeral on April 22, three students attempted  to present a formal petition outlining the seven demands to the National People’s Congress. These included demands for press freedom, increased funding for education, greater transparency in government officials income, removing restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing and an end to corruption.  Tensions escalated sharply after the People’s Daily, the official state newspaper, published an editorial on April 26 condemning the protests as “turmoil”. Far from discouraging the movement, this condemnation encouraged students and the wider public, drawing more people to the cause. 

The protests intensified over the following weeks, culminating in a hunger strike that began on May 13. The hunger strike attracted widespread public sympathy and went on until crackdown. Student leaders such as Wang Dan, Wu’er Kaixi, and Chai Ling emerged as prominent figures, organizing hunger strikes and negotiating with authorities. Their leadership was student-centric, focusing on political freedoms. While often overshadowed, workers from state-owned enterprises also participated, forming autonomous unions and organizing strikes, voicing economic grievances. Meanwhile, scholars and students involved in the "Democracy Salon", an informal discussion group at Peking University engaged in debates on political reform and democratic ideas, helping to provide the intellectual foundation for the movement.

Support for the movement extended beyond the student population. This also coincided with heightened global attention on China due to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit on May 15, 1989. On May 17, about one million Beijing residents demonstrated in solidarity with the protesters, reflecting broad public discontent. Similar demonstrations also spread to other major cities across China, including Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi’an, Changsha, and Chengdu. Zhao Ziyang, who was General Secretary of the Party at the time, came to Tiananmen Square on May 19 to meet with the students. He was visibly shaken and said, “Students, we came too late. We are sorry”. It was a rare moment of honesty from a top leader and one that became a reason for his downfall. He was removed from power and placed under house arrest, where he remained until his death in 2005. The scale of the protests alarmed the government, prompting it to declare martial law on May 20 and deploy an estimated 300,000 troops to Beijing. On June 2, four student leaders in Tiananmen Square issued a hunger strike declaration condemning martial law and urging a shift from class struggle to democratic values. They called for a political culture based in dialogue and citizens seeing themselves as active participants, not passive observers.

The night of June 3-4, 1989, marked the brutal end of the Tiananmen Square protests. Military forces, equipped with tanks and automatic weapons, advanced into Beijing, opening fire on unarmed civilians. Eyewitness accounts, such as those reported by Amnesty International, describe soldiers bagging bodies and executing 200 young people, including students and residents, near Beijing. The violence was particularly intense around Muxidi, where many were killed, and by dawn on June 4, Tiananmen Square was cleared, with the last protesters removed by force.

The exact number of deaths remains disputed, a controversy central to the event’s legacy. Official Chinese figures claim 241 killed, including soldiers, but independent estimates, based on hospital records and foreign reports, range from several hundred to over 10,000, with British cables initially estimating 10,000. The wounded numbered in the thousands, with over 2,000 civilians and 5,000 soldiers, the police reported. This discrepancy also shows the government’s refusal to release an official death toll, fueling ongoing debates. A major contribution to the western world’s understanding of what happened behind closed doors was in 2001 after the publication of The Tiananmen Papers. The book was based on leaked internal documents and meeting transcripts, compiled by a former senior Party official using the pseudonym Zhang Liang, and edited by scholars Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link. The documents showed that many top CPC party officials believed that the crackdown had reaffirmed the need for strict ideological control and the rejection of Western liberalism. The Chinese government immediately banned the book and denounced it as a fabrication. 

In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the CPC launched a sweeping nationwide repression of dissent. On June 13, 1989, the Beijing Public Security Bureau issued arrest warrants for 21 student leaders. Seven of them managed to escape to Western countries through Operation Yellowbird, a covert rescue effort coordinated from Hong Kong. Others, such as intellectuals Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao, were arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison as alleged “black hands” behind the movement. According to the Dui Hua Foundation, 1,602 people were imprisoned for their roles in the protests as of May 2012.

Global Reactions and Diplomatic Aftershocks

The Tiananmen Square massacre elicited widespread international condemnation. Western governments, particularly the United States, imposed sanctions and suspended high-level exchanges, with President George H.W. Bush denouncing the actions and meeting with Chinese nationals studying in the U.S. The European Community enacted an arms ban, and multilateral institutions like the World Bank paused lending. Global media coverage, especially the iconic image of "Tank Man" photographed by Stuart Franklin on June 5, 1989, gathered public outrage and shaped international perceptions of China as a repressive regime. India at that time reacted cautiously to the Tiananmen crackdown, avoiding condemnation and prioritizing continued diplomatic and strategic engagement with China.However, these reactions were short-lived. 

As China’s economy boomed in the 1990s, many of the initial sanctions were lifted. By 2001, China’s accession to the World Trade Organization signaled its reintegration into the global economy. This shift reflected the complex interplay between moral imperatives and economic interests. Japan and South Korea navigated a delicate balance in their responses to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, weighing human rights concerns against strategic and economic interests. Japan expressed official disapproval of China's actions but refrained from imposing sanctions, emphasizing the importance of maintaining regional stability and bilateral relations. Declassified documents reveal that Japan opposed G7 sanctions and a joint condemnation, citing concerns about isolating China and the potential impact on diplomatic ties. While Japan temporarily froze new aid projects, it continued existing ones and resumed full economic cooperation by 1990.

South Korea undergoing its own democratization had issued a statement expressing regret over the loss of life but avoided direct criticism of Beijing. Prioritizing economic engagement and regional diplomacy, Seoul maintained its relationship with China without imposing sanctions. The Soviet Union, under Mikhail Gorbachev, offered only muted criticism amid its own reform struggles. Gorbachev, who visited Beijing during the protests, refrained from condemning the crackdown focusing instead on normalizing Sino-Soviet relations. His restrained response reflected both a desire to maintain diplomatic ties and the complexities of managing political reforms within the USSR.

The Struggle Over Memory and Censorship

The CPC has undertaken extensive measures to erase the memory of the Tiananmen Square protests from public consciousness. Following the crackdown, political liberalization was effectively halted, although economic reforms resumed after Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 southern tour. The government continues to strictly prohibit open discussion of the protests, employing widespread censorship to suppress remembrance. Educational textbooks contain little to no information about the events, and internet searches for terms such as “4 June Tiananmen Square” within mainland China return heavily censored results or are met with severed connections. Numerous websites, especially those linked to overseas Chinese democracy movements are blocked entirely.

The ongoing criminalization of remembrance is exemplified by individuals like Gu Yimin, who was convicted in 2013 for posting images commemorating the protest’s 24th anniversary. Outside of mainland China, the memory persists, annual vigils, notably in Hong Kong, continued until 2020 when new national security laws banned such gatherings. The removal of the Pillar of Shame sculpture by the University of Hong Kong in 2021 marked another symbolic step in erasing local memorialization efforts. In response, former Tiananmen student leaders Zhou Fengsuo and Wang Dan opened a museum in New York in 2023 dedicated to the protests. The exhibit includes artifacts such as a blood stained shirt from a journalist and a printer which was smuggled out of China. Taiwan has consistently upheld the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. In 2022, a replica of the “Pillar of Shame” statue was unveiled at a commemorative vigil in Taipei. Apart from these, even peaceful activities like attending seminars or posting online tributes were met with criminal charges by China. Human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, for example, was detained after participating in a private seminar on the Tiananmen legacy. 

The Tiananmen Mothers, founded by Zhang Xianling and Ding Zilin, are a group of grieving parents who have spent decades demanding justice for those killed in the 1989 crackdown. Ding, whose teenager son was among the victims, became the group’s leading voice. The group has documented over 200 victims, compiling names, personal details, and testimonies, even as the Chinese authorities have repeatedly suppressed their efforts. International human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have consistently cited the Tiananmen Mothers as a critical example of peaceful resistance in authoritarian regimes.

The open letter penned by overseas Chinese students on the 26th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, authored by Gu Yi and co-signed by others studying in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, shows the enduring weight of this suppression. Written to their peers in mainland China the letter recounts the 1989 atrocities, tanks crushing unarmed civilians and challenges the CPC’s narrative that dismisses the protests as mere “turmoil”. Amnesty International had reported that several Chinese students abroad face intense surveillance and pressure from authorities even through family members, in turn discouraging them from participating in protests. Despite limited direct evidence in some cases, consistent testimonies across multiple countries and documented cases of illegal monitoring have strongly suggested this sort of coordinated effort by the Chinese state to suppress political expression and activism abroad. Amidst these circumstances, the letter’s call for truth and justice, despite the personal risks faced by the students, reflects a persistent demand for accountability that is beyond China’s borders. 

While the Tiananmen Square protests are often framed as a student-led movement, workers played a crucial role, particularly in Beijing and other cities, offering a distinct perspective often overshadowed by the dominant narrative. Their participation highlighted class tensions and the movement’s multifaceted nature. Workers in state-owned enterprises faced layoffs, reduced benefits, and wage stagnation as part of Deng’s economic reforms. They joined the protests not only for political change but also for economic justice, forming autonomous unions and organizing strikes in Beijing.  This perspective, distinct from students focus on liberal democracy, challenges the narrative of Tiananmen as solely a pro-democracy movement, revealing it as a broader struggle for social justice. The CPC’s crackdown targeted workers as much as students, with many worker leaders arrested or executed, and their contributions erased from the historical record, showing the regime’s fear of class-based mobilization. Tiananmen remains politically important not just because of the violence that occurred, but because it continues to challenge the very foundations of the Party’s legitimacy. Even after thirty six years, the Chinese state tries to erase the event from public memory, yet it persists. It exists in the diaspora’s activism, in the work of exiled writers and activists, in the annual commemorations, and even in the quiet resolve of those in China who remember but cannot speak. 

A fight for more than democracy

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a convergence of urban intellectuals, workers, and rural communities, all grappling with the inequities of China’s economic transformation. While students voiced demands for political openness, workers and rural citizens, marginalized by market reforms and rising corruption, sought economic justice and inclusion. The CPC’s violent response was not merely a reaction to calls for democracy but a calculated move to dismantle a potential alliance across class and regional lines that threatened its authority. By erasing the contributions of workers and rural participants from official narratives, the Party ensured that the protest's broader social justice implications were obscured.

Tiananmen Square in 1989 was not just a protest, it showed how deeply people longed for a voice, for fairness, and for a future where their lives mattered beyond just economic growth. More than 36 years later, the Chinese government still tries to erase what happened, not just the events, but the people who dared to dream of change. Despite China’s rapid economic growth since 1989, many problems remain. Corruption, one of the key issues back then, is still widespread, leading Xi Jinping to launch a massive anti-corruption campaign targeting over 1.3 million officials since 2012. But many see this campaign as a way to sideline rivals and tighten Xi’s grip rather than truly fight corruption. Since coming to power, Xi has also removed presidential term limits, tightened control over the Party, and expanded surveillance to keep a closer watch on society. This pattern can be seen clearly in the crackdown on the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, where peaceful calls for autonomy and freedom were met with tear gas, arrests, and sweeping national security laws. Similarly, in Xinjiang the mass detention and surveillance of Uyghur Muslims show how the government views any assertion of identity or demand for rights as a threat to national unity and political control. Beyond these, it is well known how the government’s intolerance extends to Tibet, where restrictions on religious practice and cultural expression remain severe. 

These measures show the Party’s prioritization of regime security over the voices and rights of its people. There has also always been suppression of grassroots labor movements across urban centers, where workers continue to face harsh retaliation for organizing to demand fair wages and conditions as seen in the “Lying Flat” movement. These protests and expressions of dissent are met with censorship, arrests, and harassment highlighting that political and social control remain paramount despite the country’s economic modernization. In 2025, remembering Tiananmen is about standing with those who continue to hope for a world where freedom and justice are not dangerous ideas but everyday realities. 

Image Source: AFP