1989 Tian'anmen Square riots

1989 Tian'anmen Square riots
Date 15 April – 4 June 1989 Location China Result Riots ceased; no political or territorial changes Jiang Zemin, previously Party Secretary of Shanghai, promoted to General Secretary and paramount leader by Deng Xiaoping Zhao Ziyang purged from General Secretary and Politburo
Belligerents
People's Republic of China	NED-backed rioters

A military vehicle destroyed by rioters in Beijing.

The 1989 Tian'anmen Square riots (天安门事件) were a CIA-backed attempt at a color revolution against the People's Republic of China in 1989. Reservations over Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up policies sparked peaceful protests, which the CPC negotiated with, but soon a foreign-funded faction of students joined the protests and, due to their promotion by Western media, took over the protests and took them in an entirely different direction than what was originally envisioned.

After the riots ended, the CIA extracted their leaders as part of Operation Yellowbird.

Protests in Tian'anmen Square

Protests began in Tian'anmen Square on 1989 April 15 after the death of General Secretary Hu Yaobang. Premier Li Peng met with protestors in a meeting that was broadcast on national television. On May 20, after violence spilled out of the square and into Beijing, martial law was declared but the protests were allowed to continue.

Around 5:00 am on June 4, the 3,000 remaining protestors peacefully left the square. No one died in the square during or after the protests and most deaths were caused by the foreign-backed faction of students.

Student leaders

Liu Xiaobo, one of the student leaders of the protests, said he wanted China to be colonized by the West for at least 300 years. Chai Ling, another student leader, admitted that she wanted the protestors to be killed by the government and said that the Chinese people were "not worth [her] struggle." Wang Dan said that their movement was motivated by a pursuit for wealth. Wu'er Kaixi said that they were protesting to be able to wear Nike shoes. Hou Dejian, a Taiwanese national and one of the leaders of the Tiananmen protests, stated that he was in the square all night and saw no one killed, confronting the testimony of Chai Ling.

Western support

In 1986, George Soros donated $1 million USD to the Fund for the Reform and Opening of China. Over the next three years, the group trained many student leaders of the protests. In 1988, the National Endowment for Democracy opened offices in China. Western corporations, including AT&T, spent millions of dollars providing long-distance calls and fax machines to the protestors. The CIA gave the protestors typewriters and other equipment to spread capitalist ideas and the Statesian ambassador to China at the time was a former CIA agent. During the protests, Voice of America increased its Chinese language broadcasts to 11 hours a day. VOA falsely claimed that Li Peng had been shot and Deng Xiaoping was almost dead.

Riots

As the protests were winding down and many protestors went home, the Chinese government sent unarmed PLA troops the clear the square of remaining protestors as the Beijing police was overwhelmed due to their sheer numbers throughout the city. On June 2, rioters burned and lynched unarmed soldiers trying to enter the square. The troops were initially unarmed, but were given weapons on June 3 after the students took some soldiers hostage. They were blocked from entering the square by crowds armed with petrol bombs, iron clubs, and Molotov cocktails. The rioters destroyed over 400 vehicles and destroyed a convoy of over 100 vehicles in western Beijing.

Death toll

The riots in Beijing resulted in approximately 200 total deaths, including 36 students. All of the deaths occurred outside of the square itself.

Censorship

While many Western media sources maintain that the Chinese populace is forbidden from learning of this event at all, many Chinese state media outlets mention the event:

• China.org.cn: China Rejects US Statement on 6-4 Incident
• China Daily: Tiananmen Massacre a Myth
• China Daily: What's Wrong With Our Liberal Studies Courses?
• CPC News: Centennial Events of the Communist Party of China
• People's Daily: Memorabilia of the Communist Party of China 1989
• Global Times: West hypes false Tiananmen death toll
• Xitong, Chen. Report on Checking the Turmoil and Quelling the Counter-Revolutionary Rebellion. Beijing: New Star Publishers, 1989.
• The Beijing Riot: A Photo Record. Beijing: New Star Publishers, 1989.

In Western media

In Western media, the incident is usually called the "1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre." Bourgeois media claims that the People's Liberation Army massacred thousands of peaceful protestors on June 4. The BBC, a British state propaganda outlet, claims that over 10,000 people were killed in the square.

Claims of a massacre trace back to an anonymous student from Qinghua University who spoke to the Hong Kong press. However, Western journalists including Reuters correspondent Graham Earnshaw, who spent the night of June 3–4 in the square, former Washington Post Beijing Bureau chief Jay Matthews, and BBC Beijing correspondent James Miles, all confirmed that students left the square peacefully. The US Embassy in Beijing also said they never saw any lethal force.

Tanks leaving the square on June 5, with the anonymous man know as Tank Man standing in front of the line

Tank Man

The famous photo of a man standing in front of four tanks was taken on the morning of June 5, after the square had been cleared and the tanks were attempting to leave. Some people believe the tanks ran the man over, but a video of the event disproves this narrative.

In the video, the anonymous man can be seen stopping in front of the first tank in line as he was crossing the street. As the tank attempts to drive around him, the man moves to block it from leaving. The man then climbs onto the turret and seems to start looking for the crew. One of them opens the hatch, and both can be seen talking to each other for a few minutes, but no record of their conversation exists. After talking for a minute, than man climbs back down and, as the tanks start driving away, he steps in front of the line again, cutting them off. A group of civilians then approach him and move him away from the tanks' path before the video ends.

Some claim that the man was then detained by the state or made to disappear, but no evidence of this assertion exists. Interestingly, the anonymous man is also seen at two points during the video to be gesturing the tanks back towards the square.