Higher Education Sparks Clash Against Political Corruption: The 1989 Student

Protests in Tiananmen Square

October 15, 2013 Presentation By:

Yu Qing LiuLin Peng

Ryan Petersen

Tank Man

Figure 1: June 5, 1989. A lone man stands before a line of tanks preventing the government show of force from carrying on.

Tank Man

Figure 2: A line of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Held in place momentarily by one lone man laden with shopping bags.

Thesis

• It was a combination of advanced education, political corruption, increasing civil unrest and wide spread media that prompted the June Protests of 1989 in Tiananman Square Beijing, China.

What Was it

• Tiananmen Square incident, also called June Fourth incident or 6/4

• series of protests and demonstrations in China in the spring of 1989 that culminated on the night of June 3–4 resulting with a government crackdown on the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

• Although the demonstrations and their subsequent repression occurred in cities throughout the country, the events in Beijing—and especially in Tiananmen Square, historically linked to such other protests as the May Fourth Movement (1919)。

Who Protested?

• China's 1989 is described as a student movement, with rallies and hunger strikes organized by educated youths.

• When crowds a million strong thronged Beijing's streets, however, only a minority of demonstrators belonged to this social group — as had to be the case since there were far fewer than a million college students in the entire country.

• When soldiers killed hundreds of protesters and onlookers in the capital late on June 3 and early on June 4, the dead were a mix of workers and educated youths.

Student Initiative Protestors

• Figure 3: Student waves flag in central Tiananmen Square on June 3, 1989 before the government sends in the military

Where Did The Action Happen?

• Tiananmen Square was not the only site of dramatic protests in China in 1989

• large demonstrations also took place in the central plazas of scores of other cities. Nor was Beijing the only urban center that witnessed a massacre.

• In Chengdu, on June 4 and 5, soldiers also killed at least dozens of people. Which suggests, the widely-used term "Tiananmen Square Massacre" is misleading, as the main killing fields in the capital were near the plaza, not in it.

Tiananmen Square

Figure 4: Tiananmen Square, the main public square in central Beijing, the capital city of China.

• Figure 5: Elevated picture of Tiananman Square. There is the Zhengyangmen gate tower to the South (bottom), The Great Hall of People to the West (left), the National Museum of China to the East (right) and the

China’s Capital, Beijing

• Figure 6: China, third largest country in the world by landmass (only 300,000 km2 smaller than Canada) and 1st in the world for population, 1.2 billion in 1989 (only 1.17 billion people more than Canada)

The City of Beijing

• Figure7: Beijing, the capital city of China. Over 10 million people call this city home. At the centre of the city is located Tiananmen Square.

Chinese Authorities Clamp Down on Information of 1989?

• Initially, the authorities strove to popularize their interpretation of events, which held that there had been "counter-revolutionary riots" .

• This official version of the story, complete with its denial that the June 4th Massacre took place, has not changed. From the early 1990s on, though, the government has switched from telling its tale loudly to discouraging any public talk of 1989.

• Internet minders work diligently this time of year, for example, to keep the Chinese Internet free of all references to "liusi" ("June 4," literally "6/4," the most common shorthand for the upheaval), and to ensure that web searches for "Tiananmen" and "Tiananmen Square" will take browsers only to sites that discuss this plaza's role as the home of revolutionary monuments

Media Coverage

• BBC Reporting on the Tiananmen Square protests OF June 4, 1989 and the documentation of the government military response.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJBnHMpHGRY

• This video shows a stark contrast to the Chinese Governments official statements that minimal force was used in dispersing the crowds and that there were no fatalities.

What Did Protesters Do?

• The main tactics used in the 1989 protests — marches by banner-carrying demonstrators, rallies and speeches at Tiananmen Square, students kneeling before the Great Hall of the People to present a petition with their grievances.

• little attention is sometimes given to the central importance of the group hunger strike students launched on May 13, 1989. Nothing did more to galvanize popular support for the struggle, drawing its power from the stark symbolic contrast it set up between selfless youths who fasted and selfish officials who feasted. The lavish banquets that only the well-connected enjoyed at that time in China had come to epitomize rampant official corruption.

Why Did People Take to the Streets?• The is perhaps the most divided among scholars with the majority

arguing the rallies and movement was in favour of democracy and the others arguing that the students simply were protesting against rampant corruption within their political system.

• One more motivation to factor in, which is often forgotten in the West's remembrance of the day, provides a fitting place to end these anniversary reflections: patriotism. A favorite song of the students in 1989 was "Children of the Dragon," a folk anthem with nationalist overtones. And a central demand of the students who stayed longest around the Square was that the government needed to apologize to them for official editorials that had described their protests as efforts to damage the country. The students wanted a formal acknowledgment that, to the contrary, they had marched precisely because they loved their country — loved it so much that they were willing to risk their lives to make it a better place.

Schmid Classification

• Since the aim of Student Protester actions was to directly challenge the political framework of the country of China it would fall under the classification of Political Terrorism according to Schmid’s Framework.

References• Calhoun, Craig. 1989. "Revolution and Repression in Tiananmen Square." Society 26, no. 6:

21-38. SocINDEX with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed October 10, 2013).• Gardner, Hall. 1990. China and the world after tiananmen square. SAIS Review 10, (1)

(Winter): 133, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1311697317?accountid=10969 (accessed October 10, 2013).

• Moskvitch, Katia. 2012. “China bans Tiananmen Square-related web search terms”. BBC News, June 4 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18321548

• Nickerson, Colin. 1990. Represion in high gear; Chinese leaders wary as Tiananmen anniversary nears. The Gazette, April 14, 1990

http://search.proquest.com/docview/431942317?accountid=10969 (accessed October 13, 2013).• Park, Henry. 1992. Tiananmend diary: Thirteen days in June (book review). Journal of

Contemporary Asia 22, (2) (Jan 01): 283, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1292876312?accountid=10969 (accessed

October 13, 2013).• Wasserstrom, Jeffrey. 2010. “China’s June 4, 1989: Remembered-and Misremembered.

Time World, June 03, 2010.

Figures• Figure 1: Tank man.

– chinadigitaltimes.net• Figure 2: Tank Man Expanded

– http://kottke.org• Figure 3: Student Protestors

• http://chinese-democracy-movement.wikispaces.com• Figure 4: Tiananmen Square

– http://chinese-democracy-movement.wikispaces.com• Figure 5: Panorama of Tiananmen Square

– http://en.wikipedia.org• Figure 6: China

– Goolge.com• Figure 7: Beijing

– Google.com