S25: Tiananmen Protests

Date and time

120-minute, take-home, open book

• Start: 6 pm, on Friday, March 6
• End: 6 pm on Tuesday, March 17 (last day of exam period, no extension possible)

Question type:

• Three excerpts (~800 words):
  • Primary source
  • Secondary source
  • Multimedia source
• Open-ended: No set prompt
• Similar to our class readings

• Transition to market economy initiated by incumbent leaders in planned economy
• Creating market on the margin of the plan and state sector, not “shock therapy” – rapid transition to market economy through privatization
• Combination of political centralization and economic regional decentralization: fragmented and hybrid state-corporatist

• Student movement in Beijing: Focus on the capital
• Authoritarianism vs. Democracy: End of Cold War
• Liberals vs. Conservatives: Elite Factions

• What led to the protest and its final bloodshed?
• Contentious politics: How (not) to build a social movement?
• What to remember about Tian’anmen? How should we remember it?

Hua Guofeng

• 1977-02: “Two whatevers”:
• “Resolutely defend whatever political decisions taken by Mao”
• “Unwaveringly follow whatever directives issued by Mao”

Deng Xiaoping

• 1978-03: “Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth”
• Transform CCP from revolutionary party to reform-oriented and pragmatic one
• Four modernizations (of agriculture, industry, science and tech, and defense) as top priority
• Performance-based legitimacy: Economic development as number one priority

Meritocracy over factionalism

• Party of technocrats: Smaller, younger, and more professional membership
• Administrative competence, rather than personal loyalty, as main criteria for promotion

Norm-bound succession politics

• Mandatory retirement age
• Law of avoidance: avoiding provincial governorship in hometown
• Term limited to two five-years

Collective leadership and institutional differentiation

• Separation of responsibilities and spheres of authority

• Political reform driven by strong and open-minded leaders
• Institutional innovation vs. Fundamental reform
• Inner-party democracy as top-down strategy to address party legitimacy and popular discontent

Rupture

• End of formal rules and informal norms since Deng years
• 2018: National People’s Congress removed from constitution term limit for president and vice president
• 2023: Xi Jinping begins third term

Continuity:

• Limits of collective leadership: Strong man politics of Deng Xiaoping
• Factionalism: Political patronage and network
• “Core leader” as political culture

• Rising inequality and insecurity: new urban entrepreneurial class, at the expense of rural party cadres
• Rent-seeking behavior and spread of corruption
• Uneven reform: incremental institutional change at local level; macro order unchanged

• From tools of propaganda to new avenues for public discussion
• Writing in new publishing venues, as well as establishment media of the party
• Key questions: How to reform socialism? How to think for oneself?

Debasement is the password of the base, Nobility the epitaph of the noble. See how the gilded sky is covered With the drifting twisted shadows of the dead.

[…]

I came into this world
Bringing only paper, rope, a shadow,
To proclaim before the judgment
The voice that has been judged:

Let me tell you, world,
I—do—not—believe!

• 1986-12: Demonstration at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, Hefei
• Demands to nominate own candidates for National People’s Congress and for greater freedom
• Spread to major cities across China after police repression
• Lack of response from Hu Yaobang led to his dismissal in Jan 1987; replaced by Zhao Ziyang
• Trigger for Anti-bourgeois liberalization campaign (1987)

• Produced and aired in 1988 by a dozen sent-down intellectuals
• Lead writer Su Xiaokang, son of high-ranking cadre in party press
• Viewing audience of 600 million

What is the main argument of the film? What is its significance?

• Sweeping critique of deep structure of Chinese history
• Ocean Civilization: Trade, exploration, capitalist expansion, vitality
• Yellow River: Muddy, turbulent, violent – symbol for ignorance and backward of traditional Chinese culture

• Led not by dissidents, but by sent-down generation, with many party members in positions of influence
• Not a free national public sphere, but a coherent one, directed by the party
• Intellectual debates as public face of inner party divisions over reform

• “Democratic centralism”, albeit under leadership of “core leader” Deng Xiaoping
• Declining authority of state ideology and charismatic leadership
• New performance legitimation through economic growth
• Divisions among elites over role of party and direction of reform

• Increasing wealth, but also growing inequality and insecurity
• Emerging public sphere, but fragmented and directed by state
• Renewed critique of Chinese tradition and new language of citizenship rights
• Political and social liberalization, punctured by episodic inflation and official repression

• Peak inflation in 1980, 1985, 1988, and 1995
• Each peak marking a phase of policy cycle after a wave of reform
• Cycles correspond with oscillation in influence of top policy makers

• 1989-04-15: Hu Yaobang dies in hospital
• 1989-04-22: Memorial service for Hu Yaobang

• 1989-04-23: Autonomous Students Federation of Beijing Universities founded
• 1989-04-26: People’s Daily editorial, labeling the movement as a “planned conspiracy” and a “turmoil”.
• 1989-04-27: About 100,000 students march to Tiananmen to protest the editorial.

• 1989-05-13: 3000 students begin hunger strike in Tiananmen
• 1989-05-15: Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Beijing
• 1989-05-19: Li Peng declares martial law. Deng Xiaoping announces replacement of Zhao Ziyang by Jiang Zemin

• 1989-05-19: Li Peng declares martial law.
• 1989-05-20: Martial law goes into effect in Beijing, but meets resistance.
• 1989-06-03: PLA troops clear Tiananmen Square. Students and civilians killed on paths of advance; remaining 4000 students leave square after encirclement by troops.

Politburo standing committee meeting

• Should the party implement martial law?

Autonomous Students Federation of Beijing Universities

• How should the students respond?
• Discussion ahead of meeting between hunger strikers and Li Peng in the Great Hall of the People on May 18

• Protest movement reveals succession crisis inside CCP: Deng Xiaoping’s legacy and reform agenda in question
• Student protests used as a tool to resolve succession struggle: How to use the movement to strengthen positions of power?
• Convergence of elite in-fighting, popular agitation, and military involvement

• Not a simple binary: Reformers vs. Conservatives
• Deng Xiaoping: Supreme leader, yet insecure about his legacy and successor
• Zhao Ziyang: Conciliatory approach did not equate support for dismantling party state

Top goals by students

• Ending corruption
• Accurate news reporting
• Freedom of expression
• Only 33%: Free election

Top goals by ordinary Beijing residents

• 82%: Ending corruption
• 59%: Stopping official profiteering
• 50%: Accurate news reporting

• Pursued a liberal, Western-style democracy centered on abstract individual rights and political reform.
• Viewed corruption and social problems as results of incomplete market reforms, not inherent to marketization itself, advocating for parallel economic and political liberalization
• Sought to maintain the “purity” of the movement and largely excluded or dismissed worker participation, reflecting an elitist attitude.

• Adopted a conciliatory strategy toward the state, appealing to party leaders—including moderate figures like Zhao Ziyang—and displaying slogans such as “Support the Communist Party” to gain legitimacy.
• Framed their role in moral and intellectual terms, blending liberal democratic discourse with traditional Confucian ideals of scholar-activists “speaking for the people.”

• Advocated for a class-based socialist democracy focused on workplace democracy, labor rights, and collective control, such as the right to form independent unions, supervise management, and engage in collective bargaining.
• Understood economic grievances—like inflation and inequality—not in isolation, but as rooted in a broader political system of bureaucratic dictatorship.
• Saw market reforms and bureaucratic rule as mutually reinforcing; thus, true change required abolishing both, making their vision fundamentally anti-marketization.

• Embraced more radical tactics, including calls for general strikes, self-organization into “Workers’ Autonomous Federations,” and open resistance against state oppression.
• Criticized the official trade union system (All-China Federation of Trade Unions) as ineffective and illegitimate, emphasizing grassroots worker autonomy and direct action against bureaucratic power.

• 1989 had two separate movements: students’ and workers’. They overlapped but lacked trust, communication, and unity.
• Unlike May Fourth (1919), where students mobilized workers for a general strike, 1989 lacked the worker-student alliance key to May Fourth’s significance.
• Earlier precedent: During the Cultural Revolution, workers/students organized radically, challenging authority and demanding democracy. From 1968, Mao allowed military suppression of rebels; caused most Cultural Revolution deaths.

• 1980s China commonly depicted as free and open era, but this narrative downplayed workers’ political retreat and repression after Democracy Wall.
• Who received the majority of benefits – open discourse, diverse ideas – from liberalization? Intellectuals or workers?
• Political participation reinforced elite identity: e.g., “River Elegy” documentary.

“If one fasting classmate refuses to leave the square, the other thousands of fasting students on the square will not move. […] On the square, it is not a matter of the minority obeying the majority, but of 99.9 percent obeying 0.1 percent.”

• PLA soldiers killed innocent civilians, including those trying to help others, workers, and people hiding in their homes.
• While the term “Tiananmen Massacre” is used, killings occurred throughout Beijing, with most by troops on their way to the square.

• Chinese Red Cross initially estimated 2,600 deaths.
• A Chinese Red Cross official reportedly counted 728 bodies.
• The Tiananmen Mothers and other activists have identified 187 individuals killed by the PLA.

• Social movements and collective memory are both rooted in a collective identity.
• Shifts in collective identity can challenge narratives of the past.
• Tiananmen commemoration was supported by a “Hong Kong Chinese” identity.
• With young Hong Kongers rejecting their Chinese identity, they also questioned the relevance of the Tiananmen commemoration to them.

• Jimmy Lai (1947-), a Hong Kong media mogul and democracy advocate, is currently on trial for treason after being held in custody since 2020.
• One of over 250 individuals arrested since 2020 under the NSL, Lai has been denied bail, the right to a jury, and his choice of lawyer.
• Verdict still pending.

• 2020-06-30: National Security Law promulgated.
• 2020-07: 47 activists organized an unofficial primary election to select opposition candidates for the 2020 legislative elections, which were then postponed due to Covid.
• 2021: Hong Kong police charged 47 activists with “subversion” under new national security law.
• 2025-05: 14 pro-democracy activists convicted.

• Banning of public commemoration in Hong Kong after National Security Law
• How to remember Tiananmen when 1) the space for collective memory diminishes; 2) collective identity shifts?

• Parallels: Taiwan’s 228 Incident, Korea’s Kwangju Uprising, and Indonesia’s 1965 Killings.
• Open discussions of these historical events were only made possible after regime changes.
• Meanwhile, memories survived in more virtualized, decentralized, individualized, and internationalized forms.