Tiananmen Square

 Tiananmen Square 

Date	3 June 1989 - 4 June 1989
Interest of	'Tank Man'

The Tiananmen Square massacre is the name given to events on 3rd and 4th of June 1989, when the People's Liberation Army cleared Tiananmen Square of protesters.

Official narrative

The Chinese government brutally suppressed mostly peaceful protests by young students with the military.

Background

Hu Yaobang, who helped economic development and social change in post-Mao China, but who was also blamed for student protests that occurred across China in 1987, for his "laxness" and "bourgeois liberalization" that had either led to or worsened those protests, died on 15th April 1989 - which is also the day the protests started in and around the Tiananmen Square. At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled on the square and were organized by groups of students, intellectuals and labor activists. There was no common cause or leadership in the protests, most protesters did not like the way the Communist party of China ran the economy, some also wanted a change towards more democracy. Most people protested on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but some also did in other cities, like Shanghai; protests in other cities other than Beijing stayed peaceful.

Concerns

Larry Romanoff challenges the conventional view on the Tiananmen Square massacre. Romanoff makes the point that the protests were peaceful and the students were getting along with the soldiers, there were different protests happening at the time and at one point mercenary types, who were well prepared for an attack made their move and escalated, killing soldiers (who were scarcely armed at that point) by burning them in their vehicles. In his view this was an attempted color revolution.

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