Tiananmen Square protests and massacre (1989)

The Tiananmen Square protests were a wave of demonstrations led by students and workers in Beijing, and in hundreds of other Chinese cities, between 15 April and 4 June 1989. They ended when the Chinese government sent the army into the capital on the night of 3–4 June, killing several hundred to perhaps a few thousand people in what is widely known as the Tiananmen Square massacre. In China the events are referred to as the June Fourth Incident, and the subject remains heavily censored.

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping launched market reforms that brought rapid growth but also inflation, corruption and insecurity for workers who had relied on guaranteed state jobs. Price reforms in 1988 triggered panic buying and soaring prices. Students and intellectuals, many facing poor job prospects, increasingly argued for political reform, and the Communist Party leadership was split between reformers and conservatives. Hu Yaobang, the party's general secretary, had been forced out in January 1987 after being blamed for tolerating student protests.

Hu died of a heart attack on 15 April 1989. Students gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn him, and the gatherings quickly became protests calling for press freedom, an end to corruption and dialogue with the leadership. On 26 April the party newspaper People's Daily published an editorial condemning the movement as a disturbance aimed against the party, which angered students. The next day some 50,000 to 100,000 marched through Beijing. The party general secretary, Zhao Ziyang, favoured conciliation, while the premier, Li Peng, pressed for a hard line.

On 13 May students began a hunger strike in the square, two days before a state visit by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose welcoming ceremony had to be moved to the airport. Public sympathy surged. Around 17 May about a million people filled the square, and protests spread to some 400 cities. Talks between officials and students made little progress. At a meeting at Deng's home on 17 May, the decision was taken to impose martial law; Zhao opposed it and was soon sidelined.

Martial law was declared on 20 May, but crowds of residents blocked the troops in the suburbs and the army pulled back. On 30 May students erected a statue they called the Goddess of Democracy. On the evening of 3 June, troops advanced again from the west along Chang'an Avenue. Met by barricades, stones and petrol bombs, they opened fire with live ammunition, and most of the killing took place on the approach roads, especially around Muxidi, rather than in the square itself. Soldiers were also killed by crowds. In the early hours of 4 June troops surrounded the square; several witnesses later said the last students left it under army orders without mass killing inside the square. On 5 June an unidentified man stood in front of a column of tanks on Chang'an Avenue, an image that became famous around the world.

The number of dead remains disputed. Officials first spoke of about 300 dead; an internal figure reported to party leaders on 19 June was 241, including soldiers and police. Records from eleven Beijing hospitals counted at least 478 dead. Most other estimates, from diplomats, journalists and Amnesty International, range from several hundred to around a thousand; some went far higher, though the historian Timothy Brook judged claims of 10,000 deaths unconvincing. The Tiananmen Mothers, a group founded by relatives of victims, has documented 202 named victims.

The government arrested large numbers of people across the country and purged officials seen as sympathetic. Zhao Ziyang was removed and spent the rest of his life, until 2005, under house arrest; Jiang Zemin replaced him. Western countries imposed arms embargoes. Political liberalisation was halted, while economic reform resumed after Deng's southern tour in 1992. In Hong Kong, the crackdown deepened fears ahead of the 1997 handover.

Our 1985 and 1994 maps show the People's Republic of China in the years before and after the protests.