The Tiananmen Square Massacre

Podcast Transcript

In the spring of 1989, thousands of people filled the heart of Beijing demanding reform, freedom, and an end to corruption.

For weeks, the world watched as hope seemed to rise in Tiananmen Square that maybe, China would see major political reforms.

Then, in a single night, tanks rolled in, gunfire echoed through the streets, and one of the most infamous crackdowns in modern history unfolded.

Learn more about the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and how it changed China and the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

To understand the events that took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989, it is necessary to understand China in the 1980s. After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China’s paramount leader. Deng did not dismantle Communist Party rule, but he radically changed the economy.

Under his reforms, markets were partially liberalized, private enterprise was tolerated, foreign investment was welcomed, and living standards began to rise. However, reform also produced inflation, corruption, inequality, and widespread frustration.

Many Chinese citizens saw politically connected officials and their families enriching themselves while ordinary people struggled with rising prices. Universities expanded, exposing students to new ideas about democracy, constitutionalism, and accountability. Intellectual debate flourished more than at any time since 1949.

The death of Hu Yaobang, a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, was the immediate cause of the protests. He died of a sudden heart attack on April 15. The students believed his death was related to being forced to resign after his leniency with earlier student protests in 1986.

Hu Yaobang was deeply admired for his advocacy of political reform and compassion for peasant rights. His sudden passing was a devastating blow, fueling the students’ grief as they poured into the streets, igniting the protests.

The students gathered in Tiananmen Square, the vast ceremonial center of Beijing, to mourn him. Their memorial petitions soon turned into political demands: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, disclosure of leaders’ assets, action against corruption, and dialogue with the government.

What began with students rapidly broadened. Workers, journalists, civil servants, and ordinary Beijing residents joined demonstrations. Universities across China organized marches, and solidarity protests appeared in other cities.

The movement was never fully unified. Some wanted Western-style democracy. Others wanted reforms within socialism. Many simply wanted a cleaner government and respect from leaders. This diversity gave the protests strength in numbers but weakness in strategy. There was no single leadership, no agreed negotiating position, and no clear endgame.

The Chinese leadership itself was deeply divided. General Secretary Zhao Ziyang favored dialogue and compromise. Premier Li Peng and party hardliners argued the protests threatened Communist rule and social stability.

On April 26, the People’s Daily published an editorial condemning the movement as turmoil manipulated by hostile forces. Rather than intimidating students, the editorial enraged many citizens and swelled participation.

Tensions rose when the protesters learned that Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev was planning to visit China on May 15, 1989. In protest of the impending visit, many of the students began hunger strikes. This form of protest was used to raise public awareness by highlighting the suffering and injustices the protesters were experiencing.

The protesters tried to exert international pressure on the Chinese Government. At this point in history, China had opened its borders to the West, allowing outside media into the country. The hunger strike drew the attention of Western audiences and raised awareness of the protest and the movement’s demands.

With the number of protesters now exceeding a million, the government began taking more action.

Beijing was placed under martial law on May 20. The government mobilized at least 30 military divisions and 14 army corps. Civil air travel was suspended for the military, but this did little to deter protesters.

As the military began to arrive in Beijing, they initially could not enter the city. Protesters blocked the path to the Capitol, so the military had no way forward. This forced the military to retreat to the city’s outskirts.

In the meantime, the protesters began facing internal challenges. Because of he sheer volume of people in the square and the lack of organization, there was no definitive leadership or agreement on how to proceed. Consequently, these factors fostered significant internal friction and division within the movement.

Because there was no clear course of action, some students wanted to reconvene on campus to discuss the goals of the protest movements, while many others were unwilling to leave the square.

Overcrowding led to severe hygiene issues. Distrust grew, with students accusing each other of collaborating with the government or seeking personal fame. Combined with fear of the military, the situation was psychologically difficult.

The protests were becoming a powder keg, and it was only a matter of time before it blew.

Zhao Ziyang made his final political appearance on May 19 when he visited the square and urged students to leave, telling them they had come too late. Soon afterward, he was removed from power and placed under house arrest, where he remained until his death in 2005. His fall marked the victory of hardliners within the Communist Party.

On the night of June 3 and into June 4, the government launched the final crackdown. Troops from multiple army units entered Beijing with tanks, armored vehicles, and live ammunition.

Fighting and killings occurred primarily on the roads leading to Tiananmen Square, especially in western Beijing neighborhoods, where residents attempted to block the army’s advance.

Soldiers fired into crowds. Civilians were beaten, shot, or crushed by vehicles. Buses and barricades burned. Chaos spread across the city.

One of the earliest and deadliest clashes occurred around Muxidi, a major boulevard area west of the square. Witnesses reported soldiers firing directly into crowds as people tried to block their advance.

Many civilians appear to have believed the troops would use blanks or fire over their heads, as had happened in some previous political confrontations. Instead, bullets struck bystanders, cyclists, apartment residents looking from windows, and people trying to carry the wounded away. Hospitals in western Beijing were rapidly overwhelmed.

As the army continued eastward through the night, the city became a patchwork of burning vehicles, gunfire, panicked crowds, and improvised rescue efforts. Beijing residents used bicycles, carts, and rickshaws to move the injured.

Doctors and nurses treated victims continuously. Some citizens attacked isolated soldiers or military vehicles. A number of armored personnel carriers were burned. Several soldiers were killed in the unrest, though civilian deaths were far higher.

Inside Tiananmen Square itself, thousands of students and supporters remained encamped. By this stage the movement was fragmented and exhausted. Hunger strikes had weakened many participants. Some leaders wanted to leave before bloodshed.

Others insisted that abandoning the square would surrender the protest’s moral power. Communication was chaotic, with different groups using loudspeakers and giving conflicting instructions.

Around midnight into the early hours of June 4, troops tightened control around the square. Tanks and infantry moved into the surrounding streets. Gunfire could be heard nearby.

Accounts differ on precise sequences because multiple groups witnessed different events that night, but the general outline we know emerged from journalists, diplomats, students, and later scholarship.

It should be noted that the most intense killing was not in the center of the square itself but on the roads leading to it. By the time troops fully encircled Tiananmen, many of the dead and wounded had already fallen in surrounding districts. Within the square, military commanders and some student representatives negotiated a withdrawal.

Certain witnesses, including foreign journalists and diplomats nearby, reported that many students were allowed to march out through the southeast side before dawn. Others described beatings, sporadic gunfire, and chaos as troops advanced.

In addition to the attack on the protesters, government troops also destroyed the signs and monuments erected by the protesters. The most notable of these was the “Goddess of Democracy.” The “Goddess of Democracy” was a statue created by art students inside the square. The statue was hastily made of papier-mache and modeled after the Statue of Liberty.

The Goddess stood for only a week before the military bulldozed it. Its destruction showed the Communist Government crushing the people’s freedoms, literally destroying the aspiration for democracy within China.

By June 5, the military had secured the square and was working to restore control over the rest of the city. The tanks left Tiananmen and began to move into the outer city streets.

While this was happening, one of the 20th century’s most iconic images was captured. Known as “The Tank Man,” most of you have probably seen it. It is an image of an unidentified Chinese individual who stood face-first in front of a row of Chinese Tanks. There was a brief standoff between the man and the tanks before the tank man was pulled away by a group of people.

The encounter between the man and the tanks happened the day after the Chinese began their attack on Tiananmen, so the man knew of the violence that had occurred.

After a week, all remaining protests and resistance had disappeared, and for all intents and purposes, order was restored.

The protest at Tiananmen Square was not the only one occurring in China. There were protests in at least eighty other cities. However, the events in Beijing are the best known.

There is a long-standing debate over what happened inside Tiananmen Square itself in the final hours because so little information about the event has ever been made public.

Some accounts, as I previously mentioned, suggest many remaining students negotiated an orderly withdrawal from the square before dawn, while others report violence there as well.

What is beyond dispute is that the massacre was not limited to the square proper. The major bloodshed occurred throughout central Beijing as the army fought its way to and from the area. The term “Tiananmen Square Massacre” became shorthand for the wider military suppression of the 1989 democracy movement in Beijing.

It was reported by the Chinese government that about 300 people died and thousands more were injured. Other organizations, like the Chinese Red Cross and the Swiss Ambassador, estimated the death toll to be closer to 2,600 to 2,700 based on their visits to hospitals in Beijing. Other estimates have placed the death toll as high as 10,000.

In the aftermath, the Chinese government ordered the arrest of the 21 students they believed were responsible for the protests. Seven of them managed to escape; the remaining were imprisoned.

In many ways, the protest at Tiananmen Square had the opposite impact that the students wanted. The protest led to the government cracking down, purging liberal reformers, increasing surveillance, and tightening its authoritarian control. The push for political freedom was, in a literal sense, crushed by tanks.

Domestically, the events of 1989 became one of the most censored subjects in China. Textbooks largely omit it. Online references are scrubbed. Dates, images, and coded language connected to June 4 are frequently censored. Generations of young Chinese have grown up with limited official knowledge of what occurred.

The legacy of the Tiananmen Square massacre is measured not only in those who were killed or imprisoned, but in the silence and censorship that followed. It marked the moment when China chose the path of economic reform without political openness.