Having removed all remaining liberal voices in the party, Deng moved to crush the protests in the square. Beginning on May 20, troops shut down the square and began to arrest students. On the night of June 3rd, a second wave of troops worked their way from the outskirts to the center of the city,… Read more »
Tiananmen Square already had a long history as a staging ground for political unrest. Hu Yaobang’s sudden death in April 1989 began another chapter in that history. In a scene similar to the one that followed Zhou Enlai’s death in 1976, mourners flocked to the square to honor the liberal Hu. Deng tripped up when he challenged… Read more »
Student unrest followed Fang Lizhi around the country, but after ousting his chosen successor Hu Yaobang for being slow to respond, Deng clamped down. But tensions lingered under the surface. The controversial documentary River Elegy, aired on Chinese TV in 1988, encapsulated some of the difficult questions China continued to face. What role would traditional… Read more »