The Tiananmen Square protests, known in China as the June Fourth Incident were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government declared martial law on the night of 3 June and deployed troops to occupy the square in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising.
Chai Ling is a Chinese psychologist and businesswoman who was one of the student leaders in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. She was a representative of the hardline faction of the protest movement and some of the comments she made at the event formed the basis of two lawsuits later in her life. After the Tiananmen Square crackdown, she fled to the United States via Operation Yellowbird where she started her career working for Bain & Company. She is the founder of All Girls Allowed, an organization dedicated to ending China's one-child policy, and the founder and president of Jenzabar, an enterprise resource planning software firm for educational institutions.
The Goddess of Democracy, also known as the Goddess of Democracy and Freedom, the Spirit of Democracy, and the Goddess of Liberty, was a 10-metre-tall (33 ft) statue created during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The statue was constructed over four days out of foam and papier-mâché over a metal armature and was unveiled and erected on Tiananmen Square on May 30, 1989. The constructors decided to make the statue as large as possible to try to dissuade the government from dismantling it: the government would either have to destroy the statue—an action which would potentially fuel further criticism of its policies—or leave it standing. Nevertheless, the statue was destroyed on June 4, 1989, by soldiers clearing the protesters from Tiananmen square. Since its destruction, numerous replicas and memorials have been erected around the world, including in Hong Kong, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Vancouver.
The Tiananmen Mothers is a group of Chinese democracy activists promoting a change in the government's position over the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. It is led by Ding Zilin, a retired university professor whose teenage son was shot and killed by government troops during the protests. The group – comprising the parents, friends and relatives of victims of the massacre – formed in September 1989 when Ding, along with her husband Jiang Peikun, met another mother, Zhang Xianling, whose 19-year-old son was also killed on June 4, 1989. As well as campaigning, the group also disseminates information about the events to the public, including through the internet. Currently, the group consists of relatives of 125 individuals killed during the protests. For her efforts, Ding has been hailed as an "advocate for the dead".
The Tank Man is the nickname of an unidentified Chinese man who stood in front of a column of Type 59 tanks leaving Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989, the day after the Chinese government had massacred hundreds of protesters. As the lead tank maneuvered to pass by the man, he repeatedly shifted his position in order to obstruct the tank's attempted path around him. The incident was filmed and shared to a worldwide audience. Internationally, it is considered one of the most iconic images of all time. Inside China, the image and the accompanying events are subject to censorship.
The Beijing Hotel is a five-star state-owned hotel complex in the Dongcheng District of Beijing, China. It is located at the southern end of Wangfujing Street, at the corner with East Chang'an Avenue, 1.5 km from Beijing railway station with views of the Forbidden City and part of Tiananmen Square.
The Tiananmen Papers was first published in English in January 2001 by PublicAffairs. The extended Chinese version of this book was published in April that same year under the title 中國六四真相 by Mirror Books in Hong Kong. The book is presented as a compilation of selected secret Chinese official documents relating to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. The documents used in both books are said to have been made available by a Chinese compiler under the pseudonym Zhang Liang, whose identity is hidden to protect the individual from potential persecution. The English version of the book was edited and translated by Andrew J. Nathan, Perry Link, and Orville Schell, who claim to place full trust in the compiler. Speculations about the authenticity of the book have nevertheless been fervent, as the editors were never given the actual physical documents, but rather a reformatted version of the material.
Zhang Boli is a Chinese dissident.
Xiong Yan is a Chinese-American human rights activist, military officer, and Protestant chaplain. He was a dissident involved in 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Xiong Yan studied at Peking University Law School from 1986–1989. He came to the United States of America as a political refugee in 1992, and later became a chaplain in U.S. Army, serving in Iraq. Xiong Yan is the author of three books, and has earned six degrees. He ran for Congress in New York's 10th congressional district in 2022, and his campaign was reportedly attacked by agents of China's Ministry of State Security.
Collection of June Fourth Poems: Commemorating the Tiananmen Square Protest is an anthology of poems commemorating the June Fourth protests in China and published in 2007. The poems were written by victims, exiled activists and international supporters. It documents the history and cultural impact of the June Fourth movement.
Operation Yellowbird, or Operation Siskin, was a British Hong Kong-based operation to help the Chinese dissidents who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 to escape arrest by the Chinese government by facilitating their departure overseas via Hong Kong. Western intelligence agencies such as Britain's Secret Intelligence Service and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were involved in the operation. Other contributors included politicians, celebrities, business people and triad members from Hong Kong—forming the "unlikely" alliance which sustained the operation for most of its duration.
Feng Congde is a Chinese dissident and Republic of China Restoration activist. He was as a student leader from Peking University during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which placed him onto the Chinese government's 21 Most Wanted list. He spent 10 months hiding in various locations in mainland China, until he was smuggled out to Hong Kong on a shipping vessel.
Yan Mingfu was a Chinese politician. His first prominent role in government began in 1985, when he was made leader of the United Front Work Department for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He held the position until the Politburo expelled him for his sympathies with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protestors. Yan returned to government work in 1991 when he became a vice minister of Civil Affairs.
The April 27 demonstrations were massive student protest marches throughout major cities in China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The students were protesting in response to the April 26 Editorial published by the People's Daily the previous day. The editorial asserted that the student movement was anti-party and contributed to a sense of chaos and destabilization. The content of the editorial incited the largest student protest of the movement thus far in Beijing: 50,000–200,000 students marched through the streets of Beijing before finally breaking through police lines into Tiananmen Square.
Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters was formed on May 24, 1989. The purpose of this organization was to create a strong leadership to lead the student movement.
During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, student organizations received a significant amount of support in the form of donated money, supplies, and equipment from both domestic and foreign sources.
Many women participated in the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 for democratic reform in China. Lee Feigon states "women [during the Tiananmen Square Protests] were relegated for the most part to traditional support roles." Chai Ling and Wang Chaohua, however, were female student leaders taking part in leadership activities during the pro-democracy movement. Ranging from student leaders to intellectuals, many women contributed their opinions and leadership skills to the movement. Although women had substantial roles, they had different standpoints regarding the hunger strike movement on May 13.
The first of two student hunger strikes during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre began on May 13, 1989, in Beijing. The students said that they were willing to risk their lives to gain the government's attention. They believed that because plans were in place for the grand welcoming of Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on May 15, at Tiananmen Square, the government would respond. Although the students gained a dialogue session with the government on May 14, no rewards materialized. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not heed the students' demands and moved the welcome ceremony to the airport.
Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China is a scholarly book by Rowena Xiaoqing He, published by Palgrave Macmillan in April 2014. The book has been named one of the Top five China Books by the Asia Society. It is primarily an oral history of Yi Danxuan, Shen Tong, and Wang Dan, all exiled student leaders from the 1989 Tiananmen Movement in China. "Tracing the life trajectories of these exiles, from childhood during Mao's Cultural Revolution, adolescence growing up during the reform era, and betrayal and punishment in the aftermath of June 1989, to ongoing struggles in exile", the author explores, "how their idealism was fostered by the very powers that ultimately crushed it, and how such idealism evolved facing the conflicts that historical amnesia, political commitment, ethical action, and personal happiness presented to them in exile." Dan Southerland notes in Christian Science Monitor that the book provides "fresh insights and an appreciation for the challenges that exiled Chinese student leaders faced after they escaped from China." Paul Levine from American Diplomacy states that there was “a fourth major character: the author herself.” Tiananmen Exiles is a part of the Palgrave Studies in Oral History and contains a foreword by Perry Link. The forward was published in the New York Review of Books the same week the book came out.
The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, commonly known in mainland China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations in Beijing in 1989. More broadly, it refers to the popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests during that period, sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement. The protests were forcibly suppressed after Chinese Premier Li Peng declared martial law. In what became known in the West as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with assault rifles and tanks fired at the demonstrators trying to block the military's advance towards Tiananmen Square. The number of civilian deaths was internally estimated by the Chinese government to be near or above 10,000.
