“We cannot avoid our obligations,” the protestors said, while Premier Li Peng claimed, “The fate of China hangs by a thread.” Currently, China avoids mentioning June 4th entirely if possible, but when unavoidable, they use the vague term 'political turmoil' (政治风波). The official explanation is that 'an extremely small number of dissatisfied elements incited the masses and instigated a counter-revolutionary disturbance.' In short, they use the name 'political turmoil' but fill the content with the narrative of a 'riot.' Official state documents mentioning this incident can still be found in some libraries, and they consistently describe the soldiers who suppressed the 'riot'.
Evidence supporting this came in a 2019 public statement by Wei Fenghe, China's Minister of National Defense, at the Asia Security Summit. He mentioned June 4th—a very rare occurrence—saying, 'The June 4th incident was a kind of disturbance and turmoil, and the firm measures taken by the Party Central Committee to stop and quell it were the correct decision.' This is effectively the Party's current official stance.
When Hu Yaobang died on April 15th, university students immediately held protests demanding anti-corruption measures and democracy. However, the People's Daily published the 4.26 Editorial, defining the protests as a 'planned counter-revolutionary disturbance' and calling for their dispersal.
Students, citizens, and workers had to fight this editorial throughout May. The students constantly maintained that 'We are patriots, not rioters.' They even sang songs like 'Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China' and 'The East Is Red' to clearly demonstrate that they were 'patriots advocating for reform,' not 'counter-revolutionary rioters.'
However, a month of uneasy confrontation ultimately yielded no results, and the Party chose armed suppression, leading the People's Army to slaughter the people.
(Scene in the square on June 1st) The '89 Democracy Movement was 'initially' clearly a peaceful protest. But when the military's armed suppression was officially authorized on June 2nd, and troops began deploying in Beijing, tensions started to soar.
On the evening of June 2nd, an armed police jeep plowed onto the sidewalk, killing three citizens and critically injuring one. The protestors viewed this less as an accident and more as a warning sign for 'armed suppression.' Student leaders immediately instructed supporters to build barricades at key strongholds to block the military's entry.
On the morning of June 3rd, a bus carrying soldiers moving in plain clothes was spotted by protestors in the Xinjiekou area of Beijing and blocked right in the middle of the road. Enraged by the large number of firearms and ammunition found inside the bus, protestors surrounded the soldiers, beat them, and seized their weapons.
The protest leaders were deeply troubled by the sight of rifles, bayonets, and ammunition piled up in the square. Naturally, keeping these would only give the authorities an excuse for suppression. This is where the famous story comes in: the intellectual protest leader Liu Xiaobo—who we know well—appealed tearfully to the protestors, saying, 'We must return the confiscated weapons.'
This is where the discrepancy between Chinese government reports and human rights organization accounts appears. The official CCP media outlets described the situation by claiming that on 'June 3rd, student and worker organizations distributed knives, guns, and iron bars, inciting people to capture and kill soldiers and police.' This directly clashes with the records of protestors and researchers present at the scene, who state that 'although a small number of citizens were agitated and took up arms, the leadership tried to maintain non-violence and handed the firearms over to the police.' I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is more trustworthy.
Starting at 8 PM on June 3rd, the military surrounded the entire city of Beijing and began suppressing the key strongholds and main routes.
Clashes continued outside Beijing. Protestors fiercely resisted, throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails at the soldiers. The military broadcasted warnings for 30 minutes, and when the protestors did not retreat, they began firing live ammunition around 8:30 PM.
Around 11 PM, the largest clash of the entire protest occurred in Muxidi. 1. The start of the standoff: The 38th Army, approaching from East Beijing, encountered barricades made of buses. Initially, 'police' stepped forward and warned them to disperse, but this failed as protestors resisted by throwing bricks. 2. Live Fire: Soon after, an officer who appeared to be a regular 'military unit' commander shouted, 'If you don’t attack first, we won’t shoot, so disperse!' However, the protestors continued to resist by throwing Molotov cocktails, and live fire soon began. It was not minimal firing for suppression, but clearly indiscriminate spraying. There are numerous testimonies of citizens watching the situation from their apartment balconies being shot at this time.
3. Armored vehicle breakthrough: The military then mobilized APCs and trucks to forcibly break through the barricades. During this process, protestors fiercely resisted. Records from the 'People's Liberation Army' state that 65 military trucks and 47 APCs were burned, and 485 military vehicles were damaged. While the specific numbers are questionable given the source, Western journalists (like Jeff Widener, the 'Tank Man' photographer) also testified that they saw protestors burning APCs with Molotov cocktails, beating and killing soldiers who jumped out, and even stealing military vehicles and driving them around. Thus, it cannot be dismissed as something that never happened.
There is only one instance where the fact that 'citizens also fired guns' is mentioned. It is reported that in the early morning of June 4th in the Shuangjing area of Southeast Beijing, there was a shootout where some citizens returned fire with captured weapons. However, calling this the 'armed riot' the government speaks of is a massive leap.
At dawn on June 4th, the western city center descended into pandemonium. The military advanced, led by APCs, unleashing indiscriminate live fire, while citizens burned APCs and killed several soldiers.
(Actual scene of students withdrawing at the time) The leaders in the square were greatly shocked by this news, and the consensus formed was, 'Not everyone here should die.' Intellectual figures like Hou Dejian and Liu Xiaobo took the lead and negotiated with the martial law troops around 3 AM, securing a promise that 'the military will not fire if the students withdraw in an orderly fashion.' Students then withdrew from the square around 4:30 AM.
Around 5:20 AM, a tank charged into the square, crushing and destroying the Goddess of Democracy statue, and that’s where the '89 Democracy Movement' as we know it ended.
However, even on the morning of June 4th, the martial law troops did not stop. They engaged in indiscriminate firing across the entire city, targeting protesting citizens and even those who were doing nothing. The massacre continued throughout the morning of June 4th, only finally subsiding by the afternoon.
On June 5th, a man blocked the military as they were leaving the city center after pacifying Beijing—this man was Tank Man. Two nearby citizens pulled away the man protesting the soldiers, and with Tank Man, the protest officially came to a complete end. Although arrests and executions continued across China for another month, it is fair to say the 'June 4th Tiananmen Democracy Movement' ended with Tank Man. Amnesty International estimates that at least 1,000 civilians died, and dozens of soldiers were killed. The official report from the Chinese government states that 'over 200 citizens died, but the losses suffered by the military, who were attacked by 'rioters,' were also significant.'
The key points used by the Chinese government to frame the protest as a riot, and the rebuttals, are as follows: 1. Protestors seized and used firearms. CCP Claim: Rioters systematically stole and used weapons, and they organized the distribution of these weapons to incite violence. Rebuttal: While combining various testimonies confirms that 'weapon seizure' itself occurred, the protest leaders clearly instructed that captured weapons be handed over to public security forces. 2. Protestors 'first' brutally used violence and seized weapons, leading the military to fire in self-defense. CCP Claim: Protestors first beat up soldiers and police, threatened them with Molotov cocktails, and even killed them. Rebuttal: There is ample testimony that the military used violence before the protestors engaged in violence, and this claim does not explain the indiscriminate killing of unarmed citizens.
The government heavily promoted photos of the 'soldier immolation,' where protestors burned and 'hanged' soldiers in the city center, to highlight the violence and radicalism of the protestors. They use this to define the essence of the '89 Tiananmen Square struggle' as a 'violent rebellion.' This is confirmed by a Reuters journalist, who described the scene as 'too horrifying to send to subscribers.' If you search for it in Chinese on Google, the original photo does appear, but since it is explicit and brutal, I recommend against searching for it. The authorities are using such methods to distort the fundamental nature of the democracy movement.
(Photo of a university couple protesting in the square) Source.
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"Mandatory reading for anyone who believes an authoritarian regime's official history. Major props to the commenter who dropped the classic HK protest song lyrics."
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