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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

Tianamen Square

Contents of this path:

Daily Mirror Newspaper cover on June 6, 1989, two days after the Chinese Military crackdown in Tiananmen Square. The events at Tiananmen grabbed the American public’s attention and seemed to shift Americans’ views of China within a short period of time. Just months before the massacre, a Gallup poll found 72% of Americans expressing a very or mostly favorable view of China, but this plummeted to 34% by August 1989. About half of Americans in a July 1989 Times Mirror survey said they had seen the now iconic photo of a lone demonstrator standing in front of a column of tanks on Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue.
The Communist Party was divided between those urging more rapid change and hardliners wanting to maintain strict state control. In the mid-1980s, student-led protests started. Those taking part included people who had lived abroad and been exposed to new ideas and higher standards of living. How did the protests grow? In spring 1989, the protests grew, with demands for greater political freedom. Protesters were spurred on by the death of a leading politician, Hu Yaobang, who had overseen some of the economic and political changes. He had been pushed out of a top position in the party by political opponents two years earlier. Tens of thousands gathered on the day of Hu's funeral, in April, calling for greater freedom of speech and less censorship. In the following weeks, protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square, with numbers estimated to be up to one million at their largest. The square is one of Beijing's most famous landmarks. At first, the government took no direct action against the protesters. Party officials disagreed on how to respond, some backing concessions, others wanting to take a harder line. The hardliners won the debate, and in the last two weeks of May, martial law was declared in Beijing. On 3 to 4 June, troops began to move towards Tiananmen Square, opening fire, crushing and arresting protesters to regain control of the area. No-one knows for sure how many people were killed. At the end of June 1989, the Chinese government said 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel had died. Other estimates have ranged from hundreds to many thousands. In 2017, newly released UK documents revealed that a diplomatic cable from then British Ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald, had said that 10,000 had died. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48445934
Student leader Wang Dan addresses a mass protest rally in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on May 27, 1989. The number of people killed is unknown. Estimates vary from several hundred to 10,000. “We knew people had been injured and died. We were leaving in an orderly way. Suddenly we heard a big bang behind us and we saw a tank fire a tear gas canister towards us. They were chasing us aggressively from the east toward the west,” he said.
University students campaign for democracy in Tiananmen Square, May 1989. Students list seven demands of the government. 1. Affirm Hu Yaobang’s views on democracy and freedom as correct. 2. Admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization had been wrong. 3. Publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members. 4. Allow privately run newspapers and stop press censorship. 5. Increase funding for education and raise intellectuals’ pay. 6. End restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing. 7. Provide objective coverage of students in official media
Journalists protest against corruption on Tiananmen Square on May 17, 1989. “Before people fasted on their own. Now, we hope more people will join and turn this into a social movement and a tradition. Even though we are scattered… we are united and together,” said one of the organisers, based in China, who asked not to be named for security reasons. “When 1.3 billion people come together to observe this moment, our nation will have gained new life,” the statement said.
A young unidentified couple pass the time in Tiananmen Square with a lively dance. It was mid-morning in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on 1 June, 1989. Someone had turned on a boombox playing 80s disco music, and people began to dance. A young couple spins in a small opening in the crowd. The woman smiles slightly, her eyes almost closed, as her partner in a loose dress shirt and blazer turns her. Around them, people are clapping. It is a photo that captures a side of the pro-democracy movement often overshadowed by what came after – the brutal military crackdown on the evening of 3 June and morning of 4 June. 30 years later, Zhou Fengsuo, a student leader in Beijing, later jailed, remembers the scene. “There was a lot of celebration. For the first time, you see this freedom in the air, that inspired people to celebrate to be hopeful and be joyful in Tiananmen Square, the symbol of power in China. That’s the most inspiring story of 1989.” Throughout the six-week occupation of the square, there were many lighter moments: protesters giving out birthday cake, people sharing breakfast and tea, someone giving another demonstrator a haircut. Unofficial weddings were held.
The Goddess of Democracy, completed in 1994, stands in Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, California. In San Francisco, for the fifth anniversary, the city erected a 9.5 foot bronze statue that was modeled after the original Goddess of Democracy. It is located in the edges of Chinatown, on a small park. Fang Lizhi and Nick Er Liang were at the unveiling. The designer, Thomas Marsh, used photographs of the original Goddess of Democracy as a model for his statue. Two Chinese students of his formed the torch, and another formed the face
President Bush, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, and others meet with Chinese students in the Oval Office on June 5, 1989. The United States Congress and media criticized the military action. President George H. W. Bush suspended military sales and visits to that country. Large scale protests against the Chinese government took place around the country. U.S. public opinion of China dropped significantly after the Tiananmen Square protests, from 72% having favorable opinions of China before the Tiananmen Protests to only 34% in August 1989. As veterans of the 4 June movement settled into lives in their adopted countries, some, like Wang Dan, chose to continue the fight against the CCP.
On April 21, 1989, tens of thousands of students and citizens marched to Tiananmen Square. The students protested corruption and rising prices and called for free speech and the right to protest. Four days later the People’s Daily — the official voice of the Communist Party — sharply condemned the protests. But the next day, April 27, about 100,000 people marched in the first mass pro-democracy protest in China, in direct defiance of the party.
A student meditates while on a hunger strike, May 1989. From disgraced CCP member Wang Ruowang in 1989- “According to Marx’s historical materialism, mass riots and wars are generally divided into two clearly opposite kinds — the just and the unjust. Take “the people are driven to by tyranny” as an example. Historical books in our country always say that it is just, while suppression by government troops and police is unjust. Similarly, it is only just that “officials are driven out of power by the people.”
The Communist Party was divided between those urging more rapid change and hardliners wanting to maintain strict state control. In the mid-1980s, student-led protests started. Those taking part included people who had lived abroad and been exposed to new ideas and higher standards of living. How did the protests grow? In spring 1989, the protests grew, with demands for greater political freedom. Protesters were spurred on by the death of a leading politician, Hu Yaobang, who had overseen some of the economic and political changes. He had been pushed out of a top position in the party by political opponents two years earlier. Tens of thousands gathered on the day of Hu's funeral, in April, calling for greater freedom of speech and less censorship. In the following weeks, protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square, with numbers estimated to be up to one million at their largest. The square is one of Beijing's most famous landmarks. At first, the government took no direct action against the protesters. Party officials disagreed on how to respond, some backing concessions, others wanting to take a harder line. The hardliners won the debate, and in the last two weeks of May, martial law was declared in Beijing. On 3 to 4 June, troops began to move towards Tiananmen Square, opening fire, crushing and arresting protesters to regain control of the area. No-one knows for sure how many people were killed. At the end of June 1989, the Chinese government said 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel had died. Other estimates have ranged from hundreds to many thousands. In 2017, newly released UK documents revealed that a diplomatic cable from then British Ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald, had said that 10,000 had died. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48445934
“DOES THE AVENUE of the Stars now lead to Tiananmen Square? For two bloody hours last Friday June 15), the LAPD sealed off Century City so that they could beat and arrest scores of striking janitors and their supporters. While horrified office workers and residents looked on (including, perhaps, Ronald Reagan in his Fox Plaza suite), the police repeatedly flailed the front lines of the justice for Janitors march with riot batons, before launching a flanking attack that swept an en tire section of the crowd into an underground parking structure. Those trapped inside were mercilessly pummeled; trying to flee, they were arrested for “failure to disperse.” From Mike Davis, “Failure to Disperse: The L.A. Police Riot”