An anniversary is an opportunity to reflect. The anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which took place on 4 June 1989, is one of those pivotal moments in history that invites us to reflect on China and its relationship to human rights. 

While social and political leaders around the world remember what happened, the Chinese regime remains on high alert for signs of dissent, wielding the tried and trusted weapon of censorship at home, and downplaying the Tiananmen protests as a “disturbance" abroad. The regime’s task of forgetting has been made easier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic and the widespread protests in the US, following the killing of an unarmed black American in police custody.  

However, the events of 4 June 1989 should not be forgotten. Understanding Tiananmen is the key to understanding why the authoritarian Chinese regime has endured long after other dictatorships have fallen. Perhaps, it is also the key to change.

THE FIRST STONE LAID IN ‘86

The first stones on the road to 4 June 1989 were laid two and half years earlier. Following Mao’s death in 1976, China, guided by the ideologically moderate paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, had gradually begun opening itself to market reforms. Criticism of the regime, long hidden, began to bubble to the surface. In December 1986, student protests against corruption and high inflation took place across mainland China. The then General Secretary Hu Yaobang, a vocal critic of Mao and advocate for reform, was sympathetic to the students’ demands for freedom of press, freedom of association and freedom of speech.

Despite pressure from Deng and conservative party members, Hu refused to expel the student protest leaders from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As a consequence, when the protests dissipated in January 1987, Deng attacked Hu for his tolerance of “bourgeois liberalism”, forcing him to resign as General Secretary and to produce a humiliating self-criticism. Hu was quickly elevated by students to the status of a political hero, who had chosen to abide by his principles and face the consequence rather than compromise. 

On the surface, it did not appear that the removal of Hu would seriously hinder China’s slow march to reform, first of the market and then of politics. Hu’s replacement as General Secretary was the equally liberal Zhao Zhiyang, who Deng intended to groom as his successor. But the removal of Hu also allowed the archconservative Li Peng to navigate his way to the position of premier. He was a critic of Hu’s handling of the ’86 student demonstrations and he would be a critic of Zhao’s handling of the ’89 demonstrations.

THE ROAD TO TIANANMEN

On 8 April 1989, Hu suffered a fatal heart attack and died a week later. His death unleashed a wave of mourning across China’s liberal-leaning students. On 15 April, they began converging on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to express their grief and, like the ’86 protesters, to demand greater political freedom and an end to corruption. During Hu’s funeral, held in the Great Hall of the People, 50,000 students marched on Tiananmen Square demanding to be let inside. Over the coming weeks, the student protesters were joined by people from all across China and all socioeconomic classes, until their numbers reached more than one million. 

Like his predecessor, Zhao was sympathetic to the student protests, calling them patriots and declaring that their grievances were legitimate. Zhao resisted the hardline advocated by Li. On 19 May, Zhao and Li went to the square to discuss with the students their grievances and broker an end to the protests. Although Zhao was unable to clear the square, he was able to convince the protesters to call off their hunger strike, which had started on 13 May.  

On the same day, the Politburo Standing Committee—the CCP’s highest organ—met and Deng decided that the square should be clear without further delay. Li declared martial law the next day and Zhao was sidelined (like his predecessor he was forced to resign, before being placed under house arrest). After the declaration of martial law failed to clear the square, troops moved in overnight on the 3-4 June. When the troops met the protesters, they opened fire. It is unknown how many were killed.

AFTERMATH

In the immediate aftermath of the killings, the regime rounded up protesters and other dissidents. Among them were diverse figures, such as the Noble Laureate Liu Xiaobo; the linguist Chen Mingyuan; the factory worker Xiao Bin who had spoken to foreign media; the film director Zhang Nuan Xin; advisers to the General Secretary Zhao, Bao Tong and Cat Siyuan; veteran activist Ren Wanding; student leaders, Gao Haifeng and Liu Gang; Christian trade unionist Lee Chukyan; and the social scientists, Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, Li Dan, the announcer for the English-language broadcasts of Radio Beijing, who reported on the protests was also arrested after announcing that thousands had been killed before signing off his broadcast with “And now for the official version of the news…”. According to Human Rights Watch, the translator for the broadcast was summarily executed shortly afterwards. 

The crackdown on civil society persisted in the years following the massacre. Even the defence lawyers, who defended some of the arrested, became guilty by association: some were stripped of their licences to practice, another was denied state housing. Guo Quan and Xu Zhiyong, who both attempted to found political parties in the aftermath of the massacre, were detained and sentenced to ten and four years respectively. And a few years later, when Army Doctor General Jiang Yanyong published an open letter asking the regime to recognise the protests as an act of patriotism, echoing the sentiment of former General Secretary Zhao, the regime subjected him to "reeducation." He has been detained under house arrest intermittently ever since. Those activists lucky enough to escape via Hong Kong to the West remain in exile to this day.

CONSEQUENCES

The CCP never suffered any major consequences abroad for the events of 4 June 1989. The UK and Portugal handed over Hong Kong and Macau respectively to China in 1997; China joined the WTO in 2001; Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008; and China has signed numerous bilateral agreements with nations around the world on trade and infrastructure in the 31 years since Tiananmen.

Consequently, while the early 1990s saw the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and a wave of democratisations from South Korea to Chile, China was allowed to take a step back to a more authoritarian approach. Thus, rather than feeling the need to reform China’s political system, the upper echelons of the CCP took away from the Tiananmen Square Massacre the lesson that compromise and dialogue weaken the party’s legitimacy and power, and that only brute force can secure it. It is a lesson that has informed the party’s response to peaceful protests and dissent ever since, and explains why China’s current leader Xi Jinping has dealt so harshly with dissent in China, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Hong Kong: he is a product of China’s recent history.

There is an opportunity, however, to teach Xi and the Chinese regime a new lesson—that human rights matter. The way to do that is not to allow human rights abuses in China to take a back seat to economic interests or to apathy, in the way that the terrible killings in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 were.

Samuel is a trainee solicitor and postgraduate at Cardiff University. He is active in several U.K.-based organisations campaigning on behalf of Hong Kong and BNOs. His research interests include transitional justice and the rule of law.

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