Twelve years ago the Chinese Government lost patience with a student movement calling for democracy in Tiananmen square. They ordered the peoples army to turn their weapons on the people. The bloody suppression of the students effectively smashed the pro- democracy movement and drove dissent underground. The recent publishing of the Tiananmen Papers has reminded the world of the tragic events of June 1989, when students challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese Government. The issues which fueled the protest are still present in China today; lack of political freedom, corruption and unemployment. But public displays of dissent are rare and Tiananmen square remains under constant surveillance. .
The student movement started with a yearning to commemorate the reformer Hu Yaobang, who had died on April 15. To be sure, there was a provocative edge to the students' behaviour, attributable to the relatively freewheeling atmosphere the government had tolerated during the strong reform push of the previous few years. By bringing their slogans off the campuses into Tiananmen Square, the centre of the capital city the students further stuck their noses at Party control. Still, most of them stayed within the bounds of certain pieties, they acknowledged Party leadership and positioned themselves in a respectful if disappointed, supporters of the Party's long-term reform project.
The first small misstep occurred when government officials refused to receive student petitioners at the Great Hall of the People. Overnight on April 19-20 demonstrators and police clashed at the Xinhua Gate of Zhongnanhai. On April 20-21 a variety of autonomous student organizations formed, which in the leaders' eyes was a dangerous development whose only precedent in the Communist period was the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution. A huge demonstration greeted Hu Yaobang's memorial service on April 22.
Despite these developments, Zhao Ziyang--who as Party secretary held ultimate responsibility for managing the problem-believed that once Hu's funeral was over, the students would feel they had made their point and would disperse.
