The Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989

Abstract

On June 4th, 1989, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces brought an abrupt end to an unprecedented protest that lasted for two months at Tiananmen Square in China. The estimated death toll of the crackdown varies from several hundred to several thousand.1 While the Chinese government denied the existence of massive killing and claimed that the incident was simply a suppression of a counter-revolutionary rebellion, the foreign media characterized the event as an aggressive “massacre” that severely abused human rights. However, according to Wei Ling Chua, “Technically speaking, the nature of the protest was similar to the 2011 Wall Street protest in America. From a historical perspective, it is nothing more than another incident of mass discontent against an existing government at a time of economic hardship.”2 But why did the Tiananmen Square Incident become the one that still gets mentioned even thirty years after it happened? The Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989 remains as an unforgettable event that still attracts exceptional, continuous attention from many people today. This is because of the huge difference between what the protestors sought and the violent responses that the Chinese government had on handling the demonstrations, and the exaggerated reports from the Western media who assigned China a paralyzed image.