From Mourning Service to Martial Law - The Crackdown on the Protest Movement of 1989 on Tiananmen Square and the Leaders' Motives

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Politics - Region: Far East, grade: 1,0 (A), University of Regensburg (Institute for Politcal Science), course: China in World Politics, language: English, abstract: When in the night from June 3 to June 4, 1989 armoured personnel carriers and main battle tanks entered Tiananmen Square in Beijing the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) brought the world's largest and longest-lasting movement dedicated to democracy to a violent end. The numbers of confirmed deaths differ depending on the source. Today it is safe to assume that more than thousand people were killed in Beijing within several days. The West was shocked that the democracy movement that had met with wide response throughout the world ended in tragedy and bloodshed. The surprise about the crackdown was so big because the Chinese government had treated the demonstrators over a month obviously with remarkable tolerance1. Eventually, the declaration of martial law and the government's use of force against their own people by killing innocent and peacefully demonstrating students and citizens were disturbing and horrifying for the Western observers. [...]