TIANANMEN SQUARE MASSACRE This research paper o

This research paper outlines and discusses the events leading up to the massacre which occurred in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 3-4, 1989, and seeks to explain why it occurred and whether it could have been avoided. The student demonstrations in the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the spring of 1989 reflected tensions between economic and other reforms which had been introduced by the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the preceding decade and the reluctance of party and government elites to share more broadly their shared monopoly on political power. Other specific sources of urban and intellectual discontent as well as deeper historical forces were unleashed by the cataclysmic changes which took place in the PRC during the post-Mao period. A repressive outcome was inevitable given the balance of forces in the PRC at the time but the degree of violence and bloodshed involved might have been lessened had either the Party and the government on the one hand or the student movement on the other been more unified.

On June 3-4, 1989, armored forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), including 18 tanks, and supporting local police units, cracked down on student demonstrators and sympathizers assembled in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Hundreds of demonstrators were killed and thousands wounded. According to the Chinese government, 150 soldiers were killed and 5,000 wounded (Hsu 934). In the police terror whi

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ure and party ideology. His aim in introducing administrative and economic reforms, including some decentralization of authority, the abandonment of collectivized agriculture, the introduction of market incentives and a degree of privatization of industry, including trade and investment interactions with non-communist societies, was designed to modernize China without jeopardizing party control. Baum says that "Deng threw open China's doors to the outside world, setting in motion a process of accelerating socioeconomic development and modernization . . . [while he] kept the other foot firmly on the political brake" (Burying 351). Throughout his period in power, Deng used what Baum calls "superb balancing skills . . . to mollify conservative party elders and relieve the buildup of antireform pressures . . . to follow each new surge of economic reform with an ideological swing back in the direction of Leninist orthodoxy" (Burying 394, 397). The crisis which the regime faced in the spring of 1989 was more difficult and more intense than the one it experienced after the gigantic student demonstrations in Beijing in December 1986, but the government's response was much the same. According to Hsu, "decisions were made to clamp down o

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