The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the massive massacres were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in the People¡¯s Republic of China (PRC) between April 15 and June 4, 1989. They were mainly led by Beijing students and intellectuals who called for political reforms. The protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of socialist governments around the world.

There was a growing anti-government sentiment among students and progressive scholars. The protests were sparked by the death of pro-market and pro-democracy leader, Hu Yaobang. On the eve of Hu¡¯s funeral, 100,000 people gathered in the Tiananmen Square to mourn Hu. While the protests lacked a unified cause or leadership, participants were generally against the authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic liberalization and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which stayed peaceful throughout the protests.

The movement lasted seven weeks from Hu Yaobang¡¯s death on April 15 until tanks cleared Tiananmen Square on June 4. In Beijing, the resulting military response to the protesters left many civilians dead or injured. The reported tolls ranged from 200-300 (PRC government figures) and to 2,000-3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross).

Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were ousted. The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest caused widespread international condemnation of the PRC government.

There was considerable sympathy for the student protests among Chinese students in the West. Almost immediately, both the United States and the European Community announced an arms embargo, and China¡¯s image as a reforming country and a valuable ally against the Soviet Union was replaced by that of a repressive authoritarian regime.

The oppression on Tiananmen Square protests dampened the growing concept of political liberalization in communist countries that was popular in the late 1980s. As a result, many democratic reforms that were proposed during the 1980s could not succeed. Although there has been an increase in personal freedom since then, discussions on structural changes of the PRC government and the role of the Communist Party of China remain largely taboo.