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Students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square, 1989
On May 12, 1989, after more than three weeks of protesting at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, a thousand students began a hunger strike. This was timed to take place simultaneously with the planned visit of Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in order to reach the widest international audience with their demands. The hunger strikers were surrounded by thousands of supporters in the square. Protesters’ demands were largely over democratic rights, including freedom of speech and the press, improved treatment of intellectual workers and an end to the rampant corruption of the ruling bureaucracy.
The welcoming ceremony for Gorbachev was planned for May 15 at the Great Hall of the People, only hundreds of feet from where the protests has been taking place. The anger and determination of the protesters put the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy in a crisis. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Zhao Ziyang appealed to protesters on state-run national television to call off the protests to ensure a successful summit meeting.
The day of Gorbachev’s arrival, half a million demonstrators marched in the square in defiance of Chinese authorities’ appeals, forcing a change in the route of the Gorbachev motorcade. The number of hunger strikers grew to 3,000. Workers joined in the demonstration with chants such as “The citizens have joined in! Long live the students!” A young worker told the press, “They are saying what’s in our hearts.”
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