Tiananmen Square

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Coursework On China-Tiananmen Square

How useful are sources A-D to a historian studying the main causes and events of the demonstration in Tiananmen Square in June 1998? (15 marks)

Source A

Source A is useful because it tells us about some of the causes, and events that occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989. It tells us that ‘thousands of students and other Beijing residents’ were involved in the demonstration. Their goal was to get rid of the ‘dictatorship of old men’, from that we can tell that they wanted democracy.  Many of the Chinese people wanted a democratic system to be put into place, like the ones that they had heard about in western countries. Deng’s reforms allowed only the social aspect of life to be westernised. However, he was not prepared, in any way, to change the political aspect of life. If he allowed democracy to enter the Chinese political system then there was a chance of him losing power. But without democracy in place then weather he was fulfilling the demands of the people or not, he could not lose power over them. People had had enough of not having a say in the way that the country was run, this is why over a million people demonstrated in and around Tiananmen Square. All the demonstrators wanted was political freedom, but Deng dismissed this idea. And even today, people who campaign for democracy are giving a harsh punishment. Usually a long jail sentence as shown in the articles on Wang Dan by Graham Hutchings.  
The source tells us that the mood was entirely peaceful over the two week long demonstration. It also tells us about the ‘cruel end’ of the demonstration. On 4 June the protestors were crushed by tanks and shot at by soldiers. During the demonstration, many students from all over mainland China enjoyed a free transportation system offered by many bus drivers to get to Tiananmen Square. The students sung the song ‘Internationale’, which is a song about international worker unity and socialism, while parading orderly in the square to demonstrate their solidarity with the boycott of college classes. This was then followed by a hunger strike including several hundred to a thousand people and on May 30
th a statue of the ‘Goddess of Democracy’ was erected in the square. This statue then came to symbolize the protest to the television viewers worldwide that were being fed by the large number of media present in China due to the expected arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russian leader who came to observe the Chinese communist system that the Chinese leaders had been boasting about. On March 20th martial law was declared. However, this was not enough to scare the demonstrators away and they continued. Therefore, several weeks later, the government officials decided that the square was to be cleared using brutal force. The entry of the troops into Beijing was opposed by many angry protestors; the people’s army were now fighting against the people using heavy armour and automatic weapons fire. Many roadblocks and battles against the army slowed them down a bit, but the roadblocks were not enough to stop tanks from entering the square. On June 4th the square was cleared of the protestors after a most gruesome event. The lights were turned off and tanks started crushing anything in their ways-students and Beijing residents.

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        Source A is similar to source C. They both show that many students demonstrated in Tiananmen Square. Also in source A the students are said to have led a ‘peaceful’ protest, in the photograph in source C it shows how students listening to each other and interacting with each other. There is no sign of violence.

The source is a bit inaccurate. It says that the mood was ‘entirely peaceful’. We know this is not true because various other accounts say about how students threw rocks and cocktails at the tanks and soldiers and set fire to busses in ...

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