1989 Tiananmen Square Protests

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese,were student-led popular demostrations in Beijing  that received broad support from city residents and exposed deep splits within China's Political Leadership but were forcibly suppressed by hardline leaders who ordered the Military to enforce Martial Law  in the country's capital.

The protests were triggered in April 1989 by the death of former communist party general secretary Hu Yaobang, a liberal reformer, who was deposed after losing a power struggle with hardliners over the direction of Chinese Economic and Political reforms.

University students marched and gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn Hu also voiced grievances against inflation, limited career prospects, and corruption of the party elite .The students called for government accountability, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the restoration of workers' control over industry.

At the height of the protests, about a million people assembled in the Square.

The crackdown initiated on June 3–4 became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the June 4 Massacre as troops with assault rifles and tanks inflicted thousands of casualties on unarmed civilians trying to block the military’s advance on Tiananmen Square, which student demonstrators had occupied for seven weeks.

In the aftermath of the crackdown, the government conducted widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press.

Internationally, the Chinese government was widely condemned for the use of force against the protesters.