Question

Match the individuals or groups to their actions related to the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Answer 1

Deng Xiaoping - arrested anti-communists

students - went on hunger strike

the west - sympathized with student protesters

Answer 2

Deng Xiaoping  arrested anti-communists

Students  went on a hunger strike

The West sympathized with the student protestors

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 consisted of a series of demonstrations led by students in the People's Republic of China, which took place between April 15 and June 4, 1989. The protest is named after the place where the Army Popular Liberation suppressed the mobilization: Tiananmen Square, in Beijing. The protesters came from different groups, from intellectuals who believed that the Communist Party government was too repressive and corrupt, to city workers who believed that economic reforms in China had gone too far and that inflation and unemployment were threatening their lifestyles. The event that started the protests was the death of Hu Yaobang.

After the protests and the calls of the Government asking for its dissolution, a division of criteria on how to respond to the demonstrators took place within the Communist Party. The decision was to suppress the protests by force, instead of accessing their demands. On May 20, the government declared martial law and on the night of June 3, sent the tanks and army infantry to Tiananmen Square to dissolve the protest. Estimates of civilian deaths show a total of approximately 10,000. After the violence, the government undertook a large number of arrests to suppress the instigators of the movement, expelled the foreign press and strictly controlled the coverage of events in the Chinese press. The cruel repression of the protest in Tiananmen Square caused international condemnation of the actions of the Government.