Tiananmen Incident

The death of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, a widely respected senior Chinese leader, on 8 January 1976, prompted the incident. For several years before his death, Zhou was involved in a political power struggle with other senior leaders in the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, with Zhou's most visible and powerful antagonists were the four senior members who came to be called the Gang of Four.[1] The leader of the clique, Jiang Qing, was married to Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. To defuse an expected popular outpouring of sentiment at Zhou's death, the Communist Party of China limited the period of public mourning.

On 4 April 1976, at the eve of China's annual Qingming Festival, in which Chinese traditionally pay homage to their deceased ancestors, thousands of people gathered around the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square to commemorate the life and death of Zhou Enlai.[2] On this occasion, the people of Beijing honoured Zhou by laying wreaths, banners, poems, placards, and flowers at the foot of the Monument.[2] The most obvious purpose of this memorial was to eulogize Zhou, but Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan were also attacked for their alleged evil actions against the Premier.[3] A small number of slogans left at Tiananmen even attacked Mao himself, and his Cultural Revolution.[4]

Up to two million people may have visited Tiananmen Square on 4 April.[4] First-hand observations of the events in Tiananmen Square on 4 April report that all levels of society, from the poorest peasants to high-ranking PLA officers and the children of high-ranking cadres, were represented in the activities. Those who participated were motivated by a mixture of anger over the treatment of Zhou, revolt against Mao and his policies, apprehension for China's future, and defiance of those who would seek to punish the public for commemorating Zhou's memory.[3] There is nothing to suggest that events were coordinated from any position of leadership: it was a spontaneous demonstration reflecting widespread public sentiment. Deng Xiaoping was notably absent, and he instructed his children to avoid being seen at the square.[4]

On the night of 4 April, the Central Committee held a meeting to discuss the situation in Tiananmen Square. Party elders such as Hua Guofeng and Wu De, who were not close allies of the Gang of Four, expressed criticism at the protesters and some of their slogans which were critical of the Gang of Four and party leadership. Meanwhile, the Gang of Four seemed to have been alarmed by the personal attacks at the event, and began to use their controlled newspapers to accuse Deng Xiaoping of encouraging and controlling the protesters.[5] They consulted with the sickly Mao Zedong, claiming these people to be "capitalist roaders" who were hitting back at the Proletarian Revolution.

Government action began on the morning of 5 April, when the People's Liberation Army began removing articles of mourning from Tiananmen. On the morning of 5 April, crowds gathering around the memorial arrived to discover that it had been completely removed by the police during the night, angering them. Attempts to suppress the mourners led to a violent riot, in which police cars were set on fire and a crowd of over 100,000 people forced its way into several government buildings surrounding the square.[4]

In response, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made the decision to forcefully clear Tiananmen Square of mourners.[6] Security forces under the PLA's Beijing detachment, alongside urban militia under the control of the Gang of Four, went into the Square to forcefully clear the area.[6] The militia were reported to have been carrying wooden clubs and leather belts.[6] Approximately 40 arrests occurred and with no casualties, and by the morning of April 6, all articles of mourning had been removed.[6]

By 6:00 pm, most of the crowd had dispersed, but a small group remained until 10:00 pm, when a security force entered Tiananmen Square and arrested them. Many of those arrested were later sentenced to "people's trial" at Peking University, or were sentenced to prison work camps. Incidents similar to those which occurred in Beijing on 4 and 5 April occurred in Zhengzhou, Kunming, Taiyuan, Changchun, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Guangzhou. Possibly because of his close association with Zhou, Deng Xiaoping was formally stripped of all positions "inside and outside the Party" on 7 April.

After Mao's death, Hua and Wang played an important role in arresting the Gang of Four in October 1976. They subsequently expressed their opinion that the Tiananmen Incident was not a counter-revolutionary activity. Along with other party elders, they rehabilitated Deng and brought him back to Beijing. Nonetheless, Deng and his reformist allies subsequently became involved in a power struggle against Hua and Wang, who were more traditionally minded Maoists. Deng emerged as China's Paramount Leader in 1978.

Many of the 1976 demonstrators had written poems in memory of Zhou Enlai and as an expression of political opposition to the political situation in China.[7] Poetry created during the incident was later published in four unofficial editions by students from Beijing's Number Two Foreign Language Institute, a school with close ties to Deng Xiaoping.[8]

In December 1978, at the Third Plenum of the CPC Eleventh Central Committee, the Communist Party of China reassessed its position on the Tiananmen Incident of 1976 and declared it a "revolutionary event", a complete rebuttal of the previous position put forward by the Party.[9]

• May Fourth Movement
• Tiananmen Square protests of 1989