Tiananmen 1989 : Seven Weeks that Shook the World

20 years ago this week the mass student protests in Beijing began

On 15 April 1989 Hu Yaobang, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, died of a heart attack. This became the start signal for one of the biggest mass movements in modern history, a movement that soon grew beyond the wildest expectations of its initiators and came close to toppling the dictatorial regime of the so-called ‘communist’ party.

On the night of 3-4 June 1989, Deng Xiaoping and his ‘hard-line’ supporters within the ruling group, waded through the blood of thousands of workers and youth in order to restore their control.

A political revolution – to safeguard the priceless social conquest of a state-owned economy, but place it under a new regime of democratic workers’ control and management – was within reach in 1989. The critical ingredient that was lacking was a genuine Marxist party, rooted among workers as well as students, which could have emerged from underground conditions to fructify the mass movement with a clear programme and correct tactics. Such a force could have given a conscious expression to the unconscious processes among the masses in the direction of a socialist alternative to capitalism and Stalinism.

Published by chinaworker.info, Hong Kong, June 2009