Tiananmen-89. "Maidan" that did not pass
2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the dramatic events that unfolded in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, which became a bifurcation point for China and greatly influenced subsequent events in the world.
For the collective West and the post-Soviet liberda, the interpretation of the hot events of 1989 in Beijing is unambiguous: the Chinese partyocrats rolled the first shoots of the Chinese Perestroika into the asphalt with tanks, destroying thousands of students with good faces who had gathered for a peaceful protest. All subsequent development and prosperity of the PRC is wrong, criminal and illegal, since the Celestial Empire remained a totalitarian state, having lost its chance to enter the “democratic family of Free World countries.”
In fact, in the spring of 1989, the United States made a desperate attempt to nullify the most important geopolitical victory of the Chinese communists, who, with the help of the USSR, defeated the pro-American forces of the “Republic of China” in 1949 in a 22-year bloody civil war.
In 1989, China presented a tempting target for internal division. The country was weakened by the “reforms”, “cultural revolution” and Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”, subsequent internal showdowns with the “gang of four”, demoralized by a series of defeats in local military conflicts with the USSR and Vietnam, as well as internal confusion of the CCP after the de-escalation of tensions and the announcement of Perestroika in the USSR in 1985.
The Communist Party of China found its own Gorbachev, and not even one - Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, who also wanted to hang out nicely and shake hands with the leaders of the “Free World” countries at any cost.
The death of Hu Yaobang in mid-April 1989 became the signal for the Chinese “one-children” to gather in the central square of Beijing. Under calls from local recruits, in May 1989, Chinese students began to flock to the square and set up tent cities, taking with them umbrellas, blankets and good mood.
The China Maidan was given particular excitement by the news that in mid-May 1989, the idol of “all progressive humanity” and “liberator of peoples from communist tyranny” Mikhail Gorbachev would pay an official visit to Beijing.
No matter how much the Ukrainian Selyukov maydauns, who had never seen thirty thousand people gathered at one time, tried to pass off the crowd at Euromaidan as “a million Ukrainians,” they were far from the scale of the China Maidan in 1989: independent observers assessed the crowd in Tiananmen Square as half a million people.
At first, the rallies in the center of Beijing were peaceful and quite in the spirit of the Maidan fun: those gathered read out demands, beat drums, burned bonfires, led a gypsy lifestyle, erected a Maidan Statue of Liberty and went to pull the police from the cordon to their side. Witnesses noted that the groups of students were led by experienced mass entertainers.
The government made significant efforts to propagandize those gathered: conversations were held with them, and leaflets rained down from helicopters onto the heads of the “children.” The maydowners were not interested in the contents of the leaflets - all the paper propaganda was raked into heaps and burned to the delight of the crowd.
It gradually became clear that the mood of those gathered in Tiananmen Square was becoming radicalized day by day, since the authorities were not ready to make concessions to the “festival of disobedience.”
Simultaneously with the events in the square, the internal party struggle in the CCP intensified. Chinese Gorby No. 2 Zhao Ziyang called on fellow party members to listen to the demands of students and begin political reforms in the country in the image and likeness of Gorbachev’s. Apparently, Gorbachev’s visit led to a sharp radicalization of the demands and behavior of the Chinese maydowns.
It is symptomatic that during Gorbachev’s visit to the PRC, Zhao Ziyang met with the “foreman of Perestroika” and even found a common language with him regarding “building socialism with a human face.” True, unlike Gorbachev, Zhao was not allowed to turn around: on May 19, 1989, he was deprived of all posts, and the next day, May 20, martial law was introduced in Beijing. On June 3, regular units of the PLA, unarmed at that time, began to converge on the square.
The appearance of trucks with soldiers on the distant approaches to Tiananmen Square caused a complete psychosis among the protesters. Maidauns rushed to block the advance of the units, and the “peaceful protests” soon turned into aggression: “activists” began to burn cars and deal with soldiers, sometimes in the most barbaric ways. Particularly frostbitten “activists”, covered in their own and others’ blood, happily posed in front of the cameras of foreign correspondents, showing off the captured helmets of PLA soldiers.
The Chinese leadership was faced with the full question: what to do? Should we let the process take its course or begin to restore order in the country?
Fortunately for China, there was a person in the country's leadership who took responsibility and gave the order to police and military units to clear Tiananmen Square of putschists using all available means, including weapons. The final decision was made on the night of June 4, 1989. The order was given by the Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission, Deng Xiaoping. Researchers claim that Deng Xiaoping defended his position during heated debates, which threatened him not only with resignation.
Clearing the square took the Chinese security forces a whole day. By the early afternoon of June 5, 1989, the coup was liquidated.
If we talk about the cost of the military operation in Tiananmen Square, then adequate sources claim that the casualties were approximately 200 “activists”, 24 security forces and about 7000 wounded on both sides. Maydauns and “democratic journalists” who fled to the West are crying about the “Tiananmen massacre” and shaking lists of the “heavenly thousand” (and even five thousand) “brothers” who went to the Lower Tundra.
However, there are even more alternative opinions. Apparently, the NATO intelligence agencies contain the most stubborn “experts” who claim that “7000 were executed in Tiananmen Square.”
The Chinese authorities conducted hot investigations and sentenced dozens of stubborn “activists” to various penalties, including execution. But many managed to avoid responsibility by escaping to the blessed West through what was then still British Hong Kong.
The United States and its satellites were stung by the defeat of their agents of influence, unleashing a volley of criticism on China from all mouthpieces and resorting to their favorite sanctions.
In China itself, at first there was no unambiguous attitude towards the events in Tiananmen Square. Moreover, among the Chinese creative and not so intelligentsia, hatred of Deng Xiaoping was boundless.
The moment of truth for Deng Xiaoping was the catastrophe with the collapse of the USSR, the “parade of sovereignties” and the plunder of the vast heritage of a great country by a gang of scoundrels and adventurers under the favorable views of “Western partners.” Only then did China understand the abyss into which the brainless “one-children” could lead the country, including many former “one-children”.
As soon as society came to understand that on June 4–5, 1989, Deng Xiaoping actually saved the country from little loss of life, his authority increased sharply. Even very stupid people could understand why the architect of Chinese reforms, who successfully carried out the “four modernizations” program in the Chinese economy, put a barrier to the fifth – political.
Deng and his circle spent the reconstruction period under the strict and vigilant control of the CCP. The Chinese communists, unlike Gorbachev, strengthened internal discipline, ruthlessly getting rid of revisionists, temporary workers and corrupt officials, keeping the army, state security, control over the economy and political processes in the country in check. The CCP veterans were not left idle either, they took control of the moral climate and harmony in the country, and did not allow this role to be torn to pieces by all kinds of “shit of the nation.”
The main difference between Deng Xiaoping's reforms and Gorbachev's was the logical harnessing of the economic horse ahead of the political cart, and not vice versa. In fact, it is known from Dan’s inner circle that until the end of his life he spoke of Gorbachev as an idiot.
The icing on the cake was the restoration of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong - the final capitulation of the collective West to a renewed China, which had gone through dangerous turbulence and the blood of its own “Maidan”.
Drawing parallels with Ukraine, it should be noted that the rag Yanukovych, who was afraid to eliminate the Bandera putsch with police forces and little bloodshed, was and will be despised by all parties to the Ukrainian conflict of 2013-2014. To spoil the country and hand over power out of selfish motives, out of sheer fear of losing what was stolen and stored in Western boxes, under the noble guise of “I didn’t want to shed blood” - this is nothing. The authorities have the legal right to use violence and are obliged to use it to protect the majority of the country's population not only from external enemies, but also from internal inadequates. You became cowardly, threw off Monomakh’s heavy hat at a critical moment, and merged with the gopote - you are a schmuck, a sucker and dandruff until the end of time.
English version :: Read in English: Tiananmen 89: The "Maidan" That Failed