Tiananmen Square

TIANANMEN SQUARE

Tiananmen Square will forever be remembered as a political rally that turned into a bloody massacre viewed on live television. The square in Beijing, China was the site of a pro-democracy student demonstration in the Spring of 1989, a demonstration violently crushed by the Chinese military. Scenes of the brutal crackdown were broadcast throughout the world. These images embittered the international public toward the Chinese government and had profound impact on subsequent foreign policy decisions. The demonstrations presented the media with an opportunity for a telegenic foreign story that was also easy for viewers to identify with. All of the major American networks and news organizations from many other countries had previously stationed prime-time news anchors and camera crews in Beijing in order to provide live broadcasts of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to the city. That visit marked a step toward rapprochement between China and the Soviet Union.

Thousands of students comprising China's pro-democracy movement also planned to use the state visit and the obligatory media coverage for their purposes. They had assembled and camped in the Square for two weeks in late May and early June. Among their demands were the rights to free speech and a free press, and they erected a symbolic Statue of Liberty named the "Goddess of Democracy." Their cause and the images they employed were very familiar to Americans and to other audiences around the world.

However, this hopeful demonstration came to a sudden and horrifying end. On the night of 3 June and into the early morning hours of 4 June, the army launched an assault on the unarmed civilians in the Square. They stormed the area with tanks and machine guns, firing into the crowd at random. Hundreds of young students were killed and thousands wounded in the attack. Scenes of brutality and chaos were broadcast from Tiananmen Square, and there were reports of students and civilians being imprisoned in other parts of China.

The fear inspired by the government's crackdown was so powerful that almost immediately, students and demonstration organizers stopped talking to the media. The excitement and generous spirit with which interviews had been granted just two days before had eerily disappeared. An official news blackout was imposed, and in addition to sources drying up, reporters and crews themselves were being threatened and interrogated. In a tragic distortion of intentions, the televised interviews and pictures were also used by Chinese officials to identify and incarcerate many of the students involved. The Chinese people outside of Beijing never really saw or heard the true horror of what happened. They received "official" versions from the state-run news organization. These broadcasts described scenes of violent student protesters and angry dissidents attacking innocent government authorities.

The Western media, however, was not so easily manipulated. Even though human rights violations were thought to be commonplace under the Communist Party rule, the topics received little consistent or significant mention in the mainstream press. Never before had television so graphically exposed the abuse of individual rights and disregard for human life that took place there. Tiananmen Square received continuous coverage during the first day of the massacre, representing one of the earliest efforts by U.S. news media to devote non-stop air-time to a breaking International news event. But in one of the most dramatic moments of the event audiences were able to watch a Chinese government official physically unplug the satellite transmitter carrying CBS's broadcast. As CBS Evening News Anchor Dan Rather stood by, registering his protest, television screens suddenly carried nothing but blurred static until New York transmission opened its own feed to network affiliate stations.

China experienced nearly three years of economic sanctions and scorn from the international community after the massacre, yet the Chinese government continued its hard-line policies toward all civilian dissent. On subsequent anniversaries of the military attack, Beijing has maintained an official position of denial and repression. A heavy police presence stifles the city earh year on 4 June and international news broadcasts commemorating the event are interrupted and blocked. Hotels have all been instructed to unplug their satellite connections to CNN.

The student uprising in Tiananmen Square
Photo courtesy of AP/ Wide World Photos

Despite the government's attempts at censorship, the images broadcast from Tiananmen Square cannot be erased from public memory. Few who watched the coverage will ever forget the sight of a lone student standing defiantly against a column of army tanks, or soldiers clubbing demonstrators until they were bloody and lifeless, or the panic-stricken faces of the people in the Square. Although the Chinese government would like to strike Tiananmen Square from the record books, television has insured that its lessons will be taught for many years to come.

-Jennifer Holt

FURTHER READING

Calhoun, Craig J. Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1994.

"China: The Weeks Of Living Dangerously." Broadcasting (Washington, D.C.) 12 June 1989.

Li, Peter, Steven Mark, and Marjorie H. Li, editors. Culture and Politics in China: The Anatomy of Tiananmen Square. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1991.

Salisbury, Harrison Evans. Tiananmen Diary: Thirteen Days in June. Boston: Little Brown, 1989.

Tonetto, Walter, editor. Earth Against Heaven: A Tiananmen Square Anthology. Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia: Five Islands Press, 1990.

Watson, Trevor. Tremble And Obey: An ABC Correspondent's Account of the Bloody Beijing Uprising. Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia: ABC Enterprises for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1990.

Yang, L.Y. and Marshall L. Wagner, editors. Tiananmen: China's Struggle for Democracy: Its Prelude, Development, Aftermath, and Impact. Baltimore, Maryland: School of Law, Univerity of Maryland, 1990.