This Day in 1989: May 4, Large-Scale Protest around the Country

May 4, 1989, the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, was a much anticipated date since the beginning of that year. Yet on the heels of the much more recent demonstration of April 27, the anniversary had lost quite a bit of the excitement. Beijing Students Autonomous Federation launched another large-scale demonstration anyhow, in response to the government's refusal of an equal dialogue.

The demonstration on this day was smaller in scale but a much happier occasion than that of the April 27. Students were no longer afraid of a military crackdown. They treated it largely as a victory lap and received, once again, enthusiastic support from Beijing residents. There were only occasional police human barricades, which the students stormed through without trouble.

At Tiananmen Square, students staged an impromptu commemoration of the anniversary by making speeches. In the happy mode, Zhou Yongjun announced that the weeks-long class strike was now over and urged students to resume classes. It appeared that this current student movement had reached its conclusion.

A couple hundreds young reporters joined the demonstration on that day. They rallied to demand press freedom.

In the afternoon, Zhao Ziyang made a keynote speech to the Asian Development Bank conference in Great Hall of People. Without mentioning the April 26 People's Daily editorial directly, he seemed to have reversed its verdict by claiming that there was no, and would not be, turmoil in the country.

Outside of Beijing, large-scale demonstrations erupt in more than a dozen big cities. In Shanghai, students marched and staged a sit-in protest at the city government office.


Days of 1989

NYT Archive 1989: Press Freedom in May

Back in April, 1989, when the emerging student movement was showing its unprecedented strength, Party General Zhao Ziyang inexplicably left Beijing, and indeed the country, for a previously scheduled but long state visit to North Korea. The Premier Li Peng was left in charge of handling the trouble. By all indication, however, Zhao Ziyang had personally approved the publication of the infamous People's Daily editorial on April 26, which had poured fuel into the raging fire.

Zhao Ziyang did not get back to Beijing until early May. But he got a window of opportunity to showcase a more moderate approach towards the movement. First, he gave a speech at the Asian Development Bank meeting that was oscillatory to the students, markedly different in tone from the editorial. Somehow this important speech was not covered by New York Times at the time.

Next, Zhao Ziyang made his boldest move yet: opening the press. With his instruction, pretty much all restrictions on news reporting were lifted overnight. On May 6, 1989, NYT noticed this sea change in Beijing's newspapers:

After studiously ignoring pro-democracy protests for the last two weeks, China's official newspapers seemed today to display a new openness in their reports of a mass demonstration held here on Thursday.

Photographs of streets filled with students waving banners as far as the eye could see ran on the front pages of most newspapers. The newspapers also reported details of demonstrations not only in the capital but in many other cities. Some of those demonstrations had not previously been reported.

and

'Several hundred thousand spectators watched the students marching along the streets, and many of them donated cold drinks and food,'' read part of an article from the official People's Daily. ''As long as there is corruption, this country will never be stable,'' the article quoted a banner as saying.
Such articles were unusual only given the Government's previous determination to avoid references to the demonstrations. It is not clear if today's articles and photos in the official press mark a permanent step toward openness that will let Chinese people learn about events as they happen.
Today's newspapers also quoted the Communist Party General Secretary, Zhao Ziyang, as saying that corruption occurs partly because there is a ''lack of openness in the system of work.'' That seemed to be another call for more openness in Chinese society, one of the major student demands.

This unprecedented and unusual practice of press freedom in China would last the month of May, through the thick and thin of the upcoming drama. It would then become a thing of past, never to be seen again.

NYT Archive 1989: Gearing Up For May Fourth

The May Fourth Movement is a legendary milestone in modern Chinese history, especially in the version propagated by the Communist government. The Chinese Communist Party credit the movement as a major factor in giving birth to itself.

Despite the violent nature in the movement, during which severe beating of government officials and arson had occurred, the movement had been portrayed as glorious and patriotic. In fact, school textbooks had gone so far as claiming that "student movements [such as the May Fourth] are naturally reasonable" (学生运动是天然合理的), i.e., there could be no wrong with student movements.

The generation of college students in the late 1980s grew up believing it. Many of them felt that, in 1989, it was their turn. As the seventieth anniversary of May Fourth was a couple of days away, excitements were mounting.

On May 2, 1989, New York Times reported that inter-city networking was taken place among students during the holiday period. Some students were leaving Beijing for the provinces to spread their protesting message. But more students were coming into the capital to see what was developing in Beijing.

Meanwhile, the opening session of the annual Asian Development Bank meeting was scheduled to be held in the Great Hall of People on May 4, which led to much comprehension and anticipation. The meeting was also the occasion of a breakthrough milestone: the first official delegate from Taiwan to Beijing. The delegate was headed by Taiwan's Finance Minister Shirley Kuo. As NYT reported, the tensions across the Taiwan Strait had been easing:

The two onetime enemy Governments still do not recognize each other, but they stopped shelling each other a decade ago, and in the last 18 months contacts have multiplied frenetically.

Taiwan officials no longer refer to the ''Communist bandits,'' and hundreds and probably thousands of mainland peasants have sneaked into Taiwan to work illegally in its factories and brothels. Trade between Taiwan and the mainland via Hong Kong soared 80 percent last year to $2.8 billion, and on the mainland, ''Taiwan compatriots'' have invested more than $100 million and can now be seen wherever there is a sight to be seen or money to be made. The New Look in Portraiture

Miss Kuo will sense the relaxed atmosphere when she visits Tiananmen Square in the center of the city. A gigantic portrait of Sun Yat-sen, who is honored by both sides, has been put up in the center of the square for the May Day celebration, but the traditional portraits of Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Engels were left off this year.

NYT Archive 1989: Taiwan's First Official Delegate to Beijing

On April 7, 1989, Sheryl WuDunn reported on New York Times that Taiwan had decided to send its first official delegation to Beijing for the Asian Development Bank conference in that May. By the spring 1989, the relationship across the Taiwan Strait had improved greatly. It had become very common for people from Taiwan to visit the mainland or even invest in various business activities. But still there were no official contacts between the two governments.

Just like the Gorbachev visit, this historic occasion would end up being completely overshadowed by the student movement unfolding. Indeed, Zhao Ziyang used the Asian Development Bank conference itself as a forum, just as he used his meeting with Gorbachev, to send his signals to the movement.