This Day in 1989: April 18, Students Sit-in at Great Hall of People and Xinhuamen

After spending the night in Tiananmen Square guarding the flowers and wreaths at the Monument to People's Heroes, the crowd from Peking University shrank to about two hundreds in the early morning of April 18, 1989. They had come up with a Seven-Point Petition which they intended to submit to the National People's Congress.

Wang Dan and Guo Haifeng led the remaining crowd onto the steps of the Great Hall of People. When it opened the door in the morning, they went in and submitted the petition to an office. Wang Dan obtained a receipt and then left the scene. But the crowd was not satisfied and remained at the site. They wanted to have People's Representatives to receive the petition in person. Another copy of the peitition was made and Li Jinjin took the lead to organize a day-long sit-in. It was by the evening hour when three People's Representatives finally agreed to appear and receive the petition in front of the students. Li Jinjin met them on the steps and handed the paper in a scene resembling a formal diplomatic manuver.

Li Jinjin left the scene and returned to Peking University, where to his horror he saw large groups of students rushing out of the campus to reinforce the crowd at Tiananmen.

Later that night, a sizable crowd gathered in front of Xinhuamen, the site of the central government and engaged a push-and-shove match with the guards there. They demanded for the Premier Li Peng to appear in person for a dialogue. The situation was tense.

Eventually, however, the crowd dispersed in the early morning hours with the combined efforts of rational persuasion and the appearrance of more and more police force. No violence broke out that night, but the same could not be said for the next night.


Days of 1989

Document of 1989: Seven-Point Petition

In the early morning of April 18, 1989, hundreds of students from Peking University gathered around the Monument to People's Heroes at Tiananmen Square. They had spent the previous night there guarding the wreaths and flowers dedicated to the newly deceased Hu Yaobang. Wang Dan, Guo Haifeng, Li Jinjin, and Zhang Boli were all among the crowd. They proposed to draft a formal petition to the government.

After much discussion, a "Seven-Point Petition" was drafted:

1. Reevaluate and praise Hu Yaobang's contributions
2. Negate the previous anti-"spiritual pollution" and anti-"Bourgeois Liberation" movements
3. Allow unofficial press and freedom of speech
4. Publish government leaders' income and holdings
5. Abolish the "Beijing Ten-Points" [restricting public assembly and demonstrations]
6. Increase education funding and enhance the compensation for intellectuals
7. Report this movement faithfully

The petition was first written as big posters. Wang Dan and Li Jinjin made separate attempts to submit them to People's Representatives in the Great Hall of People that day. The list was also widely circulated among the campuses in Beijing and became the focal point in the early stages of the student movement. The government never responded directly to the petition.

On April 22, at the end of the state funeral for Hu Yaobang, three students made the most dramatic scene of kneeling down at the steps of the Great Hall of People and lifting a copy of the Seven-Point Petition over their head.


Documents of 1989