Hello, I'm an American who has really only seen the photo of the man in front of the tank, but recently I've seen a video that someone posted to Reddit of a British news reporter talking about the military shooting at citizens and killing and injuring them. I had no idea that happened at all and have zero context or any other information about what happened so if I could get a rundown I would really appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Hi there! I see this question is getting some traction.
Unfortunately I don’t feel confident enough to give you (and other readers) a full rundown of an extremely complicated series of events that led to violent clashes between Chinese protesters and soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army on the 3rd and 4th of June, 1989, resulting in the deaths of many, many civilians as well as a comparatively small number of soldiers.
What I can offer are some resources that address the situation in 1989 much better than I can.
The first would be the 1995 documentary film The Gate of Heavenly Peace. In only three hours, it offers a comprehensive overview of the historical background, origins, development and the fatal conclusion of the 1989 Tiananmen Protests. While it does skim over or simplify some issues (a fault shared by any other documentary), it is still by far the most accessible and digestible (and a very, very watchable) introduction to the protests. A recommendation for those Netflix aficionados out there, or those of you who don’t want to read a book. It is available on Youtube in English I believe.
If you want a readable narrative of the Beijing protests, Craig J.Calhoun’s Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China is the book for you. The book is split into two parts, with the first half being an exceptional narrative of the protests from start to finish, and the second half being socio-political analysis. So if you want a quick, simple-to-follow narrative, you can just read half of the book (I certainly wouldn’t do so, the second half is as good as the first half)! An alternative would be Timothy Brook’s Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement, which breaks down the events of June 3rd and 4th in much more detail. It also has an extended analysis of the ‘Tank Man’ as well, if that’s what you’re interested in.
If you want to hear directly from the people actively involved in the events of 1989, I have two recommendations. The first would be the autobiography of the then General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Zhao Zi-yang, titled Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Zhao was a major figure, among many others in the Communist government, who advocated for compromise and deescalation with the protesters. He was sidelined by the hardliners before the events in June 1989 and was subject to house arrest for the rest of his life. His autobiography provides a valuable glimpse into the high-level discussions and arguments within the Communist Party on how to deal with the protesters of 1989. My second recommendation would be the recently published Bullets and Opium: Real-Life Stories of China After the Tiananmen Square Massacre, by Liao Yi-wu. A very touching book that documents the stories, testimonies and memories of the ordinary people involved in protests in Beijing and Sichuan.
You might now ask, why have I mentioned Sichuan? An unfortunate by-product of western media attention on the events in Beijing has led to a neglect of similar protests happening all over China in 1989. In the city of Chengdu in Sichuan, there was also a violent suppression of protesters that has received very little attention. The best guide to events in Chengdu and other major Chinese cities would be the edited collection The Pro-democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces, edited by Jonathan Unger.
Finally, if you want to understand why there is so little awareness of the Chinese protests in 1989 in general, or why your Chinese friends won’t mention June 4th, Lousia Lim’s The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited is an absolutely essential book in understanding the memory of June 4th, 1989 in China and the world.
Sorry for not directly answering your question, but I hope you will find these recommendations useful. Of course, this is only a small selection of media on the protests of 1989, and there are many other valuable works that I am excluding. Do feel free to reach out if you want more recommendations in either Chinese or English!
Edit: u/Drdickles and I wrote a bit about the origins of the protest movement and what the protesters really wanted here.