Tiananmen Square Analysis

After reading a Financial Times Article, and an interview with Lee Kwaun Yu which both discussed the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, I have come to a lucid conclusion regarding Deng's crackdown on the protesters. Initially, from the "Tank Man" documentary in class, I gained that Deng cracked down on the protesters because he did not want the Communist government to fall. Moreover, I gained that since Communism was based on the "dictatorship of the proletariat," he did not want to lose the faith of the workers, and therefore tried to get rid of those that dissented with the Communist government. However, after reading Lee Kwaun Yu's interview concerning China and the Tiananmen Square incident, I learned that Lee thinks that the government in China is the most stable it could possibly get. Since China has a variety of races and cultures, Lee insists that China needed to have a centralized power to stick together. This ideology could be applied to the Yugoslavia Crises in the 90's in Europe. When Communism fell in Europe, Yugoslavia split, but Serbia still wanted to keep Yugoslavia together. Since Yugoslavia was filled with different cultures, religions, and races, there were many disputes which ended in great violence. What Lee is suggesting, is that China needs to prevent splitting because violence would pervade the country. Therefore, at the time, Deng could have cracked down on the protesters because China would go to ruins if there were seditious people. But, the Financial Times article suggested a different reason for Deng's action. In the article, it articulates that the protesters were not in fact protesting for democracy, but because there was an "emerging elite." They were enraged that Mao's "eternal revolution" was not being put into place. Likewise, many of the people were apparently mad that there were so many compromises with capitalism. To be frank, I do not know how China's economy could even currently be considered Communist. I understand that that a couple things are nationalized like their banks, or industries, but China created Locke's dream of "freedom of property" in 1987 which is the pinnacle of capitalism. Sure, they are more leaned toward a Socialist economy, but China is still increasingly capitalist. Since there was such mass change, I suppose that people wanted to go further and to get "freedom." Like the USSR and Gorbachev, too much change was occurring at one time. Glasnost and perestroika overwhelmed the USSR and the government lost influence. Deng's reforms overwhelmed the people, and they just wanted more. Once again, another analogy with Russia arises, but 100 years before. In the second half of the 19th century, Alexander II, a liberal Russian czar, did such radical things like the Emancipation Act in 1861 which liberated the serfs, but since there was such mass change, a radical group called the Intelligisia just wanted more. By 1881, they assassinated Alexander II, who upon his death passed a Constitution for the country, which was repealed by his successor, Alexander III. Therefore, overall, we learn that Deng needed to maintain the stability in China, and that he instituted too many reforms at one time which overwhelmed the people.