Tian'anmen incident

The Tian'anmen incident took place on April 5, 1976 and was a mourning rally by thousands of Chinese in memory of the recently deceased Zhou Enlai , which was politically interpreted.

The same term is occasionally used for the violent crackdown on the Chinese student movement in 1989. One speaks more often in this context of the Tian'anmen massacre .

background

In the final phase of the Cultural Revolution, there were ongoing battles for direction between the factions of the radical Maoists over the gang of four and the reformers around Deng Xiaoping . Since February 1976 Deng was attacked by students in wall newspapers and at demonstrations, but also in press articles.

Zhou Enlai, who died on January 8, was the most popular politician in the People's Republic of China, although or because he was not given such excessive hero worship as Mao Zedong . Despite having survived the Cultural Revolution unscathed, he was identified with the more liberal political wing.

event

On the evening of April 4, the day before the Qingming Festival, which traditionally celebrates the deceased ancestors, a crowd of several thousand Chinese citizens gathered in Tian'anmen Square in Beijing . There they laid wreaths, poems, flowers, and flags at the monument to the fallen heroes to honor Zhou Enlai. On the morning of April 5, the crowds returning to the memorial found that their gifts had been removed by the police as undesirable. Protests were raised, proclaiming the end of Qin Shi Huangdi's reign , 210 BC. Deceased founder of the Chinese Empire . This presumably made both Mao and his radical followers feel attacked. After all, in the 1973 campaign against Confucius and Lin Biao, they had extolled this absolute ruler and by that meant the Great Helmsman of the Chinese Revolution. The protests quickly escalated into police brawls, during which some cars were set on fire. The crowd, which had grown to around 100,000, stormed several government buildings around the square until it largely dispersed towards evening. A remaining hard core of protesters was arrested by police and workers' militias around 10:00 pm.

consequences

On April 7th, Deng Xiaoping was removed from all party positions and placed under house arrest on behalf of Mao and the Central Committee . In the coming months the campaign against him continued and Deng was attacked as a new Imre Nagy and the incident in Tian'anmen Square was negatively compared to the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Instead, Hua Guofeng was established as Mao's new Crown Prince.

literature

• Jonathan Spence: China's Path to Modernity. Munich 1995
• Lois Fisher-Ruge: Everyday Life in Beijing - A woman from the west experiences China today. Econ Verlag GmbH, Düsseldorf and Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-430-12783-1 , pp. 227-244.