The Tiananmen Square Massacre - Background and Causes

The Tiananmen Square Massacre - Background and Causes Most people in the western world remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre this way: 1) Students protest for democracy in Beijing, China, in June of 1989. 2) Chinese government sends troops and tanks to Tiananmen Square. 3) Student protesters are brutally massacred. In essence, this is a fairly accurate depiction of what happened around Tiananmen Square, but the situation was much longer-lasting and more chaotic than this outline suggests. The protests actually started in April of 1989, as public demonstrations of mourning for former Communist Party Secretary General Hu Yaobang. A high government officials funeral seems like an unlikely spark for pro-democracy demonstrations and chaos. Nonetheless, by the time the Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre were over less than two months later, 250 to 7,000 people lay dead. What really happened that spring in Beijing? Background to Tiananmen By the 1980s, the leaders of Chinas Communist Party knew that classical Maoism had failed. Mao Zedongs policy of rapid industrialization and collectivization of land, the Great Leap Forward, had killed tens of millions of people by starvation. The country then descended into the terror and anarchy of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), an orgy of violence and destruction that saw teenaged Red Guards humiliate, torture, murder and sometimes even cannibalize hundreds of thousands or millions of their compatriots. Irreplaceable cultural heirlooms were destroyed; traditional Chinese arts and religion were all but extinguished. Chinas leadership knew that they had to make changes in order to remain in power, but what reforms should they make? The Communist Party leaders split between those who advocated drastic reforms, including a move toward capitalist economic policies and greater personal freedoms for Chinese citizens, versus those who favored careful tinkering with the command economy and continued strict control of the population. Meanwhile, with the leadership unsure of which direction to take, the Chinese people hovered in a no-mans land between fear of the authoritarian state, and the desire to speak out for reform. The government-instigated tragedies of the previous two decades left them hungry for change, but aware that the iron fist of Beijings leadership was always ready to smash down opposition. Chinas people waited to see which way the wind would blow. The Spark - Memorial for Hu Yaobang Hu Yaobang was a reformist, who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1980 to 1987. He advocated rehabilitation of people persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, greater autonomy for Tibet, rapprochement with Japan, and social and economic reform. As a result, he was forced out of office by the hardliners in January of 1987 and made to offer humiliating public self-criticisms for his allegedly bourgeois ideas. One of the charges leveled against Hu was that he had encouraged (or at least allowed) widespread student protests in late 1986. As General Secretary, he refused to crack down on such protests, believing that dissent by the intelligentsia should be tolerated by the Communist government. Hu Yaobang died of a heart attack not long after his ouster and disgrace, on April 15, 1989. Official media made just brief mention of Hus death, and the government at first did not plan to give him a state funeral. In reaction, university students from across Beijing marched on Tiananmen Square, shouting acceptable, government-approved slogans, and calling for the rehabilitation of Hus reputation. Bowing to this pressure, the government decided to accord Hu a state funeral after all. However, government officials on April 19 refused to receive a delegation of student petitioners, who patiently waited to speak with someone for three days at the Great Hall of the People. This would prove to be the governments first big mistake. Hus subdued memorial service took place on April 22 and was greeted by huge student demonstrations involving about 100,000 people. Hardliners within the government were extremely uneasy about the protests, but General Secretary Zhao Ziyang believed that the students would disperse once the funeral ceremonies were over. Zhao was so confident that he took a week-long trip to North Korea for a summit meeting. The students, however, were enraged that the government had refused to receive their petition, and emboldened by the meek reaction to their protests. After all, the Party had refrained from cracking down on them thus far, and had even caved in to their demands for a proper funeral for Hu Yaobang. They continued to protest, and their slogans strayed further and further from the approved texts. Events Begin to Spin Out of Control With Zhao Ziyang out of the country, hardliners in the government such as Li Peng took the opportunity to bend the ear of the powerful leader of the Party Elders, Deng Xiaoping. Deng was known as a reformer himself, supportive of market reforms and greater openness, but the hardliners exaggerated the threat posed by the students. Li Peng even told Deng that the protesters were hostile to him personally, and were calling for his ouster and the downfall of the Communist government. (This accusation was a fabrication.) Clearly worried, Deng Xiaoping decided to denounce the demonstrations in an editorial published in the April 26th Peoples Daily. He called the protests dongluan (meaning turmoil or rioting) by a tiny minority. These highly emotive terms were associated with the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution. Rather than tamping down the students fervor, Dengs editorial further inflamed it. The government had just made its second grave mistake. Not unreasonably, the students felt that they could not end the protest if it was labeled dongluan, for fear that they would be prosecuted. Some 50,000 of them continued to press the case that patriotism motivated them, not hooliganism. Until the government stepped back from that characterization, the students could not leave Tiananmen Square. But the government too was trapped by the editorial. Deng Xiaoping had staked his reputation, and that of the government, on getting the students to back down. Who would blink first? Showdown, Zhao Ziyang vs. Li Peng General Secretary Zhao returned from North Korea to find China transfixed by the crisis. He still felt that the students were no real threat to the government, though, and sought to defuse the situation, urging Deng Xiaoping to recant the inflammatory editorial. Li Peng, however, argued that to step back now would be a fatal show of weakness by the Party leadership. Meanwhile, students from other cities poured into Beijing to join the protests. More ominously for the government, other groups also joined in: housewives, workers, doctors, and even sailors from the Chinese Navy! The protests also spread to other cities - Shanghai, Urumqi, Xian, Tianjin... almost 250 in all. By May 4, the number of protesters in Beijing had topped 100,000 again. On May 13, the students took their next fateful step. They announced a hunger strike, with the goal of getting the government to retract the April 26 editorial. Over a thousand students took part in the hunger strike, which engendered wide-spread sympathy for them among the general populace. The government met in an emergency Standing Committee session the following day. Zhao urged his fellow leaders to accede to the students demand and withdraw the editorial. Li Peng urged a  crackdown. The Standing Committee was deadlocked, so the decision was passed to Deng Xiaoping. The next morning, he announced that he was placing Beijing under martial law. Zhao was fired and placed under house arrest; hard-liner Jiang Zemin succeeded him as General  Secretary; and  fire-brand Li Peng was placed in control of the military forces in Beijing. In the midst of the turmoil, Soviet Premier and fellow reformer  Mikhail Gorbachev  arrived in China for talks with Zhao on May 16. Due to Gorbachevs presence, a large contingent of foreign journalists and photographers also descended on the tense Chinese capital. Their reports fueled international concern and calls for restraint, as well as sympathetic protests in Hong Kong,  Taiwan, and ex-patriot Chinese communities in Western nations. This international outcry  placed even more  pressure on the Chinese Communist Party leadership. Early in the morning on May 19, the deposed Zhao made an extraordinary appearance in Tiananmen Square. Speaking through a bullhorn, he told the protesters: Students, we came too late. We are sorry. You talk about us, criticize us, it is all necessary. The reason that I came here is not to ask you to forgive us. All I want to say is that students are getting very weak, it is the 7th day since you went on hunger strike, you cant continue like this... You are still young, there are still many days yet to come, you must live  healthily, and see the day when China accomplishes the four modernizations. You are not like us, we are already old, it doesnt matter to us  anymore. It was the last time he was ever seen in public. Perhaps in response to Zhaos appeal, during the last week of May tensions eased a bit, and many of the student protesters from Beijing grew weary of the protest and left the square. However, reinforcements from the provinces continued to pour into the city. Hard-line student leaders called for the protest to continue until June 20, when a meeting of the National Peoples Congress was scheduled to take place. On May 30, the students set up a large sculpture called the Goddess of Democracy in Tiananmen Square. Modeled after the Statue of Liberty, it became one of the enduring symbols of the protest. Hearing the calls for a prolonged protest, on June 2 the Communist Party Elders met with the remaining members of the Politburo Standing Committee. They agreed to bring in the  Peoples Liberation Army  (PLA) to clear the protesters out of Tiananmen Square by force. The Tiananmen Square Massacre The morning of June 3, 1989, the 27th and 28th divisions of the Peoples Liberation Army moved into Tiananmen Square on foot and in tanks, firing tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. They had been ordered not to shoot the protesters; indeed, most of them did not carry firearms. The leadership selected these divisions because they were from distant provinces; local PLA troops were considered untrustworthy as potential supporters of the protests. Not only the student  protesters but also tens of thousands of workers and ordinary citizens of Beijing joined together to repel the Army. They used burned-out buses to create barricades, threw rocks and bricks at the soldiers, and even burned some tank crews alive inside their tanks. Thus, the first casualties of the Tiananmen Square Incident were actually soldiers. The student protest leadership now faced a difficult decision. Should they evacuate the Square before further blood could be shed, or hold their ground? In the end, many of them decided to remain. That night, around 10:30 pm, the PLA returned to the area around Tiananmen with rifles, bayonets fixed. The tanks rumbled down the street, firing indiscriminately. Students shouted Why are you killing us? to the soldiers, many of whom were about the same age as the protesters. Rickshaw drivers and bicyclists darted through the melee, rescuing the wounded and taking them to hospitals. In the chaos, a number of non-protesters were killed as well. Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of the violence took place in the neighborhoods all around Tiananmen Square, rather than in the Square itself. Throughout the night of June 3 and early hours of June 4, the troops beat, bayoneted, and shot protesters. Tanks drove straight into crowds, crushing people and bicycles under their treads. By 6 a.m. on June 4th, 1989, the streets around Tiananmen Square had been cleared. Tank Man or the Unknown Rebel The city lapsed into shock during June 4, with just the occasional volley of gunfire breaking the stillness. Parents of missing students pushed their way to the protest area, seeking their sons and daughters, only to be warned off and then shot in the back as they fled from the soldiers. Doctors and ambulance drivers who tried to enter the area to help the wounded were also shot down in cold blood by the PLA. Beijing seemed utterly subdued the morning of June 5. However, as foreign journalists and photographers, including  Jeff Widener  of the AP, watched from their hotel balconies as a column of tanks trundled up Changan Avenue (the Avenue of Eternal Peace), an amazing thing happened. A young man in a white shirt and black pants, with shopping bags in each hand, stepped out into the street and stopped the tanks. The lead tank tried to swerve around him, but he jumped in front of it again. Everyone watched in horrified fascination, afraid that the tank driver would lose patience and drive over the man. At one point, the man even climbed up onto the tank and spoke to the soldiers inside, reportedly asking them, Why are you here? You have caused nothing but misery. After several minutes of this defiant dance, two more men rushed up to the  Tank Man  and hustled him away. His fate is unknown. However,  still  images and video of his brave act were captured by the  Western  press members  nearby and smuggled out for the world to see. Widener and several other photographers hid the film in the tanks of their hotel toilets, to save it from searches by the Chinese security forces. Ironically, the story and the image of the Tank Mans act of defiance had the greatest immediate effect thousands of miles away, in Eastern Europe. Inspired in part by his courageous example, people across the Soviet bloc poured into the streets. In 1990, beginning with the Baltic states, the republics of the Soviet Empire began to break away. The USSR collapsed. Nobody knows how many people died in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The official Chinese government figure is 241, but this is almost certainly a drastic undercount. Between soldiers, protesters and civilians, it seems likely that anywhere from 800 to 4,000 people were killed. The Chinese Red Cross initially put the toll at 2,600, based on counts from local hospitals, but then quickly retracted that statement under intense government pressure. Some witnesses also stated that the PLA carted away many bodies; they would not have been included in a hospital count. The Aftermath of Tiananmen 1989 The protesters who survived the Tiananmen Square Incident met a variety of fates. Some, particularly the student leaders, were given relatively light jail terms (less than 10 years). Many of the professors and other professionals who joined in were simply  blacklisted, unable to find jobs. A large number of the workers and provincial people were executed; exact figures, as usual, are unknown. Chinese journalists who had published reports sympathetic to the protesters also found themselves purged and unemployed. Some of the most famous were sentenced to multi-year prison terms. As for the Chinese government, June 4,  1989  was a watershed moment. Reformists within the Communist Party of China were stripped of power and reassigned to ceremonial roles. Former Premier Zhao Ziyang was never  rehabilitated and spent his final 15 years under house arrest. Shanghais mayor, Jiang Zemin, who had moved quickly to quell protests in that city, replaced Zhao as the Partys General Secretary. Since that time, political agitation has been extremely muted in China. The government and the majority of citizens alike have focused on economic reform and prosperity, rather than political reform. Because the Tiananmen Square Massacre is a taboo subject, most Chinese under the age of 25 have never even heard about it.  Websites  that mention the June 4 Incident are blocked in China. Even decades later, the people and the government of China have not dealt with this momentous and tragic incident. The memory of the Tiananmen Square Massacre festers under the surface of everyday life for those old enough to recall it. Someday, the Chinese government will have to face this piece of its history. For a very powerful and disturbing take on the Tiananmen Square Massacre, see the PBS Frontline special The Tank Man, available to view online. Sources Roger V. Des Forges, Ning Luo, Yen-bo Wu.  Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of 1989: Chinese and American Reflections, (New York: SUNY Press, 1993) PBS, Frontline: The Tank Man, April 11, 2006. U.S. National Security Briefing Book. Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History, posted by George Washington University. Zhang Liang.  The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leaderships Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People - In Their Own Words, ed. Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, (New York: Public Affairs, 2001)

How Do I Submit Letters of Recommendation

How Do I Submit Letters of Recommendation SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Hopefully, you have the perfect teachers in mind to ask for your letter of recommendation. Once you’ve asked these teachers, how do you actually get theirletters to your colleges? This guide will go over everything you need to know about submitting your recommendation letters, whether you’re using the Common Application, a customized school application, and/or Naviance. To start, what are the options for submission? What Are YourOptions for Submitting Recommendation Letters? Technically, there are two options for submission: online or by mail. Note the use of â€Å"or†; colleges don’t want teachers to mix and match. In other words, schools don't want a single teacher to submit her ranking form online and then send her letter by mail. If she's submitting online, then she should submit everything online. If by mail, then everything should go by mail. Generally speaking, most students reading this will have their recommenders submit their letters online. Since you’re already doing more than enough with the college application process, you might be relieved to hear that you don’t actually have to submit your letters! Your teachers andcounselor are responsible for uploading the recletters to whatever system you’re using. What you are responsible for, though, is inviting them. Make sure you give them clear deadlines, send a reminder email, and double check that your schools received their letters. Whichever mode you’re using to apply - the Common Application, Universal Application, school-specific app, and/or Naviance software - you’ll assign your recommenders. The rest is up to them! In rare cases, your recommender might prefer or need to send her letter of recommendation by snail mail. This may be the case if you’re sending an extra supplemental recommendation, or if your school uses Naviance and you need to assign a recommender outside of your immediate school faculty. This method is usually fine, though not preferred, by colleges - just notify your college to expect the arrival of this document. As you can tell, there are various ways to apply, and,therefore, there are different ways to deliver your letters of recommendation to colleges. Let’s consider how exactly your recommenders will submit in a few different scenarios. How Do Your Recommenders Submit Their Letters Online? Online rec letter submission is generally a straightforward process. First, you invite, or â€Å"assign,† your recommenders. Then, your recommenders get an email prompting them to upload their letters. The main question you need to answer is what system you’re using to invite your recommenders, whether you’re applying viaan online school application, the Common App, Naviance, or a combination of all three. Let’s look at all these options, starting withschool-specificapplications. Scenario 1: Assign Recommenders Through Your School Application In this scenario, you’re applying to school through itsindividual online application system. Schools in the University of Texas system, for example,use their own applications and don’t participate in the Common App. If your college allows or requires recommendation letters, then it will have a page on which you can invite your recommenders. Typically you’ll be asked to fill in their first and last names, position (like English Teacher), and email address. The University of Texas application has its own "Document Upload System." If your college doesn’t want you to sendrecommendation letters, like University of California schools, then you won’t find this function on your application. Some school applications will also prompt you to respond to a question about FERPA. Generally speaking, you should go ahead and waive your right to view recommendation letters, as they’re expected to be confidential between letter writers and the admissions officers who read them. All of the aboveinstructions should workfor the Common Application too. The only difference is that you'll probably have to assign recommenders for more than one college. Scenario 2: Assign Recommenders Through the Common Application Your first step in completing the recommendation letter requirement through the Common Application is signing your FERPA waiver. Once you sign this, you’ll be able to invite recommenders. First, head to the â€Å"Colleges† tab. From there, you’ll be able to assign recommenders by each individual college on your list. Each school, by the way, customizes its own page. If your school requires two teacher recommendations, for example, then you’ll see space to invite two teacher recommenders. Many schools also allow you to assign one or two â€Å"Other Recommenders.† This space is for letters beyond the requirements. Before sending any supplemental letters, check to learn your colleges’ stance: some colleges actively discourage the submission of extra materials. Once you invite your recommenders, your teachers will receive emails prompting them to submit their letters. Your recommenders are responsible for uploading their recs by the stated deadlines. Conveniently, you’ll see a status change once your letters are uploaded (usually yellow means not yet, and green means you’re good to go!). While your letters will be attached to your application, they won’t actually get sent to your colleges until you hit submit and pay the application fees (or use a fee waiver). That means that the final step of actually getting your letters to the admissions committee is ultimately in your hands. While inviting your recommenders through your online applications is a simple process, it’s not actually how you’ll sendyour letters if your high school uses the e-docs delivery software, Naviance. Read on to learn how Naviance links up to your applications to collect required documents, like your recommendation letters. Want to build the best possible college application? We can help. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's best admissions consulting service. We combine world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies. We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools, from state colleges to the Ivy League. We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to get you admitted to your dream schools. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in. Scenario 3: Assign Recommenders Through Naviance / Family Connection Many high schools use the college e-docs software program Naviance. Your counselor controls one end of Naviance from her account, and you control and access another part with yours (called Family Connection). Naviance lets you search for colleges and keep track of deadlines and submitted documents. At the same time, your counselor can upload documents, like the secondary school report and school transcript. Your Naviance account and all the documents it collects, including your recommendation letters, will sync up to your Common Application and any other school applications that accept e-docs. If you are using the Common Application, you’ll need to â€Å"match† your Common App and Naviance accounts. You’ll enter the name of your high school on the Common App and sign the FERPA waiver. Once you’ve done this, your â€Å"Assign Recommenders† page should look like this: As you can see, you won’t actually be inviting your recommenders through the Common Application. Instead, you’ll invite your recommenders directly through Naviance. Since your Naviance account is directly connected to your high school, you can just select your teacher recommenders from a drop down list that has all the teachers in the school. You simply choose the teacher and add a personal note, making sure to indicate which colleges you want her to write letters for. While this process makes it easier on you - you don’t have to collect your teachers’ first and last names and email addresses - it also has some limitations. Can you see what they are? Limitation of Naviance: Supplemental Recommendations Instead of manually entering your teachers’ contact info, as described above, Naviance asks you to select your teachers from a drop down menu. While this makes your teacher recommendations easy to request, it doesn’t allow you to ask anyone outside of your school’s faculty. Some students wish to send supplemental recommendations, like from a private music teacher, coach, or supervisor. Others may have switched high schools and want to ask a teacher from their previous school, or perhaps one who recently retired and has been removed from the drop down list of current faculty. If any of these scenarios apply to you, then you’d have to invite your external recommender through your online application. If you find yourself exceeding the number that your application allows, then you could print out the evaluation form and have your recommender send her documents by mail. (Of course, exercise caution about sending too many extra letters!) This process may sound a bit complicated, but once you sit down at your computer, you’ll actually find it to be pretty intuitive. You’ll either assign recommenders through your online applications, or you’ll choose them through Naviance. Finally, you may have some recommenders who have full-fledged technophobia and insist on sending their letters by mail. While not preferred by colleges, this method is actually pretty easy. How to Submit Recommendations Through Mail Despite rumorsof a shutdown a few years ago, the post office is still going strong and available to deliver your orange envelopes to colleges. If your recommender wants to send a hard copy, make sure to print out any ranking form that needs to accompany the evaluation letter. Then give your recommender a pre-stamped, pre-addressed envelope. Typically, these envelopes should be sent to the school’s undergraduate admissions office. As with all your recommenders, make sure this teacherknows your deadlines, and follow up with her to check thatshe sent it in. Don’t worry if this package arrives before you submit your application. The college will start a file on each applicant and collect any materials that arrive within that file before eventually sitting down to review it as a complete application. Since there are a few different options, let’s review the key stepsthat you need to know for submitting your recommendation letters. How to Assign Recommenders: An Overview You may find yourself using a school application and/or the Common Application to apply. Additionally, you may also have a Naviance account connected to your school. Without Naviance, you simply invite your recommenders directly through your online applications by providing their full names, positions, and email addresses. With Naviance, you’ll need to sync up your applications and invite your recommenders through your Naviance account, manually indicating which colleges you want them to write letters for. If you run into any technical difficulties through the process, make sure to speak to your counselor about troubleshooting. The most common place that students get stuck is the FERPA waiver. Until you’ve completed that step, you can’t move onto your recommendation requests. Apart from inviting your recommenders, is there anything else you need to do in your quest for great evaluations? What Else Do You Need to Do? Besides choosing your teacher recommenders carefully, make sure to ask well in advance of deadlines - at least a month before, if not in the spring of your junior year. Send them a reminder email - perhaps masquerading as a thank you note - about a week before your deadlines, and sign into your application and/or Naviance accounts tomake sure they’ve uploaded their recommendations. Finally, make sure to thank your recommenders for all their help in getting into college! What's Next? Now that you know how to submit your recommendation letters, make sure you understand what separates the great letters from the forgettable ones. Check out this full guide on what makes a good recommendation letter and what makes one not so effective. A lot of your colleges of interest might participate in the Common Application. Check this full list of Common App schools to see if yours allows this convenient option. For more on the step by stepprocess of applying to college, from choosing your high school classes to taking campus tours, take a look at this detailed guide. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: