Tiananmen Square Incident Analysis

The relationships between intellectuals/students and the Chinese state have differed greatly starting from the Cultural Revolution to the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989. During the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals and the Chinese state was disharmonious while the students’ relationship with the Chinese state was cooperative and harmonious. Intellectuals had the potential to poison the students’ minds with anti-revolutionary ideas and thoughts. The students were at the forefront of the Cultural Revolution, joining the Red Guard to protect the people from those who were anti-revolutionary, anti-Communist Party. However, these relationships continued to be/became strained leading up to before and after the Tiananmen Square incident. Similarly …show more content…
Intellectuals were under suspicion and often beaten by the Red Guard because they had the most potential to be counter-revolutionary, and they could poison the minds of the students. An example of this suspicion are in the accounts of Bei Guancheng’s beatings by the Red Guard. Bei had gone to Beijing to report the School Party Secretary for being counter-revolutionary and imposing rules that were contradictory to Mao’s Sixteen Points. The Red Guards beat Bei under the Secretary’s orders. This points to two ideas: there was no protection for intellectuals even if they were pro-Party and students faced no consequences from their violent actions. The Chinese state officials, who felt threatened by intellectuals, had no tolerance for them. In contrast, students were given power and freedom from the Chinese state to punish counter-revolutionaries. However, this freedom the students had was stripped away by 1989. Student activists rallied together to demand freedom of speech and democracy from Chinese government officials. The documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace illustrates that the Chinese officials were unresponsive to the students’ pleas and that students and intellectuals were wounded and killed by