About This Module
Protester temporarily stops the advance of tanks near Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989. Photograph by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press.
This module explores how authoritarian governments try to suppress political protests that challenge their rule.
The setting is China, in the spring of 1989, when a non-violent nationwide student movement condemned the political corruption of the Chinese government and demanded swift and meaningful reform. The Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, the most powerful governing body, cracked down on the student protest by sending in the military, which resulted in the massacre of unarmed protesters and Beijing residents. Although this state violence effectively destroyed the movement, as Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom shows, the Chinese Communist Party wanted to go even further–to create and control the official story about the protest. In this module, students can read the Central Committee’s letter and puzzle over how China’s ruling party tried to rewrite the story of the massacre in order to discredit the student opposition. The module invites deeper analysis of how authoritarian rulers try to shape the narrative about their governance in order to maintain their grip on power. As part of Authoritarianism 101, this module enables teachers to explore the theme of authoritarian practice by examining some of the tools of authoritarian control.
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Contributor
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a Distinguished Professor of History atthe University of California, Irvine, author of books such as Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China (1991) and Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (2020), and a past Associate Editor of the AHR and past editor of the Journal of Asian Studies (2008–2018). He has written about social movements, globalization, urban change, and human rights, usually focusing on China but often bringing in comparative and transnational issues, and he has published in a mix of specialist and general interest periodicals.
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