what happened at tiananmen square

In 1989, Beijings Tiananmen Square became the focus of large-scale protests, which were crushed by China's Communist rulers. The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989. On the day of his funeral, tens of thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square demanding democratic and other reforms. For the next several weeks, students in crowds of varying sizes, eventually joined by a wide variety of individuals seeking political, social, and economic reforms, gathered in the square. In the following weeks, protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square, with numbers estimated to be up to one million at their largest. At first, the government took no direct action against the protesters. Party officials disagreed on how to respond, some backing concessions, others wanting to take a harder line. The hardliners won the debate, and in the last two weeks of May, martial law was declared in Beijing. On June 4, 1989, the Chinese government sent troops and tanks to Tiananmen Square to suppress the protests. The military's advance into Tiananmen Square was met with unarmed protesters and onlookers being killed en masse. The Chinese government has never acknowledged the true events surrounding the Tiananmen massacre, and discussion of the events that took place in Tiananmen Square is highly sensitive in China.