Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Two Decades After the Fall: Patterns of Chinese Protest--1919,1989, 2009
CHINA HAS a long, rich tradition—or, rather, multiple overlapping traditions—of dissent. For centuries prior to the 1949 Revolution, which culminated in the founding of the People’s Republic of China, aggrieved villagers and urbanites employed an array of tactics, ranging from rioting over tax rates to going to the capital with petitions detailing the failings of local officials. This varied repertoire continually evolved, and whenever new complaints arose or novel technologies of communication became available, innovations were made and familiar forms were updated. Since the revolution, this has continued to be true: movements of dissent have linked themselves to both the past and utilized new expressions of protest.
Two famous pre-1949 and post-1949 examples are the great student-led struggles that swept through the country during the May 4 Movement of 1919 and the Tiananmen Uprising of 1989. They were both agitations that began with marches by educated youths but reached their peaks with much bigger demonstrations in which non-student participants far outnumbered those with ties to campuses.
In the May 4 Movement, the student activists were angry about oppression and corruption at home as well as about impingements on Chinese sovereignty from abroad. They stepped into a long-established role of dissent by citing historical precedents that stretched back as far as the Song Dynasty (960-1279), but they also circulated their manifestos via a new medium: the telegraph.
Similarly, the students of 1989, again angered by corruption, framed their protests as an effort to save the nation and nodded to the past, including calling their struggle the “New May 4 Movement.” But they also employed various tactics that had not been used in 1919. Perhaps the most important one was the group hunger strike, a dramatic action that put young bodies on the line and that had no parallels with the original May 4 movement...
Read entire article at Dissent
Two famous pre-1949 and post-1949 examples are the great student-led struggles that swept through the country during the May 4 Movement of 1919 and the Tiananmen Uprising of 1989. They were both agitations that began with marches by educated youths but reached their peaks with much bigger demonstrations in which non-student participants far outnumbered those with ties to campuses.
In the May 4 Movement, the student activists were angry about oppression and corruption at home as well as about impingements on Chinese sovereignty from abroad. They stepped into a long-established role of dissent by citing historical precedents that stretched back as far as the Song Dynasty (960-1279), but they also circulated their manifestos via a new medium: the telegraph.
Similarly, the students of 1989, again angered by corruption, framed their protests as an effort to save the nation and nodded to the past, including calling their struggle the “New May 4 Movement.” But they also employed various tactics that had not been used in 1919. Perhaps the most important one was the group hunger strike, a dramatic action that put young bodies on the line and that had no parallels with the original May 4 movement...