This year marks the 30th anniversary of the nationwide, student-led democracy movement in China, and the subsequent June 4th military crackdown in Beijing. To commemorate the student movement, CDT is posting a series of original news articles from 1989, beginning with the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15 and continuing through the tumultuous spring.
From the May 3, 1989 New York Times:
About 6,000 university students took part in the pro-democracy march, the official New China News Agency said, and some witnesses put the number at about 10,000.
While demonstrations have taken place in Shanghai on several previous occasions in the last two weeks, they never attracted more than a few thousand marchers. The march today, while consisting only of students, was far better organized than before and attracted much more support, witnesses said.
The march was significant not only because of Shanghai’s size and historic ability to influence the rest of the country, but also because everyone remembers that two years ago it was in Shanghai, after a lag, that the student demonstrations were largest. [Source]
[This series was originally posted by CDT in 2009 to mark the 20th anniversary of the protests. If you have access to additional sources of original reporting, video, accounts or photos from the spring of 1989, please send them to us at cdt@chinadigitaltimes.net and we’ll consider including them in this series. Many thanks.]
