U.s.-china Economic and Security Review Commission

Stability in China: Lessons Learned from Tiananmen and Implications for the United States U.s.-china Economic and Security Review Commission

If you were in Beijing on May 15, 1989, you would have seen the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev while more than 3,000 people occupied Tiananmen Square on a hunger strike, and the hungry strikers were surrounded by tens of thousands of people in the Square and on the streets supporting their hunger strike. By the 20th of May, martial law was put in effect by the Politburo, a column of troops and vehicles tried to move from the west to get to Tiananmen Square, but it was stopped by literally a human roadblock of thousands of Beijing residents. On June 4, 1989, ten to 12 Army divisions closed on Tiananmen Square, firing rifles, automatic weapons and using tanks to clear roadblocks, and you had what we know today as the Tiananmen Massacre. The panelists here are going to discuss how the Party has tried to address the complaints of the protesters in the intervening years, and they'll compare the political, social, and economic conditions in China today to those that led to the protests in 1989. Our goal is to discuss the implications for U. S. policy, the security of American citizens, and the U. S. economy if domestic unrest again begins to destabilize China and to develop recommendations for Congress in case of that kind of an eventuality.