“Two hundred dead could bring 20 years of peace to China,” former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was quoted as saying in recently declassified documents. His words were spoken weeks ahead of the bloody military crackdown on student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
The UK’s National Archives released on Dec. 30 a huge number of previously secret government files from 1989 and 1990. Over two dozen documents (pdf) dated between May 20 and July 21 in 1989 revealed the Margaret Thatcher administration’s understanding of the political climate in China in the lead-up to the crackdown. A major reveal: The UK embassy in Beijing knew two weeks before June 4 that the People’s Liberation Army was preparing to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of student protesters who had been gathering at Beijing’s main square for weeks. [...]
And on May 19, when ousted party chief Zhao Ziyang went to see the students with future prime minister Wen Jiabao at his side, he broke into tears as he told the students: “We have come too late.” Many took that as a further sign that a violent crackdown was imminent, but it was still not enough to convince the students and their supporters to leave. Beijing residents were conducting daily rounds to talk to the soldiers already stationed in the city, telling them that the protesters were not “counter-revolutionaries.” And at the end of it all, it was hard for a lot of Chinese people to believe that “the People’s Army” could open fire on the people.
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