SUMMARY
The Government of China has consistently been concerned with opposition against the authoritarian rule of the Communist party, and limited the freedoms of speech and assembly for the population and the media. These policies have occasionally been interrupted by campaigns where the government has allowed, or even encouraged the people to openly question the state, such as during the so-called 100 Flowers Campaign in 1957, the Cultural Revolution in 1966-68 and the Beijing Spring in 1977-78. These campaigns often turned violent and were eventually suppressed with the help of the army to further strengthen the authority of the one-party state.
Under the leadership of Deng Xiaopeng, China pursued a policy of economic reforms in the 1980s while political power remained firmly asserted among the top leadership of the Communist Party. Calls for democratisation were becoming increasingly common among students. At the same time, there was a growing discontent with the slow impact of the economic reforms to improve living conditions for the population as a whole. These factors contributed to the popularity of several rounds of anti-government demonstrations initiated in Bejing, but also in other cities. The protests culminated in a crackdown on demonstrators in central Beijing on June 4, 1989. Apart from shooting at the crowd, there were reports of large groups of victims being captured, tortured and executed and soldiers firing indiscriminately into peoples houses. The crackdown on the suspected opposition continued in the following months with arrests of hundreds of people.
Crackdowns entailing violence against civilians have also been reported at other times and ín other areas, but due to difficulties of obtaining reliable information it has often been impossible to determine with certainty whether incidents should be included in UCDP data. Most notably, such events have been reported in response to movements advocating minority or religious rights, autonomy or independence in Xinjiang province and in Tibet.
The Government of China first became active as a one-sided actor in 1989, when the one-sided violence resulted in at least 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached on 4 June that year when government forces attacked demonstrators in Beijing. There were, however, also unclear reports of government one-sided violence during a demonstration in Lhasa, Tibet, in March 1989 which allegedly led to 30 civilian deaths.
