1989 Tiananmen Square protests 1989 Tiananmen Square protests The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, commonly known in mainland China as the June Fourth Incident (Chinese: , "liùsì shìjiàn"), were student-led demonstrations in Beijing (the capital of the People's Republic of China) in 1989. More broadly, it refers to the popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests during that period, sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement (Chinese: , "bājiǔ mínyùn"). The protests were forcibly suppressed after Chinese Premier Li Peng declared martial law. In what became known in the West as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with automatic rifles and tanks fired at the demonstrators
Funding of student organizations during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests May the students established a new organization called Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters to manage Tiananmen Square. Because of the intense conflicts among movement activists, General Headquarters had great difficulty getting money out of the BSAF. The rivalries between the different groups and the absence of financial management resulted in allegations of corruption. Student leaders were even suspected of corruption. Thousands of (US) dollars of contributions, mostly from Hong Kong, had been flowing into the student organizations’ coffers, but no accounting had been done. The BWAF accused the student leadership of financial misappropriation; they claimed that the students had taken in