Funding of student organizations during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests money was not received by the various Pro-Democracy groups. A large amount of the money raised overseas was sent to China as cheques or money orders made out to “the Students’ ”Autonomous Union,” “Hunger Strike Headquarters,” “Tiananmen Square Headquarters,” or even just “Tiananmen Square.” Such donations, even if delivered to the student organizations could not be redeemed. When the hunger strike started on May 13 the costs of running protests at Tiananmen Square increased. At first the number of hunger strikers was quite small, around 300 students, but as their numbers increased so did the crowds that came to support
Reactions to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests accounts refer to. As Louisa Lim notes in her book, "The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited", many young Chinese know almost nothing of the Tiananmen Square protests. In an informal survey, Lim showed the iconic photo of Tank Man to 100 Chinese university students; only 15 correctly identified it as being an image of Tiananmen Square. Perry Link, a Chinese language and literature scholar, writes, "The story of the massacre is banned from textbooks, the media, and all other public contexts." In 2014, Gu Yimin, a Chinese activist, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for attempting to hold