60 years Later, The People's Republic persists

As the 20th anniversary of the May Fourth Incident, keeping up with the trend in Chinese to name important events after the date they occurred on and known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre in the West, approaches, as well as the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (October 1), I thought it would be interesting to look at student activism in China and what it means to the Chinese Communist Party.

The protests were originally a way for people to commemorate the life and mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, a pro-democracy official in the central government who supported political reform and the creation of a capitalistic China. The participants were mostly students and mostly opposed to authoritarian governments, probably as a result of watching the authoritarian governments of Eastern Europe disappear, and some even called for economic liberalization and democratic reform of the central government.

The May 4 Incident in 1989 is important as the students who participated in these demonstrations were most likely strongly influenced by the student protests during the May 4 Movement in May 4, 1919. In fact, during the demostrations students made parallels between their situation and the situation of students opposing the Treaty of Versailles and Imperialism in 1919. In the view of Chinese officials at that time, "The May Fourth Movement was a thoroughly anti-Imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary movement. Young students acted as its pioneers...Its great contribution lay in arousing the people's consciousness and preparing for the unity of the revolutionary forces...The May Fourth Movement promoted the spreading of Marxism in China, and prepared the ideological foundation for the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party. The October Revolution pointed out the direction for the Chinese revolution."

These student protests helped pave the way for the founding of the Chinese Communist Party and so there is an inherent link between student protests and the Chinese central government. The party chose to hold student protest and demonstration to be an icon of the social and creative aspect of Chinese communism. However, the recent history of student demonstration matters to the leaders of the People's Republic of China, who become nervous every May as these dates begin to approach, as the student protests of May 1989 posed a formidable challenge to the party's post-1949 run of power in China. And there is always the possibility that history of challenging student protest will repeat itself.