CHINA 212: Rebels with a Cause: Tiananmen in History and Memory (CHINA 112)

Course Description

The 1989 Tiananmen Movement, known in Chinese as "June Fourth (Liu Si)," is considered the most serious open conflict between the Chinese Communist regime and the Chinese people since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Sparked by the April 15, 1989 death of Hu Yaobang, the former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party whose reformist leadership distinguished him from other hard-liner leaders, Chinese intellectuals and students began a series of nationwide petitions, demonstrations, and hunger strikes calling for political reforms, but they were suppressed on June 4 as the Chinese government ordered the military to fire on unarmed civilians. What is significant about June Fourth in China today? On the surface, it seems that the event is completely remote and irrelevant to the reality of the "rising China," but every year on its anniversary, the government clamps down with intense security and meticulous surveillance. June Fourth epitomizes the relationship between history, memory, and power in the Chinese context. Haunted by the relationship between the crackdown in 1989 and the legitimacy of the party and government, the post-Tiananmen regime has constructed a narrative that portrays June Fourth as a Western conspiracy, under the guise of a "pro-democracy" movement, to weaken China, hence justifying its crackdown as "patriotic" and paving the way for China's rise. This officially-constructed history is disputed by various groups of people who regard their efforts to preserve the memory of June Fourth as part of a broader struggle for social justice and human rights. Because public opinion pertaining to nationalism and democratization is inseparable from a collective memory (truthful, selective, or manipulated) of the nation's most immediate past, the memory of this traumatic past has become a highly contested field. This course will explore the background, major events, and the long-term impact of the Tiananmen Movement in Chinese society today, and will explore the implications of the politicization of June Fourth in memory. The purpose of the course is to help students understand modern and contemporary China through an approach that integrates studies of social movements (youth movements in particular) and political socialization. Why and how was this spontaneous mass movement that challenged the government initiated by a generation of youth whose political socialization had been designed to ensure their loyalty to the party-state? Despite its outward rebellious nature, did the movement show any signs of being influenced by their political socialization? What did the regime learn from June Fourth? How did the state modify its practice of political socialization for the post-89 generations so as to prevent a reoccurrence of such a movement? What was the impact of June Fourth on the Communist states in Eastern Europe? These are some of the questions that will be discussed in this course.