Political Reform, Student Demonstrations and the Conservative Backlash

Abstract

The wave of student demonstrations for greater democracy which swept through China’s major cities in the winter of 1986–7 sparked off the country’s most severe political crisis since the death of Mao Zedong. From the liberal reformist highpoint of the previous summer, China’s political scene had by early 1987 undergone a drastic, unforseen lurch towards the Maoist left. A strident campaign against ‘bourgeois liberalisation’ began and Hu Yaobang, the protégé of Deng Xiaoping and the second most powerful man in. China, was abruptly forced to resign from his post as Party General-Sectretary. After more than a month of demonstrations, China’s students discovered that their actions had precipitated a major counter-attack by certain senior Party and army figures against key political aspects of the reform programme of Deng Xiaoping and his associates.