Thirty years ago, Chinese students rose up to demand democracy and were victims of bloody repression. Nourished by the “Tiananmen Papers”, a captivating dive into the heart of the events of spring 1989.

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How, thirty years ago, did the Chinese Communist Party end up committing a mass crime for which the exact number of victims is still unknown? Twelve years after the events, in 2001, the leak of thousands of secret documents retracing the internal struggles of Chinese power, the “Tiananmen Papers”, revealed the sequence of events. Based on these exceptional documents, the film reweaves the thread of the days from April to June 1989 thanks to poignant archive images commented by specialists on China and by the former leaders of the movement themselves, for the majority in exile. The ghosts of the “Beijing Spring” continue to haunt them, while a totalitarian regime still governs the country.

Part 1. The people against the party
On April 15, 1989, Hu Yaobang, former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, dismissed from his position two years earlier, following the student demonstrations of 1986 which he had supported in their democratic demands, died of a heart attack. Wanting to pay tribute to him, thousands of students converge on Tiananmen, the largest square in the world, symbol of communist power, confronted, for a decade, with the wind of freedom which is blowing over China and weakening the dictatorship of the one party. The slogans demand freedom of expression and government transparency. This first episode traces the start of the largest movement for democratization in Chinese history and the showdown between some 200,000 demonstrators – soon supported by the workers, the people of Beijing and the big cities – and the government led by with an iron fist by Deng Xiaoping, party general secretary Zhao Ziyang and Prime Minister Li Peng. On May 20, after a charade of dialogue with student leaders, martial law was proclaimed.

Part 2. The party against the people
Two hundred thousand soldiers enter the capital, but are quickly stopped by the Pekingese who fraternize with them. At the same time, dissensions arose among the students, between the proponents of non-violence and the most radical. On May 27, Wang Dan, one of the leaders, sensing the imminence of tragedy, unsuccessfully urged his comrades to evacuate the place. On June 3, soldiers no longer submissive to the regime, and who had received orders to shoot on sight, attacked the students. In a few hours, the deaths numbered in the thousands. The day after the massacre, the image of a single man facing a tank went around the world, while a gigantic apparatus of repression was deployed throughout the country.

A film by Ian MacMillan
Production YAMI 2 – Christophe Nick and ALLEYCATS FILMS – Ed Stobart