Tiananmen Incident
The Tiananmen incident took place on 5 April 1976, and was a mourning rally, thousands of Chinese to commemorate the recently deceased Zhou Enlai, which was interpreted politically.
The same term is sometimes used for the violent crackdown of the Chinese student movement in 1989. More often one speaks in this connection of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Background
In the final phase of the Cultural Revolution continued factional fights between factions of the radical Maoists to the Gang of Four and the reformers around Deng Xiaoping took place. Since February 1976, Deng was attacked by students in wall newspapers and demonstrations, as well as press articles.
The January 8, late Zhou Enlai was the most popular politician of the People's Republic of China, although or because it has no way exaggerated hero worship bestowed as Mao Zedong. Although he had survived the Cultural Revolution unscathed, he was identified with the liberal political wing.
Event
On the evening of April 4, a day before the Qingming festival in which traditionally the deceased ancestors was thought a crowd of several thousand Chinese citizens gathered on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing. There they laid at the monument of the fallen heroes wreaths, poems, flowers and flags to honor Zhou Enlai. On the morning of April 5, found the homing again at the memorial masses that their gifts had been removed by police as undesirable. Were protests in which the end of the reign Qinshi Huangdi was announced, the 210 BC, late founder of the Chinese Empire. This probably felt both Mao and attacked his radical followers. Finally they had praised this absolute ruler in 1973 in the campaign against Confucius and Lin Biao and thus also meant the Great Helmsman of the Chinese revolution. The protests escalated quickly to blows with the police, during which some cars were set on fire. The grown to about 100,000 people crowd stormed then several government buildings surrounding the square until it towards evening largely dispersed. A remaining hard core of protesters was arrested around 22:00 clock by the police and workers' militias.
Follow
On April 7, Deng Xiaoping was in the name of Mao and the Central Committee of all party posts removed and placed under house arrest. In the coming months the campaign was continued against him and Deng was attacked as a new Imre Nagy and compared the incident at Tiananmen Square in a negative way with the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Instead, Hua Guofeng was established as the new crown prince of Mao.