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There are few places in China that seem more burned into the consciousness of typical Westerners than Tiananmen Square, and few events more commonly mentioned than the student protests of 1989.
But the stories are wrong on several levels. It was never reported in the Western media that
there were two separate events that occurred in Beijing on June 4, 1989. One was a student protest that culminated in a sit-in in Tiananmen Square by several thousand university students, which had lasted for several weeks and finally terminated on June 4.
The other was a one-day worker strike that occurred (perhaps not by chance) also on June 4, when a group of workers unhappy with their lot in life, organised their own protest
independently of the students, and in a different place. For reasons that will become apparent,
the workers' protest is the necessary focus for understanding the events of that date, so I will begin there.
The Workers' RevoltA group of workers gathered, and barricaded several streets in Muxidi, an area in Beijing five or six kilometers from Tiananmen Square, the barricades attended by several hundred mostly adult workers, with an undetermined few young people. However,
there was a third quite large group present that to my knowledge has never been clearly identified, though it is obvious from the photos
they were not workers and certainly not young students.(1) Thugs or anarchists might be an appropriate adjective, but the facts seem to support the conclusion (and my own personal judgment)
that they were mercenaries.(2)
Comment: See also: