Jiang Zemin succeeds Zhao Ziyang to become the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (Chinese: ; pinyin: lis shjin), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre (Chinese: ; pinyin: Tin'nmn d tsh), troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded. The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement (Chinese: ; pinyin: Bji mnyn) or the Tiananmen Square Incident (Chinese: ; pinyin: Tin'nmn shjin).
The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China, reflecting anxieties among the people and political elite about the country's future. The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy that benefited some people but seriously disadvantaged others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge to its legitimacy. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation. Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the Square.As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership. By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. Among the CCP's top leadership, Premier Li Peng and Party Elders Li Xiannian and Wang Zhen called for decisive action through violent suppression of the protesters, and ultimately managed to win over Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and President Yang Shangkun to their side. On 20 May, the State Council declared martial law. They mobilized as many as ~300,000 troops to Beijing. The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city's major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process. The military operations were under the overall command of General Yang Baibing, half-brother of President Yang Shangkun.The international community, human rights organizations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre. Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China. The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests. More broadly, the suppression ended the political reforms begun in 1986 and halted the policies of liberalization of the 1980s, which were only partly resumed after Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992. Considered a watershed event, reaction to the protests set limits on political expression in China that have lasted up to the present day. Remembering the protests is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of the CCP and remains one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.
Jiang Zemin (; Chinese: 江泽民; pinyin: Jiāng Zémín; born 17 August 1926) is a retired Chinese politician who served as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party from 1989 to 2002, as Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party from 1989 to 2004, and as President of the People's Republic of China from 1993 to 2003. Jiang represented the "core of the third generation" of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders since 1989.
Jiang came to power unexpectedly as a compromise candidate following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when he replaced Zhao Ziyang as CCP General Secretary after Zhao was ousted for his support for the student movement. As the involvement of the "Eight Elders" in Chinese politics steadily declined, Jiang consolidated his hold on power to become the "paramount leader" in the country during the 1990s. Urged by Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992 to accelerate "opening up and reform", Jiang officially introduced the term "socialist market economy" in his speech during the 14th CCP National Congress held later that year, ending a period of ideological uncertainty and economic stagnation following 1989.
Under Jiang's leadership, China experienced substantial economic growth with the continuation of market reforms, saw the return of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom in 1997 and Macau from Portugal in 1999 and improved its relations with the outside world, while the Communist Party maintained its tight control over the state. However, Jiang has controversially faced criticism over human rights abuses which also led to the crackdown of the Falun Gong movement. His contributions to party doctrine, known as the "Three Represents," were written into the party's constitution in 2002. Jiang vacated the roles of General Secretary and highest-ranking member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee in 2002, but did not relinquish all of his official leadership titles until 2005, and continued to influence affairs until much later. At the age of 95 years, 223 days, Jiang is the longest-living paramount leader in the history of the PRC, surpassing Deng Xiaoping on 14 February 2019.