150 China in World History
Everyone publicly associated with the demonstrations was ordered
arrested. Although the government cut off the satellite feed to kill live
broadcasting from China, television reporters smuggled videotapes out
of China showing the world horrifi c scenes of carnage. Some rioting
occurred in other Chinese cities as well, but China’s newscasters, who
had been free to cover the demonstrations during much of the spring,
now praised the brave soldiers for putting down an uprising of “bad
elements.” Near dawn, the remaining students evacuated Tiananmen
Square just before the tanks and troops rolled in, so no one was killed
in the square itself, as the government was quick to point out. Yet in the
bloody streets of Beijing somewhere between four hundred and eight
hundred civilians had been killed and perhaps 10,000 wounded.
The government urged people to turn in friends and neighbors who
might have participated in the demonstrations, but in contrast with the
Cultural Revolution era, most people refused to cooperate with the
witch hunt. Thousands of ordinary people helped to hide students and
other demonstration leaders from the authorities and to smuggle them
safely out of the country.
Some hard liners in the Communist Party hoped that the 1989 dem-
onstrations would enable them to reverse the entire direction of Deng
Xiaoping’s reforms, but Deng stuck to his economic policies. For about
a year, foreign businesses cut their investments in China because they
feared for its stability. Once it became clear that the regime was not
going to collapse in chaos, foreign investment again came pouring into
China, sending the economy into another rapid burst of growth.
The fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the breakup of the
Soviet Union convinced Deng and his successors that they made the
right decision in 1989. Deng died in 1997, the same year that Hong
Kong was returned from British to Chinese control. Because Britain had
colonized Hong Kong as part of the Opium War, this was a highly sym-
bolic transfer of power that all Chinese, including many Hong Kong
residents, took pride in. Deng Xiaoping’s successor, Jiang Zemin, who
had supported Deng in 1989, maintained Deng’s dual emphasis on strict
political control and greater economic openness. In 2002, Jiang Zemin
retired and was replaced by Hu Jintao in the fi rst relatively smooth gen-
erational transfer of power in the People’s Republic. Hu has continued
to push economic growth and repress political dissent.
China today is the world’s sixth largest economy and its third most
active trading nation after the United States and Germany. Between 1978
and 2004, China’s GDP grew by a factor of four. With China’s enor-
mous domestic market, deep talent pool, and vast supply of disciplined