This Day in History: 1989-06-04

Tiananmen Square protests crushed On this day in 1989, China’s democracy movement is crushed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square as the Chinese government orders the army to open fire. About 400 to 800 civilians died in a protest marked by amazing acts of bravery, including that of this one anonymous man who stopped a column of tanks.
China’s democracy movement had been encouraged by the government’s increasing tolerance of environmental debate at the time, especially the book Yangtze! Yangtze! by Dai Qing, which questioned the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, published in February of 1989. This tolerance of environmental debate also took place in Russia during the 1980s following the Chernobyl disaster but was also eventually crushed by the dictatorial government there.