Women's roles during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
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Many women participated in the
Student leaders
Chai Ling
Chai Ling was a leader in the hunger strike movement and the commander-in-chief of Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters. She assumed her role as a leader because she was seen as a candidate who could get men to put aside their arguments, and she became the liaison between the general student population at Beida and the Preparatory Committee.[2]
In early May, Chai Ling became a hunger strike leader. When the hunger strike was initiated on May 12, Chai's speech convinced several hundred students to add their names to the list of those willing to begin a hunger strike.[3][4] Li Lu called her speech the "manifesto of the student hunger strikers."[5] Shen Tong commented that Chai was a charismatic leader who "could move you to tears with her speeches."[6] Chai Ling explained in an interview that the hunger strike was "for the purpose of seeing just what the true face of the government is, to see whether it intends to suppress the movement or to ignore it, to see whether the people have a conscience or not, to see if China still has a conscience or not, if it has hope or not."[7]
Chai also attended the May 13 meeting with Yan Mingfu, the head of the CCP Central Committee's United Front Work Department. The purpose of the meeting was to hear the opinions of the students and to persuade students to withdraw from the Square before Mikhail Gorbachev's arrival.[8] Chai became the general commander of the Hunger Strike Headquarters on May 15.[9] On May 18, many student leaders decided to end the hunger strike because they feared the government would impose martial law upon the students.[10] The student leaders then held a vote to decide if participants should end the hunger strike or not. Chai Ling, Zhang Boli, and Li Lu asked the students to vote on the proposal, and many favoured ending the strike.[11][12]
Wang Chaohua
Wang Chaohua was a member of Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation.[13] She was more invested in organizational work than participating in demonstrations. She criticized the hunger strike movement and persuaded Chai Ling to call off the hunger strike.[14] Wang was concerned that the hunger strike would "provoke a hard-line response and possibly lead to bloodshed."[15] Chai responded, "The hunger strike was spontaneously initiated by students. No one has the right to stop it."[16]
Wang also participated in the May 13 meeting with Yan Mingfu to publicly discuss the students' views on the hunger strike and the movement itself.
In her interview with Wang Dan and Li Minqi on February 21, 1999, Wang stated that the final outcome of the movement in 1989 could have been "less disastrous" if the hunger strike had not occurred.[20]
Intellectuals
Dai Qing
Dai Qing was a journalist at
If we're going to break this stalemate, both government and students will need to make concessions. The government should make concessions first, and the students next. As for conditions, if the students are willing to trust us, we are ready to press the government.[26]
Dai Qing, however, could not convince the students to stop hunger striking. In her memoir entitled "Tiananmen Follies: Prison Memoirs and Other Writings," Dai realized that "her stature and reputation were hardly sufficient to have an impact on the students' actions or to play the important diplomatic role that the situation called for."[27] She and the other intellectuals were unable to resolve the crisis in Tiananmen Square.
Unidentifiable member
Huang Qingling
In
See also
References
- ^ Lee Feigon, "Gender and The Chinese Student Movement," in Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China, ed. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Elizabeth Perry (Boulder: Westview Press: 1994), 128.
- ^ Chai Ling, A Heart for Freedom: The Remarkable Journey of a Young Dissident, Her Daring Escape, and Her Quest to Free China's Daughters (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 2011), 91-92, 102.
- ^ Li Lu, Moving the Mountain: My Life in China from the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square (London: Macmillan, 1990), 133.
- ^ Dingxin Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement (Chicago: The University of Chicago: 2001), 163.
- ^ Li, Moving the Mountain, 131-133.
- ^ Shen Tong and Marianne Yen, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 276.
- ^ Han Minzhu and Hua Sheng, "Taped Interview with Student Leader Chai Ling in Late May" in Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 198.
- ^ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 164.
- ^ Zhang Liang, The Tiananmen Papers, trans. Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001), 171.
- ^ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 182.
- ^ Chai, A Heart for Freedom, 190.
- ^ Li, Moving the Mountain, 200.
- ^ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 163.
- ^ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 163, 166.
- ^ Han and Sheng, Cries for Democracy, 241.
- ^ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 163.
- ^ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 164.
- ^ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 166.
- ^ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 167.
- ^ Wang Chaohua, "A Dialogue on the Future of China" in One China, Many Paths (London: Verso, 2003), 318.
- ^ Dai Qing, Tiananmen Follies: Prison Memoirs and Other Writings, trans. Nancy Yang Liu, Peter Rand, and Lawrence R. Sullivan (Norwalk: EastBridge, 2005), 67.
- ^ Zhang, The Tiananmen Papers, 139.
- ^ Dai, Tiananmen Follies, 70.
- ^ Zhang, The Tiananmen Papers, 165.
- ^ Zhang, The Tiananmen Papers, 166.
- ^ Zhang, The Tiananmen Papers, 166.
- ^ Dai, Tiananmen Follies, 88.
- ^ Jan Wong, Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now (Toronto: Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1996), 242-244.