Pitfalls of Popularity: The Radicalization Dynamics in the 1989 Tiananmen Student Movement


Zitian Sun, McGill University

In the late 20th century, the 1989 Tiananmen Student Movement (TSM) was one of the most ambitious democratic struggles worldwide. The death of a liberal political figure, Hu Yaobang, inspired millions of students and workers to march on the streets of Beijing on April 15, demanding political liberalization and democratic reform. Yet, after rounds of negotiations, students and the government failed to reach an agreement. Several student leaders mobilized a hunger strike to pressure the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. However, radical tactics conflicted with the ongoing negotiation and marginalized the position of the more moderate negotiators. Eventually, on the night of June 3, the government ordered its military to repress the movement and brought the process of Chinese democratic reform to a halt. This tragic outcome for what had been such a hopeful movement raised a question: Under what condition does radicalization contribute to movement failure when regime-movement negotiation is feasible? In this article, I process-trace both elites’ interactions and the movement’s dynamics via historical archives to answer the question. First, in contrast to existing accounts on radical mobilizations, I argue that radicalization, as in escalation in demands and tactics, can be a nonviolent identity formation process without state repression. In the TSM, student mobilization decreased when the Chinese government offered to negotiate. Leaders employed cultural repertoires to highlight their legitimacy, gain political leverage via continued mobilizations, and avoid possible repression. Spectacular but nonviolent hunger strikes facilitated a distinctive moral authority of students, paralyzing the state’s bureaucratic establishment via demonstrations and strikes. Second, I argue that radicalization and its associated mass mobilization reshape elites’ coalitions and regime-movement alignments via a symbiotic dynamic. Radical discourses with cultural repertoire weaken the movement by undermining both the moderate negotiators and soft-liner elites. During the hunger strike, radical leaders disrupted negotiations and deeded any possible compromises with the state as traitorous behaviors against the movement. Moderate student leaders failed to extract meaningful concessions from the regime soft-liners, leading to a regime-movement standoff. Alternatively, this process became an opportunity for the regime hard-liners to exploit the standoff by marginalizing soft-liners, ceasing negotiations, and eventually repressing the movement violently. In brief, my case study indicates that radicalization in responding to the practical needs of mobilization and regime-movement interactions generates unintended consequences and contributes to the movement’s eventual demise. Radical tactics and repertoires establish an interconnected relationship with regime elites, but they generally undermine the concession extraction capabilities of the movement. Furthermore, I also demonstrate that China’s weak civil society in the 1980s is not the only contributing factor to the failure of the democratic transition. Instead, the radical dynamic in the movement remains equivalently critical. This paper sheds light on how social movement dynamics lead to violent repressions and the consolidation of authoritarian rule.

This paper will be presented at the following session: