With student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square growing into the largest protest movement in Communist China's history, Premier Li Peng announced martial law, ordering troops toward the capital. Beijing residents, in an extraordinary act of civil resistance, blocked army convoys with buses and their own bodies, delaying the military for days. The standoff would end in bloodshed two weeks later on June 3-4.
On May 20, 1989, Chinese state television broadcast Premier Li Peng's grim announcement: martial law would take effect in parts of Beijing, and the People's Liberation Army was authorized to move against the protesters who had occupied Tiananmen Square for weeks. Hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and ordinary citizens had gathered demanding political reform, an end to corruption, and greater freedoms, inspired partly by Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to China just days earlier.
What followed stunned observers worldwide. Rather than submitting, ordinary Beijing residents poured into the streets to physically block the army's advance. Convoys of troops found their way blocked by parked buses, human chains, and crowds who climbed onto tanks to plead with soldiers not to fire on their own people. For nearly two weeks, this remarkable civilian resistance held the military at bay on the capital's outskirts.
The reprieve was temporary. Hardliners within the Communist Party, alarmed by the movement's scale and the sympathy it drew from within the army's own ranks, eventually replaced hesitant units with troops willing to act. The crackdown came on the night of June 3 into June 4, when tanks and soldiers cleared the square, killing an unknown number of people—estimates range from several hundred to several thousand. May 20 marked the pivot point when peaceful protest tipped toward violent suppression.