NARRATION: In the spring of 1989, more than a million Chinese citizens descended on Tiananmen Square in Beijing to protest against the Communist dictatorship.

WINSTON LORD (U.S. AMBASSADOR TO CHINA, 1985-1989): This was monumental. Nobody could have predicted the huge scale of the demonstrations. It was an exhilarating, incredible, incredible sight to see.

NARRATION: The demonstrations were sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang, a popular advocate for political reform who had been pushed out of Communist Party leadership. His mourners flooded Tiananmen Square to call for freedom of speech and an end to government corruption. 

ROSE TANG: I was shopping nearby and I saw this – huge crowds in Tiananmen Square. There were swarms of armed police wearing green uniforms surrounding a crowd of protesters. At that time, I was following the marches and I was screaming and shouting, so they gave me the bullhorn. I became one of the leaders of my university.

NARRATION: Rose Tang had grown up during the repressive Cultural Revolution. She found at Tiananmen a new kind of freedom. 

ROSE TANG: You can say anything. You can express yourself without being censored. It was something we had never dreamed of, had never imagined.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 5-15-89):
NEWS REPORT: The students have created a kind of liberated territory here, with free speech and instant democracy. They have known freedom, independence and protest as never before.

ROSE TANG: The whole population were waking up to realize there’s another world out there where people enjoy the rights and have all these luxuries. That is the West, that is America.

WINSTON LORD: It was Chinese from all walks of life demonstrating without any violence. That’s one reason people thought maybe China might move in a more liberal direction.

NARRATION: China and the United States had recently overcome years of hostility and established friendly diplomatic relations. Winston Lord had served as U.S. ambassador until just before the protests. 

WINSTON LORD: While I was there, we greatly increased trade and investment, cultural media, business exchanges. There were more cars coming on the street, a little more different types of clothing. It was becoming a more modern country.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 9-25-87):
NEWS REPORT: Donald and Mickey have been a Sunday night fixture for a year now.

WINSTON LORD: But China still was a repressive Communist regime, there’s no illusions about that. So I watched the demonstrations with amazement, nervousness, hope and some apprehension. The student demands were not that dramatic. They weren’t asking for Jeffersonian democracy overnight.

ROSE TANG: We love China. We want China to be better. We just demanded the party to introduce press freedom, to fight the corruption.

NARRATION: As the demonstrations stretched from days to weeks, the Communist Party leadership refused to respond to protesters’ demands, which included an end to press censorship and more funding for education. 

Protest leaders started a hunger strike. 

WU’ER KAIXI: Our logic is simple: We apply pressure, make the pressure as high as we can.

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 5-1-89):
NEWS REPORT: He is 21-year-old Wu’er Kaixi, newly elected president of the illegal students union. If the government can’t deal with us, he said, then the struggle has to go on.

WU’ER KAIXI: Three thousand students in Beijing decide to enter because it will get the attention of the Chinese government. Our demand was simple. We want dialogue.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 5-18-89):
NEWS REPORT: At Tiananmen Square, so many students were collapsing from lack of food that it was taking on the appearance of a disaster area.

ROSE TANG: It was just so visually striking. Every day and night there were doctors and nurses and ambulances. So everything was escalating, escalating. I got more and more angry. It was like – what kind of government is this? Like, why can’t they talk to the students?

NARRATION: Five days into the hunger strike, Communist leadership agreed to an unprecedented live televised meeting in the Great Hall of the People.

ARCHIVAL (NBC NEWS, 5-18-89):
NEWS REPORT: Premier Li Peng told the students: Beijing is paralyzed, it’s anarchy, tell the students to leave the square.

ROSE TANG: The students were defiant, which is a big no-no in Chinese culture.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 5-18-89):
NEWS REPORT: Wu’er Kaixi, he accused the leaders of showing no sincerity in solving the problems.

WU’ER KAIXI: I felt this ultimate responsibility to speak up directly and challenge him.

ROSE TANG: You never speak back at somebody who’s older than you, who’s more senior than you.

NARRATION: But the televised spectacle and the subsequent imposition of martial law contributed to rising popular support for the Tiananmen protesters…

ARCHIVAL (NBC NEWS, 5-18-89):
NEWS REPORT: What worries Chinese officials is how that support is spreading around the country. Canton, Nanking, Xi’an.

NARRATION: …And direct challenges to China’s leader Deng Xiaoping and Premier Li Peng. 

ARCHIVAL (NBC NEWS, 5-21-89):
NEWS REPORT: An estimated half-million people marched through Shanghai calling for Li and Deng’s resignation.

ARCHIVAL (NBC NEWS, 5-18-89):
WINSTON LORD: I think all this is going to come to a head in the next week or two.

WINSTON LORD: We had hope and reason to believe that this issue was going to be resolved peacefully. Deng, however, obviously wanted to make a point and warn people that – don’t try this again – so he decided on a brutal crackdown.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 6-4-89):
NEWS REPORT: Last night, an estimated 30,000 Chinese army troops were sent into the capital.  

ROSE TANG: I heard the loud thuds of big objects on human flesh. The troops were beating us. People started to panic. And crying and screaming. I stumbled over the debris of the collapsed tents and bodies of people. Those bodies were not moving.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 6-4-89):
NEWS REPORT: Some lost their lives when armored personnel carriers and troop trucks simply ran over them. Others were gunned down as they tried to resist the savage show of force.

NARRATION: Amid the chaos, Rose Tang encountered a CNN news crew. 

ARCHIVAL (CNN, 6-4-89):
REPORTER: Do you think anybody got killed?
ROSE TANG: Of course, I’m sure. Very sure. Many students were killed.

ROSE TANG: I felt I was speaking to the world. Even if I will be jailed, it’s very important to get the truth out. The world needs to know.

NARRATION: In the aftermath, the Chinese regime said that only a few hundred were killed, but estimates from eyewitnesses and human rights groups range much higher. The exact figure is still not known.

ARCHIVAL (6-8-89):
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States. 

NARRATION: In Washington, American leaders had to determine how to respond.

ARCHIVAL (6-8-89):
PRESIDENT H.W. BUSH: I want to make very clear to those leaders and to the rest of the world that the United States denounces the kind of brutality that all of us have seen on our television.

NARRATION: Footage of the massacre was fast inspiring sympathy and outrage, including an unforgettable scene from the day after the massacre of a lone man facing off against a line of tanks. 

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 6-5-89):
NEWS REPORT: For three minutes in the middle of the day, an army was stopped by a man who stood still.

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI (DEMOCRAT-CALIFORNIA): I’m a very junior member of Congress at the time, and right after Tiananmen Square, we talked about the violation of human rights, the arrest of those in Tiananmen Square, all of that – the sadness of it all.

ARCHIVAL (C-SPAN, 6-22-89):
NANCY PELOSI: The human rights of the people in China are not an internal matter, that they’re of concern to people all over the world, and especially to the members of Congress here.

NARRATION: Pelosi would emerge as a fierce critic of China’s human rights abuses, making headlines for a trip to Tiananmen Square, where she commemorated the massacre.

NANCY PELOSI: We can never forget what those young people stood for, and that we were an inspiration to them for democracy.

NARRATION: But even as the U.S. imposed modest sanctions on the Chinese regime, trade with China increasingly became a national priority throughout the 1990s. 

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 5-26-94):
NEWS REPORT: China is the fastest-growing economy on Earth, one that bought $8 billion worth of American goods last year. What’s more, China is a major source of inexpensive clothing, sporting goods and shoes for American consumers.

NARRATION: In fact, members of Congress were growing concerned that China was benefiting from trade more than the U.S. 

NANCY PELOSI: They were flooding us, like five to one, we were buying their stuff versus they were buying ours. What they made in their foreign exchange strengthened them enormously.

ARCHIVAL (CBS NEWS, 5-14-92):
NEWS REPORT: Thousands of Americans believe that China, instead of being punished for Tiananmen, has been rewarded with American jobs. 

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 7-10-91):
REPRESENTATIVE GERALS SOLOMON (REPUBLICAN-NEW YORK): Let us not forget that the Chinese government is a vicious communist dictatorship, and we have no business being a partner in keeping these thugs propped up in power, which is what we’re doing.

NARRATION: Working with a bipartisan coalition in Congress, Nancy Pelosi sought to use the U.S.’s trade agreement with China, which conferred Most Favored Nation status, as leverage.

NANCY PELOSI: We wanted to make sure that if, in fact, they were to get Most Favored Nation status, we want an improvement in the trade situation, but we also want an improvement in the human rights situation.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 5-16-91):
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I look at the importance of China as a country, and I think that I don’t want to see us isolate them. 

NARRATION: President Bush vetoed Congress’s effort to amend China’s special trade status, citing the risk to good relations. His successor, President Clinton, took the same view.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 5-28-93):
NEWS REPORT: It was not the tough stance on human rights he once promised to take with China, but President Clinton was under heavy pressure from business interests. They warned that failing to give China the special trade privileges would hurt Americans more than the Chinese.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I feel very good about our policy. I think it’s a good policy. 

WINSTON LORD: I think we were relatively soft on China right after Tiananmen, and I said so at the time. But I also said we have to try to move ahead with China, basically feeling – you can’t hang everything on human rights, much as that made me uncomfortable. We emerged with the objective of improving relations with China above all, but hoping – not counting on, but hoping – this in turn would open up Chinese society.

NANCY PELOSI: At the time, people said to me, you have to believe in peaceful evolution. Nobody expected a democracy, but – more democratic freedoms, more pluralism, more freedom of speech– but it didn’t happen.

NARRATION: Not only that, the trade imbalance between the U.S. and China is still a contentious issue. After Tiananmen, the deficit was just over $5 billion a year. It continued to grow into early 2025.

NANCY PELOSI: The deficit is $5 billion a week. Not a year. A week.

ARCHIVAL (FOX5, 4-2-25):
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: My fellow Americans, this is liberation day. 

NARRATION: Today, President Trump’s approach to the trade imbalance is to impose new tariffs on China and other countries, in part to address the deficit. China has retaliated with tariffs of its own.

ARCHIVAL (PBS NEWSHOUR, 4-13-25):
NEWS REPORT: Right now, we’re closer to economic decoupling than we ever have been, and many people are concerned that the two leaders won’t be able to get the relationship back on the right track.

NARRATION: Meanwhile, in China, it remains illegal to even commemorate the Tiananmen demonstrations and massacre of 1989. Wu’er Kaixi now lives in Taiwan, having escaped China after the massacre. Rose Tang left China, too. She lives in New York City. 

ROSE TANG: What people were experiencing and demanding in Tiananmen Square was this joy of being a free person, and I was glad I was part of it, and I was glad I survived it.

(END)