Description

During the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in Beijing, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) played a decisive role in enforcing martial law, using force to suppress the demonstrations in the city. The killings of protestors in Beijing continue to taint the legacies of the party elders, led by the military leader Deng Xiaoping, and weigh on the generation of leaders whose careers advanced as their more moderate colleagues were purged or sidelined at the time. Within China, the role of the military in 1989 remains a subject of private discussion within the ranks of the party leadership and PLA.