The Power of Tiananmen

by Zhao, Dingxin

• ISBN13: 9780226982601
• ISBN10: 0226982602
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-04-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

In the spring of 1989 over 100,000 students in Beijing initiated the largest student revolt in human history. Television screens across the world filled with searing images from Tiananmen Square of protesters thronging the streets, massive hunger strikes, tanks set ablaze, and survivors tending to the dead and wounded after a swift and brutal government crackdown. Dingxin Zhao's award-winning The Power of Tiananmen is the definitive treatment of these historic events. Along with grassroots tales and interviews with the young men and women who launched the demonstrations, Zhao carries out a penetrating analysis of the many parallel changes in China's state-society relations during the 1980s. Such changes prepared an alienated academy, gave rise to ecology-based student mobilization, restricted government policy choices, and shaped student emotions and public opinion, all of which, Zhao argues, account for the tragic events in Tiananmen.

Author Biography

Dingxin Zhao is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Charles Tilly
Preface	xv
Chronology	xxiii
Introduction	1	(38)
PART ONE: THE ORIGIN OF THE 1989 STUDENT MOVEMENT
China's State-Society Relations and Their Changes during the 1980s	39	(14)
Intellectual Elites and the 1989 Movement	53	(26)
Economic Reform, University Expansion, and Student Discontents	79	(22)
The Decline of the System for Controlling Students in Universities	101	(22)
On the Eve of the 1989 Movement	123	(22)
PART TWO: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 1989 BEIJING STUDENT MOVEMENT
A Brief History of the 1989 Movement	145	(64)
State Legitimacy, State Behaviors, and Movement Development	209	(30)
Ecology-Based Mobilization and Movement Dynamics	239	(28)
State-Society Relations and the Discourses and Activities of a Movement	267	(30)
The State, Movement Communication, and the Construction of Public Opinion	297	(34)
Conclusion	331	(26)
Appendix 1: A Methodological Note	357	(6)
Appendix 2: Interview Questions	363	(8)
References	371	(42)
Name Index	413	(7)
Subject Index	420