Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement - Hardcover

Brook, Timothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195074572 ISBN 13: 9780195074574

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1992

Synopsis

The Beijing Massacre was a watershed in the history of modern China. In the early hours of June 4, 1989, the People's Liberation Army forced its way into the center of Beijing. Its objective was to take control of Tiananmen Square, headquarters of the fledgling Democracy Movement, at all costs. Even the Chinese leaders may not have realized that the Army would carry out a massacre that would shred the legitimacy of the government in the eyes of its own people and of the world community.
In Quelling the People, Timothy Brook offers the first detailed and objective reconstruction of the Army's actions during that night, as well as in the weeks leading up to the massacre. Brook goes behind the scenes, interviewing dozens of eyewitnesses, reviewing Chinese and foreign press reports, collecting unofficial hospital reports, and working from over a hundred student documents smuggled out of Beijing University. What he discovers is something very different from the official story. He demonstrates that the soldiers killed two to three thousand people as opposed to the reported hundreds. He finds that the soldiers, armed with combat weapons, were not trained to handle civilian opposition, and had little strategy except to open fire into crowds. In short, they should never have been used as riot troops. Given such poor resources, Brook asserts, the Chinese leaders should have sought a nonmilitary solution, for in deploying their incompetent troops, the government came close to provoking a civil war as the military units who had participated in the massacre squared off against each other. In addition, he looks into the Chinese government's extensive propaganda campaign--from videos edited to show that the Army was in the right, to books with the same storyline, to the celebration on National Day, an attempt to create the illusion of normalcy and unity. As Brook writes, "the Chinese government's sole hope is amnesia....It asks that we succumb to its logic....That what the soldiers did, they did in self-defense....That nothing really happened. That nothing has changed."
Filled with vivid, personal accounts of both participants and observers, Quelling the People not only sets the record straight as to what happened at Tiananmen Square, but it also provides a provocative look into the Chinese mind. It tells the story of the people who stood up to fight for democratic change, the soldiers who were sent against them, and the disregard for human rights that resulted in the tragic deaths of thousands.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“The author has done a magnificent job of reconstructing the military mobilization in Beijing and the role of the People’s Liberation Army in the bloody suppression of the Chinese people’s movement. . . . A moving book that vividly displays the extraordinary bravery of the residents of Beijing.”—Pacific Affairs
“The author skillfully weaves eyewitness accounts into a smoothly flowing narrative. Two maps of Beijing assist the reader in following the actions described, and there is a seful chronology of events. The work should interest both generalists and specialists, and spans the disciplines of history, political science, and sociology.”—The China Quarterly

About the Author:

About the Author:
Timothy Brook is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto. He has engaged in historical research and traveled extensively throughout China.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0195074572
• ISBN 13: 9780195074574
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288