Wang Dan

 Wang Dan was the main leader in the protests and hunger strikes that took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989. After the massacre, he became the most wanted man in China, because he was so prominent in the Tiananmen Square protests. He never fled China like the others; he saw that as admitting defeat. Instead, he went in to hiding. He got arrested in July of 1989, and was sentenced to 4 years of imprisonment. He got really sick, and was sent to the states and has been staying there ever since. He was nominated for the nobel peace prize. 

Wei Jingsheng

Wei Jingsheng shares his experience of the protests within the film and explains how China can become a democratic society. He also tells of how the student leaders were sometimes doing things the wrong way and how the years of imprisonment have helped him rethink and thoroughly understand what he had done.
Wei was transferred to a labour camp in Qinghai where he protested about the conditions of his imprisonment and achieved some improvements such as access to books, magazines and newspapers and a colour television set. On the 14th od September, 1993, He was released from prison as a political gesture to persuade the International Olympic Committee to vote for China to host the 2000 Olympic Games. However, this action was useless and China lost to Australia. Wei is thrown into jail for another 14 years for trying to ‘overthrow the government’ on the 21st of November, 1995 and has his political rights taken for three years. During this imprisonment, Wei is awarded with the Olof Palm Prize for 1994, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Though and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Human Rights Award. In the winter of 1997, he is deported to the US with Wang Dan. During 1998, He founds the OCDC and is presented with the Democracy Award by the National Endowment for Democracy. Wei is referred to as the ‘Chinese Mandela’ and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize at least seven times since 1993. Nowadays, Wei continues to attempt to achieve human rights and democracy in China and is the chairman of the OCDC and the president of the Wei Jingsheng Foundation.

Wang Chaohua

Chaohua Wang was one of the key organisers of the protests. She was able to escape to Los Angeles while many of her friends were killed.
After going into hiding, Wang escaped to Los Angeles, leaving her six year old son behind. In LA, she worked as a cleaner while learning English to enrol in UCLA and began writing political essays on her own website. Soon, she received her MA and PHD degrees. Since leaving the mainland, the closest she has been to Communist China was at the Hong Kong International Airport where, in 2004, she met her son again. She is now an accomplished writer and editor living in Los Angeles with a second home in North London.

Wu'er Kaixi

Wu’er Kaixi’s role in the film was one of the most outspoken student leaders. He met with Premier Li Peng in May 1989 where he interrupted Li’s introduction stating that there are people being hungry in the square while Li was exchanging pleasantries. He also stated how Li was too late but was glad that he had come at all.
After the crackdown on the 4th of June, 1989, Wu’er Kaixi became the second most wanted out of the student leaders and was forced to flee to France. He then went to study at Harvard but was unable to graduate. He started in a family in Taiwan afterwards and continues to live there now. Kaixi has been the CEO of an internet Chinese article company, the vice general manager of a broadcasting company, COO of an internet incubation company and the co-founder of a multi-media management software company. Right now, he is running a Taiwan based Asia Pacific operation. On the 3rd of June, 2009, he went to Macau to turn himself in to Chinese authorities but was deported back to Taiwan. This year, he was arrested by the Tokyo police for forcing into the Chinese Embassy to turn himself in, in order to have a chat with the authorities of China. He was released in 48 hours without charge. Now he is still the 2nd most wanted student leader and currently resides in Taiwan, although he would like to return to the mainland to make things clear with the government.

Chai Ling - Then and Now

Chai Ling organized many of the hunger strikes and demonstrations that took place in Tiananmen Square during the protests of 1989. After the shoot out on June 4^th 1989, she fled the country for Paris, and from there was accepted with a full scholarship to Princeton University in the USA. She earned an honorary Masters degree in Political Science from there. She acquired an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1998. Since the making of the documentary “Moving the Mountain”, she now co-runs a software company entitled Jenzabar, with her husband, and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. She also started a nonprofit organization entitled “All Girls Allowed” which is aimed at exposing and stopping the human rights violations caused by the One Child policy in China. She has now been nominated for the Nobel Peace Price twice.

Li Lu - Then and Now

Li Lu - At the age of 19, Li Lu part took in a revolutionary event in Chinese history, the Tiananmen Square incident. He was not one of the bigger leaders, but he did lead part of the movement, which earned him a number 14 spot on the Beijing most wanted list. Since the making of the movie “Moving the Mountain”, Li Lu has gone on to even bigger and better things. Now, he is now at the top of the financial industry. He is preparing to become one of the top investment managers in Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio once Warren buffet steps down. 

Tiananmen Article

Being the leader of the People’s Republic of China is not a piece of cake, and when events like the Incident happen, it makes my job even worse.
I understand the student’s plea for democracy as many socialist governments such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria had collapsed and they were certain that corruption was present within the system. But the truth is that our country is strong and will never collapse as a Communist state and corruption is something that has never and will never happen.
Internationally, my reputation is being lowered due to this Incident. The Soviet Union claims that 10,000 people are dead. That is outrageous and unacceptable as a figure as we had ceased fire right after negotiations. There were only a total of 241 deaths, including the heroic soldiers who had lost their lives to rampaging students.
This may be a black spot in my life, but I am known as a great Marxist, great Proletarian Revolutionary, statesman, military strategist, and diplomat not for this but rather for my success in economically opening China to allow trade and manufacturing. I have opened up the door to China for outsiders, have great relations with the USA and the Soviet Union, and have also signed the agreement to revert Hong Kong and Macau to Chinese sovereignty. But people do not see the great achievements I have made, instead, they find every little flaw in me and aggressively protest. To err is human, and may I say, I am quite human.
Although I have ordered the clearing of the Square, the sole reason I have done this is because the students have gone overboard. If somebody must be blamed, it should be the students because they are the root of their own deaths. Hopefully someday, people will begin to see the greater picture in my point of view.


- Deng Xiaoping

Tiananmen Square Timeline

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-nXT8lSnPQ


15 April, 1989 - Hu Yaobang dies due to illness
                        First students arrive at Tiananmen to protest.
One week after - 100,000 students marched into Tiananmen Square, a protest in honour of the man’s sympathy for student protests
26 April - Government editorials denounce student leaders as lier
4 May - The press joins the protests
12 May - Professors from Beijing University supported the hunger strike and offered a banquet as a ‘last meal’. Some students made their final will then as well.
13 May - Several hundred students begin a hunger strike
14 May - Elected student representatives begin formal talks with the government. But the broadcast was not materialised and thus the talks break down.
15 May - Gorbachev arrives in Beijing for the first Sino-Soviet summit since 1959. The welcome plan for Gorbachev at Tiananmen Square is cancelled
16 May - High ranking communist leader comes to talk with them
17 May - Largest demonstration - 2 - 3 million people.
18 May - Several student leaders are summoned by Li Peng for a televised talk at the Great Hall of the People, but nothing is achieved.
19 May - Hunger strike is called off due to leaked information about the government’s plan for martial law. A mass sit-in is declared.
20 May - Martial law was declared in Beijing
23 May - Troops pull back to the outskirts of Beijing.
24 May - The Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters is set up.
30 May - The Goddess of Democracy is unveiled.
2 June - Liu Xiaobo and others start a hunger strike at 5 pm
3 June - Troops are ordered to reclaim Tiananment Square at all cost. They begin to open fire upon people blocking the advancement of the army and also on people who are just shouting at the troops. Tanks and armoured vehicles move towards the centre of the city.
4 June - 1 am, troops surround Tiananment Square and wait for orders
             4 am, Liu Xiaobo and the other three men who began the second hunger strike negotiate with the troops to allow the students to leave the Square.
             5 am, thousands of students, teachers and supporters leave the Square at gunpoint.
             During this period of time, troops shoot two waves of fire.

A Chinese Perspective on the Tiananmen Square Incident: By Anisha Khosla

Is it possible that the Tiananmen Square “Massacre” was not a massacre at all? That it was nothing more than and incident, misreported and propagandized by the Western media so much that it evolved into a such said “massacre”?  The Chinese government may have been acting accordingly to the situation, with the best interests of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation at heart. As a representative of the Chinese government, I believe that this was the case. This was not merely a chance occurrence, the incident was likely to happen for months. During the months prior to the incident, from the death of Hu Yaobang to June 4^th, there had been a steadily increasing amount of protests taking place in the Square. The government announced martial law, and surrounded the city of Beijing with military. The troops were unable to get through the barricades of people that lined the streets. It is rumored that many of the troops were touched by the students, and in fact retreated from the streets. According to some research, the students rated more damage than the troops. “Over 1,280 vehicles were burned or damaged in the rebellion, including over 1,000 military trucks, more than 60 armored cars, over 30 police cars, over 120 public buses and trolley buses and over 70 motor vehicles of other kinds. More than 6,000 martial law officers and soldiers were injured and scores of them killed.” (The Truth About The Beijing Turmoil - Beijing Publishing House, 1990) This research also states that the troops suffered heavy casualties while trying to spare the innocent civilians.

 Around 1 am on the morning of June 4^th, the troops finally cleared the streets and entered the square. There, according to the observers, they waited for instructions from the government. By then, it is rumored that a large majority of the students had left the square. At 4 am, the army again offered the students a choice, to leave or to stay and face the consequences. This evidence proves that the army did not go in and just start blindly shooting at the students. They gave the students a chance to save themselves. Around 5 am, the tanks finally entered the square, shooting and attacking the students. Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident, who had been on a hunger strike on the square to show solidarity with the students, said: Some people said 200 died in the square and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning.” This here is further proof that the “Massacre” of June 4^th 1989 may not have been as severe as previously thought.