Nanjing spring: The 1989 student movement in a provincial capital

Abstract

In the spring of 1989 the students of Nanjing, the capital of wealthy Jiangsu Province and home to three and a half million people, worked hard to build a coherent student movement. This essay will trace the development of that movement and analyze its significance. The account will cover the period from the death of Hu Yaobang on 15 April to the day when the last poster was torn down on the Nanjing University campus on 13 June, and will focus on the role of the students, the university authorities, the local government, and the townspeople. I lived on the Nanjing University (hereafter Nanda) campus from 1987 to 1989 and kept a day-by-day record of events in Nanjing over those two months.