ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on one aspect of the movement, the demonstrations of students, journalists, intellectuals, and finally "the masses," mainly using his own interviews and observations in Beijing between April 18 and June 4, 1989. First, active demonstrators and passive bystanders were separated from each other, albeit not as clearly as during later demonstrations. The role of the bystanders was important, however, because their numbers add political weight to the students’ activities. Large-scale demonstrations supported by the people as a newly discovered political weapon gave the student movement the impetus it needed to carry on beyond the symbolic date of May 4, the seventieth anniversary of the 1919 May Fourth Movement. More important than the demonstrations of journalists and students, therefore, was the hunger strike begun on the Square on May 13 by about two thousand students. After proclamation of martial law, it was impossible for most units to continue demonstrating.
