1989 History Research Guide

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Prepared by Lian Shengde. Originally shared with Wang Chaohua for scholarly discussion. This web edition organizes the guide for public research and citation; later corrections and source additions will be versioned.

Purpose and scope

This guide treats the 1989 movement as a nationwide democratic and civic movement—not only a sequence of events in Tiananmen Square. Research should reconstruct people, organizations, decisions, communications, local movements, citizen participation, repression, imprisonment, exile, memory, and continuing disputes. It should preserve disagreement instead of forcing a single retrospective narrative.

Chronological research map

April 15–May 3: mourning for Hu Yaobang, campus petitions, April 22 memorial activity, marches, official responses, and early autonomous coordination.
May 4–12: expansion of student autonomy, dialogue demands, press freedom, boycotts, organizational formation, and links among Beijing and regional campuses.
May 13–18: hunger strike, the Gorbachev visit, mass public support, medical and logistics networks, broadcasting, and changing authority on the Square.
May 19–24: declaration of martial law, citizens blocking troop movements, collaboration and conflict among the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation, NAFUS, hunger-strike bodies, workers, residents, and temporary command structures. Reconstruct who authorized each decision, for what period, and through which procedure.
May 25–June 2: organizational reconfiguration, national delegations and information networks, the Goddess of Democracy, withdrawal debates, security, broadcasts, and the condition of participants.
June 3–4: troop routes, orders, weapons, hospitals, casualty locations, evacuation of the Square, civilian and military deaths, arrests, and contemporaneous reporting. Separate events inside the Square from killings and injuries on surrounding avenues and neighborhoods.
After June 4: wanted lists, detention, trials, executions, prison conditions, underground activity, regional reprisals, exile, international reporting, and preservation or destruction of evidence.
Memory and accountability: victims’ identification, political prisoners, annual commemoration, censorship, organizational histories, contested documents, oral history, and demands for truth and accountability.

Organizations and systems to reconstruct

Research should distinguish formal authority, temporary delegation, practical control, public visibility, and later reputation. Priority subjects include 北高联, 外高联/NAFUS, hunger-strike organizations, the workers’ autonomous federation, citizen-support networks, command bodies, broadcasting stations, university and regional federations, medical teams, transport and supply networks, and post-crackdown organizations.

Core research questions

What was each organization’s exact name, founding date, membership, mandate, rules, seal, records, and leadership process?
Which decisions were formally adopted, temporarily delegated, improvised, disputed, or attributed only in later accounts?
Who controlled particular broadcasts, security teams, negotiations, supplies, transport, and communications at specific times?
How did movements outside Beijing develop independently and connect with national networks?
What can be established about casualties, hospitals, detention, sentencing, torture, execution, release, and disappearance?
Which documents are originals, copies, drafts, later reconstructions, misattributions, or unresolved? A document without adequate provenance must not be treated as an organizational instrument merely because it appears in an archive.

Evidence and database method

Use the following evidentiary order: contemporaneous original document; contemporaneous photograph, audio, video, or accountable reporting; independently corroborated direct testimony; later memoir or reconstruction. Record a stable ID, title, creator, date, organization, event, provenance, custody history, exact source URL, rights status, language, transcription or translation status, verification grade, conflicts, related people and events, and last-verified date. Preserve originals unchanged; make OCR, transcription, translation, and annotation in separate working copies.

Fact, allegation, testimony, interpretation, and unresolved conflict must remain separate. Sensitive participant submissions stay restricted until identity, consent, safety, ownership, and corroboration reviews are complete. Corrections should preserve prior versions and explain what changed.

Starting points and research links

Contribute or correct

Participants and researchers may submit memoirs, documents, flyers, photographs, recordings, corrections, or source leads. Do not send material whose disclosure could endanger a person without first describing the security concern. Contact contact@freechina.live.

Web edition published August 31, 2026. English is the working public edition; the Chinese, French, German, and Spanish pages are coordinated editorial translations.