The World's Response to One of China's Most Embarrassing Events
             In the spring of 1989 in Beijing, China tens of thousands of student protesters lined the streets surrounding Tiananmen Square and filled the square itself. The reasons for their pro-democracy protests were numerous but the biggest issue on their agenda was the government and it's communist party. The students believed their government was corrupt and wanted it replaced with a democratic and freely elected institution. On May 20th, 1989 martial law was ordered and after nearly two weeks of debating and negotiating between the government and students the protest came to a deadly conclusion beginning June 3rd, 1989. The world was watching live television broadcasts of the human rights violations carried out by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) ordered by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The world's reactions were wide ranging that had social, economical, and political impacts on China that are still felt today.
             In order to understand the events of Tiananmen and what made a government murder hundreds or possibly thousands of it's own citizens, no one knows the exact number, we must look back into the history of China and her people. China's history is quite possibly the oldest on earth so we will be brief with the historical background, only so you can get an idea because this paper is not about the history of China.
             Because China's history is so vast and so many dynasties assumed power between 2200 BCE and 1911 CE, which is when dynasties went away and The Republic of China, was formed, we cannot cover them justly here without writing another research paper. So I will only list the dynasty with its ruling dates and some facts about the dynasty.
             China's history, as far as we can prove, starts at around 2200 BCE with the Xia dynasty. There is very little known about this dynasty except they d...