The Tiananmen Effect

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping, leader of the Chinese Community Party (CCP), loosened the government’s control over information in China. Eleven years later, the country would experience a massive wave of protests in which citizens demanded reforms and democratization. Within weeks, the protestor-occupied Tiananmen Square, for which the protests would be named, was violently cleared by CCP forces, causing immense outrage not only within China but throughout the world. Immediately following the massacre, the government would swiftly tighten its grip on information and censorship, especially relating to government dissent. In this paper, I follow the story of the infamous Tiananmen Square protests and its enduring legacy to argue that information control is the most important way the CCP consolidates power in China. More specifically, I discuss how information control (particularly propaganda and censorship) has evolved throughout post-1948 Chinese history, and the ways in which the Tiananmen Square protests prompted the use of information control as a method of consolidating power within the CCP.