The 'Democracy Songs for China' concert was held in Happy Valley, Hong Kong, to support the student movement in Beijing. Andy Lau and others expressed their support via long-distance phone calls and appeared on the big screen.
Li Peng called Deng Xiaoping, suggesting convening an expanded Politburo meeting to implement the dismissal decision. Deng Xiaoping requested to wait until the army entered Beijing to hold the meeting.
After Li Peng announced martial law in Beijing, Jiang Zemin was the first to signal firm support for the martial law order to the Central Committee, sending a plaintext telegram in the early hours of May 20.
On the eve of the June Fourth (Tiananmen) crackdown, Zhao Ziyang drafted a telegram requesting Wan Li to return to China and convene the NPC Standing Committee to veto the martial law decree. Wen Jiabao, director of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee, suppressed the telegram and prevented it from being sent on the grounds that the procedures were not compliant.
In the early hours of May 19, 1989, Wen Jiabao accompanied Zhao Ziyang to Tiananmen Square to visit the students on a hunger strike.
Deng Xiaoping convened a meeting at home and decided to remove Zhao Ziyang from the position of General Secretary. Zhao Ziyang and Hu Qili were not notified of this meeting.
Deng Xiaoping convened a Politburo Standing Committee meeting at home to discuss whether to impose martial law in Beijing, and Zhao Ziyang explicitly stated that it could not be carried out.
Deng Xiaoping personally summoned the heads of the major military regions and branches, beginning the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of field troops to gather around Beijing.
On May 4, 1989, reporters and editors from the People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, Guangming Daily, and China Youth Daily took to Chang'an Avenue, carrying banners demanding that the news must tell the truth.
During the June Fourth turmoil of 1989, Zhu Rongji broke with convention by appearing on television to make an appeal, saying that Shanghai was different from Beijing and that troops and police would not be deployed, and stating that no one could conceal the historical facts; this footage was later circulated repeatedly.
In May 1989, during the 1989 student movement in Beijing, university students staging a sit-in protest in Tiananmen Square spontaneously organized a clean-up of the entire square, clearing rubbish and attempting to implement self-managed sanitation of the public space.