Before his visit to North Korea, Zhao Ziyang consulted Deng Xiaoping, and Deng Xiaoping promised that after returning to China he would be appointed Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and agreed to the visit.
Former the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Hu Yaobang died of heart disease, prompting spontaneous mourning by Beijing university students.
In April 1989, Hu Yaobang suffered a massive myocardial infarction during a Politburo meeting and passed away shortly after. His death directly triggered the subsequent 1989 Student Movement.
On April 8, 1989, Hu Yaobang suffered a heart attack at a Politburo meeting in Huairentang; Wen Jiabao directed the rescue and accompanied him to the hospital.
Because the World Economic Herald published an article commemorating Hu Yaobang, Shanghai Municipal Party Secretary Jiang Zemin ordered the article pulled and suspended editor-in-chief Qin Benli for self-reflection, sparking protests by journalists and students.
On March 8, 1989, Li Peng issued a martial law decree for Lhasa on behalf of the State Council, following Deng Xiaoping's approval of martial law in Tibet, preventive arrests, and the decision that journalists and cadres could be shot on the spot; troops entered Lhasa on March 7.
Beginning on March 6, 1989, large numbers of armed police forces in Lhasa fired without warning at Tibetans gathered at the Jokhang Temple. Tibetans on retreat routes were ambushed, and Tibetans who had not taken part in the gathering were also strafed, provoking open opposition from the regional Party committee, people's congress, CPPCC, and public security department.
On March 2, 1989, a large number of Tibetans gathered in the square in front of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, shouting "down with corrupt officials," demanding the Dalai Lama's return to Tibet and the return of power to the Tibetan people. Hu Jintao dispatched armed police to clear the area, but it failed.
During the Lhasa crackdown in March 1989, in opposition to the indiscriminate shooting by armed police, more than 3000 Lhasa public security officers disobeyed orders and withdrew from the city, refusing to cooperate with the armed police.
When meeting with U.S. President George H.W. Bush in Beijing, Deng Xiaoping stated that the overriding issue for China's problems is the need for stability; without a stable environment, nothing can be accomplished.
U.S. President George Bush visited Beijing, and his plan to invite dissident Fang Lizhi and his wife to a dinner was intercepted by Chinese police.
On the morning of February 7, 1989, the Snow Lion flag symbolizing Tibetan independence was raised in the main hall of the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. More than 200 Lhasa police tried to force their way in to seize the flag but were driven out by the crowd. When the armed police returned the next day, the flag had already been hidden by Tibetans; the armed police took away more than 20 people and seized belongings to use as evidence.
Six communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed one after another within a few months, and the Berlin Wall, symbolizing the Cold War division, fell almost overnight, providing historical experience for the political transitions that followed.
In 1989, China's GDP growth was only 4.1%, and economic growth faced severe challenges, partly related to a loss of control over the economy and prices.
Stephen Chow and Lo Pui-kwan met while filming The Justice of Our Life and began a relationship, which lasted about three years.
In 1989, Zhao Ziyang bluntly told visiting Gorbachev that Deng Xiaoping was the absolute authority ruling from behind the curtain. During the June Fourth period, as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, he was unwilling to order the massacre, and was therefore politically purged.
After the 1989 June Fourth incident, writer Gao Xingjian publicly announced his withdrawal from the Chinese Communist Party and declared that he would never return to mainland China; he subsequently settled in France and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000.
In January 1989, the 10th Panchen Lama Chökyi Gyaltsen, who ranked second only to the Dalai Lama in status within Tibet's religious system and had long served as a lubricant between the central authorities and the Tibetan region, suddenly died at the age of only 51, and the situation in Tibet promptly grew sensitive.