Night after night, arriving on bicycles or on foot, they converged on Beijing's gigantic Tiananmen Square. Gathering ostensibly to mourn the ousted Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang, who had died the previous weekend at 73, the throngs of university students actually had a much more provocative, and important, goal in mind: a demand for greater democratization in the world's most populous country. Implicit in the spreading protest campaign was a call for a shake-up in China's Communist leadership, including the retirement of Deng Xiaoping, 84, after a decade in power. In a scene never witnessed in the 40 years of Communist...
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