TNY | T Andersson/Kontinent/Redux
In the spring of 1989, pro-democracy protests developed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where students and others called for government accountability and freedom of the press, among other popular causes. Overnight on June 3rd and 4th. . . the government enforced martial law, staging a bloody dispersal of the demonstrations, which killed between five hundred and twenty-five hundred people and initiated a new era of conservatism in the country.