Editing Democracy movements of China (section)

==History==
{{Further|New Enlightenment (China)|Beijing Spring|Democracy Wall}}

=== Origin ===
The beginning of China's democracy movements is usually regarded as the Democracy Wall movement of November 1978 to spring 1981.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Paltemaa |first=Lauri |date=24 October 2007 |title=The Democracy Wall Movement, Marxist Revisionism, and the Variations on Socialist Democracy |journal=[[Journal of Contemporary China]] |language=en |volume=16 |issue=53 |pages=601–625 |doi=10.1080/10670560701562325 |s2cid=143933209 |issn=1067-0564}}</ref> The Democracy Wall movement framed the key issue as the elimination of bureaucratism and the bureaucratic class.<ref name=":1" /> Former [[Red Guards]] from both rebel and conservative factions were the core of the movement.<ref name=":1" /> Democracy Wall participants agreed that "democracy" was the means to resolve the conflict between the bureaucratic class and the people, the nature of the proposed democratic institutions was a major source of disagreement.<ref name=":1" /> A majority of participants in the movement favored viewed the movement as part of a struggle between correct and incorrect notions of [[Marxism]].<ref name=":1" /> Many participants advocated [[Classical Marxism|classical Marxist]] views that drew on the [[Paris Commune]] for inspiration.<ref name=":1" /> The Democracy Wall movement also included non-Marxists and anti-Marxists, although these participants were a minority.<ref name=":1" /> Demands for "democracy" were frequent but without an agreed-upon meaning.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last=Wu |first=Yiching |url=https://archive.org/details/yiching-wu-the-cultural-revolution-at-the-margins |title=The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis |date=2014 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-41985-8 |location=Cambridge, Mass. |pages=213–215 |oclc=881183403}}</ref> Participants in the movement variously associated the concept of democracy with socialism, communism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and Christianity.<ref name=":5" /> They drew on a diverse range of intellectual resources "ranging from classical Marxist and socialist traditions to Enlightenment philosophers, [socialist] experiments in Yugoslavia, and Western liberal democracy."<ref name=":5" /> 

Significant documents of the Democracy Wall Movement include [[The Fifth Modernization]] manifesto by [[Wei Jingsheng]], who was sentenced to fifteen years in [[prison]] for authoring the document. In it, Wei argued that political liberalization and the empowerment of the laboring masses was essential for modernization, that the CCP was controlled by reactionaries and that the people must struggle to overthrow the reactionaries via a long and possibly bloody fight.{{cn|date=August 2021}}

=== Development ===
Throughout the 1980s, these ideas increased in popularity among college-educated Chinese, through the "[[New Enlightenment (China)|New Enlightenment movement]]" led by intellectuals.<ref name=":12">{{Cite book |last=Li |first=Huaiyin |title=Reinventing Modern China: Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing |date=October 2012 |publisher=[[University of Hawaiʻi Press]] |isbn=9780824836085 |chapter=6 Challenging the Revolutionary Orthodoxy: “New Enlightenment” Historiography in the 1980s |doi=10.21313/hawaii/9780824836085.003.0006}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Chen |first=Yan |date=2007 |title=意识形态的兴衰与知识分子的起落—— "反右"运动与八十年代"新启蒙"的背景分析 |trans-title=The rise and fall of ideology and intellectuals—background analysis of the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the New Enlightenment in the 1980s |url=https://www.modernchinastudies.org/us/issues/past-issues/97-mcs-2007-issue-3/1017-2012-01-05-15-35-22.html |journal=[[Modern China Studies]] |volume=3}}</ref>
Overseas pro-democracy organizations including the [[Chinese Alliance for Democracy]] were founded by Chinese activists. [[1986 Chinese student demonstrations|Student protests]] inspired by intellectuals broke out in 1986.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Shi |first=Tianjian |date=1990 |title=The Democratic Movement in China in 1989: Dynamics and Failure |journal=[[Asian Survey]] |volume=30 |issue=12 |pages=1186–1205 |doi=10.2307/2644993 |issn=0004-4687 |jstor=2644993}}</ref> 

In the wake of growing [[corruption]] and economic dislocation, the [[1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre|Tiananmen Square protests]] erupted in 1989, which culminated in a military crackdown in June.