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Before analyzing how state-society relations contributed to the development of the 1989 Beijing Student Movement in China, it is important to know more precisely how the movement unfolded. This chapter offers a narrative of the movement, chronologically arranged into four major sections which correspond to the movement's major periods. This narrative does more, however, than just give a general description of the movement. It highlights a few major events and issues that were important to the development of the movement but that nevertheless have not received enough attention in previous writing. In addition, it focuses on the contingencies that also shaped the 1989 Movement, such as Hu Yaobang's sudden death, the three students kneeling in Tiananmen Square, the conflict and lack of communication among student activists before the hunger strike, the hunger strike, and the arrival of large numbers of students from other cities in Beijing.

The changes and new perspectives that Deng Xiaoping was implementing in the rest of China were slow to reach Tibet. Deng sent Hu Yaobang to Tibet to end the “Two Whatevers” approach and begin a new, more culturally sensitive policy. Hu publicly announced a liberal six-point reform program for Tibet. Rumors spread in Tibet that Phüntso Wangye had sent a report to the Central Committee attacking the activities involved in putting down the rebellion and was instigating Tibetans to seek a “Greater Tibet.” Consequently, as fall 1981 arrived, notwithstanding all of Deng's and Hu's reforms, Phüntso Wangye was again in the middle of a potentially serious struggle about his views on Tibet and nationalities policy in China.

This chapter discusses the history and memory of the Nanjing Massacre in China from 1989 to the present. Beginning in 1989, the Communist Party strengthened its emphasis on education as a source of patriotism. Popular accounts of Nanjing became widely available to the public.

This chapter details how, though the author loved the Washington Post and could not imagine quitting, his lack of enthusiasm for covering intelligence, the FBI investigation, and the Post's reaction had exhausted him and left him dispirited. Thus, he took a job offer from U.S. News & World Report, when it decided to reopen its Beijing bureau. Though the author had long disliked the group journalism of newsmagazines, this was not his first thought. He immediately saw it as a possible way to be with Louise Branson in China much sooner. The chapter then looks at how the author witnessed the start of the events leading up to the Tiananmen Square uprising and massacre. It all started on April 15, 1989, when the Chinese Politburo member Hu Yaobang died at age seventy-three. With his death, Hu became a symbol of a yearning for Gorbachev-style reforms in China.