From November 1978 to December 1979, thousands of people put up "big character posters" on a long brick wall of Xidan Street, Xicheng District of Beijing, to protest about the political and social issues of China; the wall became known as the Democracy Wall (). Under acquiescence of the Chinese government, other kinds of protest activities, such as unofficial journals, petitions, and demonstrations, were also soon spreading out in major cities of China. This movement can be seen as the beginning of the Chinese Democracy Movement. It is also known as the "Democracy Wall Movement" . This short period of political liberation was known as the "Beijing Spring".
Background
The Cultural Revolution
In 1966, when Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, millions of middle school, high school, and college students answered Mao's call, being organized as the "Red Guards" to rebel and root out the "capitalist roaders" from within the Chinese Communist Party. But, in 1969, after using students in restoring the social order, Mao launched the "Down to the Countryside Movement" to exile the student "Red Guards" to rural areas. This movement caused a lot of red guards to feel purposely abandoned by Mao. In 1971, Lin Biao's attempted coup and death deeply shook the collective peoples' faith on Mao and the Cultural Revolution's ideology. On November 19, 1974, Li Yizhe's paper appeared on a wall in Guangdong Province. The 67 pages of the paper focused on: (1) Damage to the citizens caused by bureaucratic corruptions of the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution; and (2) the need to practice democracy and a legal system in China. This big character poster proved that people started to re-evaluate the Cultural Revolution and political system of China.
The core of the Democracy Movement was composed of former Red Guards.
The Tiananmen Incident of 1976
Premier Zhou Enlai, a widely respected senior CCP leader, died on January 8, 1976. On April 5, at the Qingming Festival, thousands of Beijing's residents gathered in Tiananmen Square. They wrote poems and put up big character posters in Tiananmen Square to mourn for Zhou and express their anger towards the impious Gang of Four and the destructive Cultural Revolution. In response, Mao ordered the police and the PLA to disperse the people, and around four thousand were arrested. This incident was also called the April 5th Movement. Deng Xiaoping was announced as the "black hand" of the movement. On April 7, Mao Zedong proposed that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CCP denounce Deng Xiaoping's official positions and that Hua Guofeng would assume Deng's positions as Prime Minister of the State Council and the Vice-Chairman of the CCP. The committee adopted both proposals.