The mass protests that erupted in China during the spring of 1989 were not confined to Beijing and Shanghai. Cities and towns across the great breadth of China were engulfed by demonstrations, which differed regionally in content and tone: the complaints and protest actions in prosperous Fuijan Province on the south China coast were somewhat different from those in Manchuria or inland Xi'an or the country towns of Hunan. The variety of the reactions is a barometer of the political and economic climate in contemporary China. In this book, Western China specialists who were on the spot that spring describe and analyze the upsurges of protest that erupted around them.

Authored by Unger, J.

Introduction, Jonathan Unger; Part I The Capital; Chapter 1 The Rise and Fall of the Beijing People's Movement, Tony Saich; Chapter 2 Beijing Days, Beijing Nights, Geremie Barmé; Part II Manchuria; Chapter 3 The Student Democracy Movement in Changchun, Roger W. Howard; Chapter 4 'Tell the World About US': The Student Movement in Shenyang, 1989, Anne Gunn; Part III The Interior; Chapter 5 Xi'an Spring, Joseph W. Esherick; Chapter 6 Voices from the Protest Movement in Chongqing: Class Accents and Class Tensions, Anita Chan, Jonathan Unger; Chapter 7 Despair and Hope: A Changsha Chronicle, Andrea Worden; Chapter 8 Protest in a Hunan County Town: The Profile of a Democracy Movement Activist in China's Backwaters, Anita Chan; Part IV The South China Coast; Chapter 9 The 1989 Democracy Movement in Fujian and its Aftermath, Mary S. Erbaugh, Richard Curt Kraus; partV The Yangtze Delta; Chapter 10 The Popular Protest in Hangzhou, Keith Forster; Chapter 11 Letter from Shanghai, Roy Forward; Chapter 12 The Political Undoing of Shanghai's World Economic Herald, Kate Wright; Chapter 13 Shanghai's Response to the Deluge, Shelley Warner;