>>10277452The protests started out as a gathering to mourn the death of the reform minded and popular General secretary Hu Yaobang, US and UK interests saw an opportunity and funnelled millions in (involving among others George Soros and the NED) to fund anti-government student groups and encourage a colour revolution. They flocked to protest sites and were joined by e.g. people who were unhappy about inflation and wanted the party to do something but not regime change, people upset with nepotism in the party, people who thought Deng's reforms betrayed communism, idealists who wanted muh freedom and democracy, provocateurs who wanted to start an uprising, people of many different stripes certainly not a monolith.
However, for weeks, the protests were peaceful and calm, no-one expected any escalation, troops were hanging out with the protestors with no weapons or armour.
The protests eventually grew violent despite the efforts of some leaders, a minority threw molotovs, had weapons, burned PLA soldiers alive (there certainly are photos of hanged and charred PLA corpses and videos of leaders of the demos smashing rifles and begging for peaceful protest). The PLA cracked down but showed relative restraint, e.g. the famous tank man photo actually shows a guy stopping tanks from leaving the square, the tanks were patient and tried to go round him and he even climbs up on them, until he was dragged off by some random bystanders.
In the end, most protestors dispersed after negotiation and left peacefully. Officially 241 died in Beijing, including 20 or so PLA and police.
Of course they don't accept shit like 10s of thousands dead, being smooshed into paste with APCs and washed down the drains, which does seem a bit ridiculous.
