ded to take a conciliatory line but the conservatives favoured a crackdown. Deng Xiaoping stepped in and said "Bourgeois Liberalisation" had gone too far and ordered the local party authorities to end the demonstration which they did. Hu Yaobang resigned as head of the party, taking responsibility for the demonstrations. He became something of a hero to students since he was thought to have been sympathetic to the demonstrators Hu had earlier in his career been an official in the Communist Youth League so he was seen as the student's friend. This was ironic because Hu had been at the forefront of the crackdown on the democracy wall movement and one of the first to condemn the participants in that movement as counter-revolutionaries. 1989 Democracy Movement 15 April 1989 Hu Yaobang died as I mentioned Hu was respected by students he was believed to have supported student calls for democracy and opposed campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalisation. The demonstrations were ostensibly to show respect for Hu but quickly developed into a large scale movement criticising the party for its corruption, mismanagement and failure to establish democracy. Very large demonstrations took place not only in Beijing but in cities and towns all over China; the biggest were over a million strong the two main groups of protestors were students and workers. The students were something of a proto-elite supporting the reform movement within the party led by Zhao Ziyang. Not many intended for democracy to include the Chinese masses, they were often scornful of the ability of peasants and workers to play any political role but they wanted an end to political corruption, control of inflation and an increased political role for themselves. Their groups seem to have been troubled by concerns about personal prestige with several different people claiming to have been the "Commander in Chief of Tiananmen Square" The workers were more sceptical o...
