Democracy movements of China

Origin The beginning of China's democracy movements is usually regarded as the Democracy Wall movement of November 1978 to spring 1981. The Democracy Wall movement framed the key issue as the elimination of bureaucratism and the bureaucratic class. Participants in the movement variously associated the concept of democracy with socialism, communism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and Christianity. Overseas pro-democracy organizations including the Chinese Alliance for Democracy were founded by Chinese activists. Student protests inspired by intellectuals broke out in 1986. In the wake of growing corruption and economic dislocation, the Tiananmen Square protests erupted in 1989, which culminated in a military crackdown in June. ==Government's response==

Narratives of a CCP-style democracy have evolved in CCP's language since its founding. The constitution of the People's Republic of China refers to the state as a people's democratic dictatorship, a term rooted in Mao Zedong's concept of new democracy formulated during the Chinese Civil War. During the general secretaryship of Xi Jinping, the CCP has utilized the term whole-process people's democracy to describe the PRC. == Academic interpretations ==

Academic Lin Chun criticizes the phrase "democracy movement" as typically used in the scholarly and media discourse on China, noting that the term is often used exclusively to refer to the "demands and activism of an urban, educated group of people seeking liberal more than democratic values". She notes, for example, that the political turbulence in universities over the period 1986 to 1989 had specific flash points ranging from anger at the government's "too soft" position on China–Japan relations to poor management of student welfare. ==See also ==