June Fourth Movement:
The party and state suppressed movements calling for government accountability, transparency, anti-corruption, freedom of the press and speech.
Military crackdown that ended the large-scale, peaceful protests in Beijing and other cities that spring and early summer.
Considered it as political disturbance
It is impossible to understand today’s China and its relationship with the world without understanding the spring of 1989: the legacy of june fourth movement and how it affected today’s Chinese governance and foreign relations.
Fear of another national movement, affecting social harmony and stability

Today’s China:
Politically more oppressive and closed atmosphere: “Neo-authoritarian” rule, relative social stability
e.g. Effective state censorship has turned the vast majority of Chinese youth into "amnesiacs", while their parents and others of their generation keep silent about the recent past. Young generation are still ignorant about the event. According to Lim Louisa’s research and experiment, many young best-educated students could not recognize the iconic image of Tiananmen-Tank Man. A vast majority doubted the validity of the photo.
e.g. high-school textbooks excluded this incident. Even some history textbooks-> claimed the imperialist Western world was trying to make socialist countries abandon the socialist route.
e.g. detention of Tiananmen Mothers such as Ding Zilin and her husband , Zhang Xianling, cctv monitoring them. Each year, on the “sensitive day” of June 4, they send dozens of police, in uniform as well as in plain clothes, to guard the periphery of Tiananmen Square and prevent “troublemakers” from honoring anybody’s memory.
More economic liberalization:
-capital controls have been a mainstay for controlling society and politics
- let the Chinese people focus on materialism
e.g. materialistic, concern property price, career path, social mobility-> redirect their energies and forget about the 1989 crackdown
e.g. Perry Link: Deng Xiaoping’s formula for the Chinese people of “money, yes; ideas, no” , a better life is available to people who stop talking about massacres

China’s relationship with the world: Sino-US relationship
Short-term
Hostile to Western countries: the Chinese government blamed foreign forces for making up stories, spreading rumors, acts of conspiracy, an attempt to undermine China’s efforts to restore order.
Eg: state media reports such as Beijing Review ( China’s only national news magazine in English) accused the Western imperialist countries of a plot to overthow CCP rule and mobilizing/ contaminating Chinese students’ minds with “bourgeois liberalization”
Being isolated:
e.g.
-sanctions and arms embargo imposed by The United States and European Union
- suspension of any arm sales or other US exports to China
-the suspension of exchanges between the US and Chinese military leadership
-the postponement of any further aid or loan assistance from international financial institutions
Long-term:
-need to maintain good relationship with China for economic benefits
e.g. United States passed the “Permanent Normal Trade Relations Bill,” which guaranteed Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to the United States market as products from most other countries.Then in 2001, China was allowed in to the World Trade Organization

Reference:
The Legacy of the 1989 Beijing Massacre: Establishing Neo-Authoritarian Rule, Silencing Civil Society+
Lagerkvist, Johan. International Journal of China Studies

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/31/tiananmen-25-years-money-ideas/

http://www.armstrong.edu/Initiatives/history_journal/history_journal_1989_tiananmen_incident_and_us-china_relations