2. Compare and contrast the descriptions of the events in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 as given in Sources A and B below.
Source A: Extracts from the June 9 broadcast by China’s official Xinhua News Agency, on the events in Tiananmen Square; translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
A shocking counter-revolutionary rebellion took place in the capital of Beijing on the 3rd and 4th of June following more than a month of turmoil… In the early morning hours of June 4, a group of rioters at a junction on Dongan Road attacked fighters (PLA troops) with bottles, bricks and bicycles. The faces of the soldiers covered with blood. At Fuxing Gate a vehicle was intercepted. All 12 (soldiers)… were beaten soundly. Many of them were seriously wounded… After dawn, the beating and killing of PLA fighters reached a degree that made one’s blood boil…
At 0430, the notice of the Martial Law Command was broadcast in the square… Upon hearing the notice, the several thousand young students remaining in the square immediately assembled and deployed pickets who linked their hands… The martial law troops left a wide opening in the southern entrance of the eastern side of the square, thereby ensuring the swift, smooth, and safe withdrawal of the students… During the entire course of evacuation… not a single one of the sit-in students in the square… died. The claim that ‘blood has formed a stream in Tiananmen’ is sheer nonsense.
Source B: Extracts from a cable sent by the US Embassy, Beijing, to the Department of State, Washington DC, about the events of June 4, 1989. Quoted in Tiananmen Square, 1989. The Declassified History.
The crackdown continued through the night, and by early morning June 4, as this cable reports, the PLA was in control Tiananmen Square. Based on eyewitness accounts of the violence, this… is the Embassy's initial effort to provide some detail on the final PLA assault on the approximately 3,000 demonstrators who had not yet left the square. "Some 10,000 troops,"… formed a ring around the square, and "a column of about 50 APC, tanks, and trucks entered Tiananmen from the east."… "PLA troops in Tiananmen opened a barrage of rifle and machine gun fire." Another column of military vehicles entered soon thereafter, and more gunfire ensued, "causing a large number of casualties." There were also… violent PLA clashes with demonstrators on Changan Boulevard, the main thoroughfare in the Tiananmen area, and in other parts of Beijing. Embassy officials also report conversations with angry citizens, some "claiming that more than 10,000 people had been killed at Tiananmen."