Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History is an Electronic Briefing Book available from the National Security Archive’s site. The Archive has obtained declassified documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and made them available to everyone free of charge.
The briefing book is made up of two pages. The first is the introduction, or title page. This page can be a bit misleading: the title of the briefing book is at the top, above a large image of Tiananmen Square. The introduction contains background information on the project, but also discusses a different, larger collection of documents, which is for sale as part of a microfiche collection produced by Chadwyck‐Healey/ProQuest Information and Learning. “Go to the Documents” is a link at the very bottom of the page.
The second page is actually the briefing book, which consists of 35 documents divided into five sections: Student Demonstrations in 1985‐86, On the Brink, The Crackdown, The Aftermath, and Ten Years after Tiananmen. Included in the first four sections are cables between the US ambassadors in China and the State Department; Department of Defense intelligence summaries; a transcript of a meeting between President George H.W. Bush and Wan Li, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and Member of the Politburo, People’s Republic of China; several Secretary of State’s Morning Summaries; and State Department reports. The final section includes references to secondary sources.
The navigation can be a bit confusing: when users click on “Document” within the text of the briefing book, they are taken to the bottom of the page, where there is a summary of the document and another link that says “Document #.” This link actually takes them to the document. In their more recent briefing books, the National Security Archive has been converting documents to PDF format, but in the Tiananmen Square, 1989 Briefing Book they provide the documents in HTML format. Unfortunately, this results in some of the documents being blurry and difficult to read.
There are certain documents that have more information than others. For instance, the intelligence summaries and State Department reports contain more commentary on the situation than do the cables, which are messages from the US Embassy in Beijing apprising US officials of the action. It is important to remember that these documents have been declassified, which does not mean that all content is available. There are certain documents in this briefing book that have words and even pages blacked out or omitted.
This briefing book can be a useful tool for researchers interested in the Tiananmen Square incident who are looking for primary source material and not much commentary. It also gives some insight into US‐China relations during the late 1980s and also gives users an inside look at the United States government. This is a great resource for primary materials related to the Tiananmen Square conflict.
Note: Another electronic briefing book, The US Tiananmen Papers (http://www.gwu. edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB47/), has recently been published on the National Security Archive’s site. It is intended as a companion to the Tiananmen Square, 1989 Briefing Book, and includes an additional 13 documents which have recently been declassified.
