Skip to content

George H.W Bush and the United States's Response to Tiananmen Square

Christian F. Jung

Paper Purpose: My paper will seek to explore the United States' response to Tiananmen Square and the failure of the Unites States to make significant progress in the arena of human rights.

My paper will consist of four main sections:

  1. The Public Response in the US to Tiananmen Square

  2. This section will evaluate first hand responses of the media and politicians in regards to Tiananmen Square. The goal of this part of the paper will be to lay out the landscape of political pressure that Bush faced in the US.

    • This will primarily be accomplished from television and newspaper archives.

  3. Bush's and the Federal Government's Public Remarks on the Events

  4. This section will spend considerable time evaluating how key stakeholders in the Federal Government spoke publicly about Tiananmen Square.

    • I hope to use interviews and public statements made.

  5. The Chinese and American Inter-Goverernmental Relationship

  6. This section will seek to explore

    • how the relationships between the two governments was effected and what tactics were used to salvage and preserve the relationship.
    • The American pressure for human rights improvements.

  7. The American Political Fallout

  8. This section will discuss Bush's actions in regards to China and how they were portrayed in the election.

    • I hope to cultivate a list of political advertisements on the issue and potentially debate transcripts.

  9. This section will also spend time discussing Bill Clinton's early public statements on China and how it reflected the Democratic Congress.

Outstanding Questions that I have

  • For section 2, how do I go about determining what key stakeholders are worth discussing?
  • In a similar vein, how do I differentiate the views between a government agency and the people who run them? I.e. The public statements of the State Department vs the Sec of State
  • For section 3, is there a way to describe the relationship quantitatively?