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A day with much happening on the other side of the world, this May 16th in 1989. For the first time in 30 years, relations between The People’s Republic of China and The Soviet Union were warm and getting warmer, as Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping met in the Great Hall in Tiananmen Square to settle and patch up differences and to pledge cooperation in the future. Gorbachev apologized for the Soviet role in three decades of sour relations and opened the first Chinese-Soviet summit since 1939 by declaring “This period has come to an end”. Gorbachev skipped a scheduled wreath-laying at a monument surrounded by tens of thousands of students calling for democracy. Instead he went directly to the meeting with Deng who has relinquished most of his official posts since launching the reforms that have spurred China’s economic surge in the past decade “All the world is concerned with our meeting” Deng told his guest at the start of their talks in a red-carpeted meeting room in the Great Hall “The key political problems in the world come from relations between the United States and the Soviet Union”. Gorbachev visited with crowds of Chinese onlookers who cheered the Soviet leader and his wife Raisa as they stopped to shake hands and sign autographs.
Just a short distance away, crowds of another kind were gathering in the Square – this time to protest and to demand Democracy and an end to Communist rule in China. Troops were sent in to confront the protesters but aside from being a presence, nothing of any consequence happened and the protestors and hunger strikers continued into their fourth day. With the crowds of protestors gathering, further summit talks were slated to take place in another part of Beijing and not at Tiananmen Square as first proposed. Observers and journalists were having an interesting time, shifting focus from one landmark event to the other.
Meanwhile, Mikhail Gorbachev in another move one could only describe as an olive branch, announced to President Bush an end to weapons shipments to Nicaragua. The Soviet leader’s commitment was reconfirmed by Secretary of State James A Baker III when he met last week in Moscow with Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard A Shevardnadze said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The United States estimated that the Soviets last year provided $500 million in various forms of military aid including weapons to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
There was no doubt much else going on, but the happenings in Tiananmen Square were capturing attention all over for this May 16, 1989 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
