The fate of the statue is recorded on film. Tanks rolled into the Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, toppling the statue (see 4:30 - 4:40) and began the crackdown on the student protest movement that would lead to bloodshed.
Popular readings that Goddess of Democracy statue resembles the Statue of Liberty are inaccurate in their account of how the statue came into being. In fact, participants in the creation of the sculpture have reflected on this episode and noted that they were conscious of not copying the Statue of Liberty because it would be read by the authorities as too pro-American.
In fact, the form was modelled after a Soviet Socialist Realist Vera Mukhina's stainless steel sculpture Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (1914) first shown at the Paris World's Fair in 1937. Students at the Central Academy of Fine Arts were exposed to Mukhina's sculpture as part of their academic exercise and they consciously adopted it as a more suitable model of uprising centred on sympathy with the people.
Construction of the statue began in 27 May 1989 in the compound of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. The statue was built in a short span of four days. It was made out of foam and papier-mâché over a metal armature. The sculpture, measuring 33 metres (10 feet) was meant to boost the faltering morale of the protesters, who have been staging a sit out at Tiananmen Square from mid-May.
On the night of the 29th, four sections of the sculpture were moved by the students to the square. Because truck drivers were threatened with a revocation of their license by the authorities if they were found to be helping with the transportation of the statue, students had to use flatbed tricycles to move the work. It became a processional event. Scaffolding was erected on site in order to piece the statue together and the final touches were laid on the statue. The next day, a man and a woman were selected from the crowd to pull down the stream of red and blue banners that covered the head of the statue during the unveiling ceremony.
The statue was meant to break the north-south axis of the square, which connected the Monument to the People's Heroes and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong to the Tiananmen of the Forbidden City where Mao's portrait was hung. This was framed in the media as a confrontation between the Goddess representing ideals of the democracy and the people against the monolithic machinery of the party embodied in the iconic image of Chairman Mao.
A written statement accompanied the statue, written in calligraphy on a banner placed near the statue. One of the student from the Broadcast Academy was selected to read the declaration. An excerpt of it exhorts,
The statue of the Goddess of Democracy is made of plaster, and of course cannot stand here forever. But as the symbol of the people’s hearts, she is divine and inviolate. Let those who would sully her beware: the people will not permit this! ...On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent. We have strong faith that that day will come at last.
- Declaration of the Art students on the Goddess of Democracy in Minzhu Han, Cries For Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement. Oxford, England: Princeton University Press, 1990.
The document was signed by the eight art academies that sponsored the creation of the statue: The Central Academies of Fine Arts, Arts and Crafts, Drama, and Music; the Beijing Film Academy; the Beijing Dance Academy; the Academy of Chinese Local Stage Arts; and the Academy of Traditional Music.
Further reading
Tsao Tsing-yuan (1994). Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Elizabeth J. Perry, ed. Essay "The Birth of the Goddess of Democracy" from Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press. pp. 140–7.
Also see, Tiananmen Square Protest and Crackdown: 25 years On
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