State legitmacy

During the 1980s, while the majority of top state elites still believed in the ideological legitimacy of the regime, most students and Beijing residents evaluated the state mainly for its economic and moral performance. In the course of movement, the students challenged the government ideologically and morally, and the larger society sympathized with the challenges. On the other hand, the government either relied on ideological or legal dimensions of state authority to deal with the movement, which only antagonized Beijing students and residents, or made limited concessions, which could not satisfy the radicals. In the end, the only viable alternative appeared to be military repression, on which the government could still rely because most top state elites, a group that included military leaders, had joined the CCP long before the communists came to power and still perceived state power as ideologically legitimate.