[citation needed] Throughout the 1980s, these ideas increased in popularity among college-educated Chinese, through the "New Enlightenment movement" led by intellectuals.

[citation needed] Ideologically, the government's first reaction to the democracy movement was an effort to focus on the personal behavior of individual dissidents and argue that they were tools of foreign powers.

The democracy movement was flawed because it promoted radicalism and revolution which put the gains that China had made into jeopardy.

Although Chinese criminal law does not contain any provisions for exiling citizens, these deportations are conducted by giving the dissident a severe jail sentence and then granting medical parole.

Generally, the government targets a relatively small number of organizers who are crucial in coordinating a movement and who are then charged with endangering state security or revealing official secrets.

[6] Academic Lin Chun criticizes the phrase "democracy movement" as typically used in the scholarly and media discourse on China, noting that the term is often used exclusively to refer to the "demands and activism of an urban, educated group of people seeking liberal more than democratic values.

"[7] She notes, for example, that the political turbulence in universities over the period 1986 to 1989 had specific flash points ranging from anger at the government's "too soft" position on China–Japan relations to poor management of student welfare.