Soon the gathering of students acquired a life of its own, becoming a cause celebre. Support was pouring in for the students from all over the world and parts of China, and for a brief moment, many even thought that perhaps momentous changes were in the offing. They were wrong.
The Communist leadership, clearly unnerved by the students' demand and the huge amount of
sympathy they were drawing from parts of China and certainly from much of the world, especially the West, decided to strike back.
After a debate, the Chinese Communist Party decided to take a hardline, and on May 20, declared martial law and called in the People's Liberation Army to crush the nascent movement for democracy.