After the June 4th crackdown, official Chinese media launched a propaganda campaign that focused on: 1) Major publicity on the what the officials called "the truth about the counter-revolutionary riots"; 2) attacking democracy activists and student organizations; and 3) promoting new ideological guiding principles, especially Deng Xiaoping's "June 9th Speech".

As Wu Renhua describes it in his book "Timeline of the 1989 Tian'anmen Square Incident", on June 7th, China Central Television (CCTV) aired special reports one after the other, including a "Documentary on the Tian'anmen Square Clearance Operation", "The Truth About the Riots", and "Test of Blood and Fire". These films confused the cause-and-effect relationships and chronology of the military massacre and the people fighting back. The reports showed many scenes of soldiers' bodies being burned and military vehicles being set on fire, and showed scenes of crowds blocking martial law military units from entering Beijing and martial law military units being attacked. Li Peng wrote in his diaries, "The general public gradually learned the truth about the unrest and riots from the television, and became more supportive of the decisive measures taken. They considered it a wise decision by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee to quell the unrest and riots in one fell swoop."

The "Hong Kong Times" reported that, in order to enhance the effect of the propaganda, CCTV broadcast violent scenes of the so-called "thugs" burning cars and killing soldiers on the evening news. They even used video from American and Japanese TV broadcasts, but with video only, no sound. CCTV did so to prevent the public from hearing the slogans shouted by the so-called "thugs", and the intense gunfire by the soldiers.

In other areas, Chinese officials did not forget to publicize their official version of the truth in diplomatic organization abroad. According to the book "The People Will Never Forget", CCTV made video recordings of "Documentary on the Tian'anmen Square Clearance Operation" and "The Truth About the Riots", then distributed them to 162 Chinese embassies abroad and several foreign television stations.

References: [八九天安門事件大事記("Timeline of the 1989 Tian'anmen Square Incident")(Chinese)] (https://blog.bnn.co/hero/201106/wurenhua/7_1.shtml); "The Critical Moment – Li Peng Diaries"; [《人民不會忘記》("The People Will Never Forget")(Chinese)] (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fQJu8_jdwgKrikqI8uSuIpxKd2UAuarn/view?usp=sharing); [香港時報("Hong Kong Times")(Chinese)] (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kOtpTxsZhboXE1ie7gvuOytQpct6I4Db/view?usp=sharing)