chapotraphouse

Then you have some racist elements mixed in with the student protests I've heard, i.e. that there were some Chinese who were protesting because they didn't like the presence of African exchange students at their universities. I don't know how true that is, but I've heard it a few times

From Another View of Tiananmen:

Concerns over prices weren’t solely due to absolute levels of privation, however. The complaints were heavily tinged with elitism. Students and urbanites were not happy to see peasants and farmers do so well relative to them. This “economic anxiety” had manifested itself a year earlier in Nanjing, where students affected by cuts to tuition subsidies took out their anger on African exchange students. “From December 1988 to January 1989, students in Nanjing, China waged violent protests against visiting African students.” The writing on the placards was very revealing:

Like most foreign students, the Africans enjoyed greater standards of living in China and some dated local women. Among the signs in the crowd at Hehai on Christmas Eve 1988 were placards demanding greater democracy alongside ones proclaiming, “death to the black devils”.