Video shows Gen Xu Qinxian explaining why he refused to deploy troops to crush 1989 student-led demonstrations
Rare footage of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general who defied orders to lead his troops into Tiananmen Square and crush the 1989 student protesters has been leaked online, offering a highly unusual glimpse into the upper echelons of the military at one of the most fraught moments in modern Chinese history.
General Xu Qinxian’s refusal to take his troops from the PLA’s prestigious 38th Group Army, a unit based on the outskirts of Beijing, into the capital has been the stuff of Tiananmen lore for decades.
The six-hour video recording of Gen Xu’s court martial hearing the next year sheds light on the rare act of defiance. In the video, Xu said he refused because he did not want to become “a sinner in history”.
General Xu was 100% correct. The entire CCP and high ranking PLA officers should have been thrown into a courtroom and sent to prison for murder.
Don’t worry, I’ve been told by users that it didn’t happen, and that if it did, it wasn’t what we saw, and it wasn’t that bad, and that, if it was, they deserved it.
It is really crazy that this weird china apologism is so common here.
Its the type of shit you’d expect to see more on reddit, but instead its on lemmy way more.
It’s all AI anyway. If you saw tank man before, you are being lied to by western propaganda.
Ai in 1989 was so advanced lol
That’s what the CIA is trying to hide! Don’t fall for it!
Like, duh? It’s all laid out in Neuromancer. 🤷♂️
ICE was black back then, too.
Ice like in cyberpunk or…?
Yes, and it is cyberpunk, just not a game of the same name
The fatal firewall shit.
Imagine if 2020 had AI becoming this popular.
Pretty sure there would be conspiracy theories that accuse the George Floyd’s murder video of being “AI”
The future is so cooked.
Future? Bitch, the present is well done as it is
I’ve been told by users that it didn’t happen
Don’t be shy. Name some names.
You’re more than welcome to go through alllllll my comments to find some interactions. I couldn’t be arsed
Thats my take on them as well.
Notice how you cannot state what you saw because in reality the entire thing was recorded by international media and it literally did not happen on video.
“It did not happen” thanks for demonstrating my point
“I was wrong and you provided video evidence but I will persist in being wrong and ignore evidence in front of my eyes”.
Is what you said when you saw the title of this post?
You registered on the wrong lemmy instance
You too.
Now that just doesn’t make any sense, youve got to have a better comeback than that
The US media was heavy handed in reporting the Federal response but deathly quiet reporting the mob violence and killing perpetrated by the rioters.
Talking about Tianeman while fixating on Tank Man is a bit like only referring to J6 by holding up photos of Ashli Babbitt taken the day before. Or reporting on the LA Riots exclusively from the perspective of the Roof Koreans. Or holding up photos of Iranian girls in swimsuits any time someone mentions the '79 revolution. Or quoting Elon Musk on White Genocide In South Africa. Or doing the “Haitians are eating the dogs and cats” line to explain our modern immigration policies.
It’s the same right wing propaganda liberals seem to recognize in their own backwards, but refuse to accept could have been applied to poison them against another country’s people.
Great, now reveal all epstein files without black outs.
It turns out they, or many of them anyway, were done with Word.
Not in another 10 years I guess (Epstein crimes apparently happened in 2002-2005)
Time to change some of my challenge responses on some of my equipment to include him as the greatest chinese citizen. I have the standard remember Tiananmen Square response. Always fun to let them port scan and attempt to brute force with those responses.
For anyone else that is interested in what came of him:
Xu was expelled from the CCP and sentenced to five years in prison. He lived the rest of his life exiled from Beijing and died in 2021 at the age of 85.
A much happier ending than I expected.
No kidding. If this happened in North Korea the trial would have lasted 15 minutes and the execution would have been a public spectacle.
Can’t make a public spectacle of something that “never happened”.
You’re clearly not well-practiced at doublethink.
In Qing Dynasty, the entire family and close relatives would’ve gotten publicly executed.
Yay CCP is slightly less cruel than a medieval monarch
Somebody did something to make thing better, we need to do it again
(Xinhai Revolution 2025 Edition)
Sometimes I day dream how cool free China would actually be
If I’m understanding correctly he was a general. He was powerful enough to merely be court martialed. I doubt the same mercy extended very often to individual soldiers who refused orders.
Modern journalism headline
Good man. Too bad China kills good people. It’s a horrible empire.
Too bad China kills good people.
He wasn’t killed, he was court marshalled and released five years later. He died in '21 at the ripe old age of 85
But the protesters were.
Protestors burned alive in their APC by the nefarious CCP Street Clothes division
Lmfao it doesn’t get more tankie than mourning the loss of a fucking tank.
Now let’s all laugh about the pictures of actual crushed, shot and mutilated humans [NSFL]. Are these people plain clothes PLA killed by uh… students false flagging as tank drivers?
Seems like I touched a nerve
It seems like all empires are horrible to me. Humans suck, especially when they have power
It’s a flaw of empires in general. They become this pervasive machine where ends always justify the means and there’s just too much power and slow rare of change. Just a bad system no matter how you look at it.
Yeah.
There’s lots of instances throughout history that prove that humans with power suck.
I like to think that it’s because nice people aren’t the type to accumulate power rather than power corrupts nice people who do get power.
Power corrupts insecure people
I think we make the mistake of letting people govern groups of people that they are too distant from to care about. Leaders are essential, but they have to care about the people they lead. I dont think its actually possible to care about people a thousand miles away the same way as the people in your community. I think this is why the largest countries that are controlled by the fewest people have the most problems. Its a delegation issue essentially.
Why are leaders essential? I would say just the opposite, leaders are unnecessary and inherently dangerous. Anyone seeking a leadership position is a red flag.
Because putting people with good judgment in leadership roles improves the lives of everyone. I suppose that doesn’t make them essential though.
I agree, that’s why all empires must die
A good point. Though I was surprised to read this particular dissident only got 5 years in prison and exile from Beijing.
Seems like standard procedure to higher ups in China. They did something similar to Xi Jinping‘s father when he spoke out against a violent solution for the protests. Too bad Xi learned all the wrong lesson‘s from his dad‘s political exile.
Did they kill him?
He went to prison for 5 years and then lived into his 80s.
They killed him in the slowest way possible 😔
We put him in the time machine but it only goes forwards at normal speed!
I build a time machine that allows you to travel into the future at 60 seconds per minute.
With a clear continence.
Literally not an empire. Don’t get your terms mixed!
Dude, China has literally expanded it’s borders during our lifetime, there are huge populations that speak entirety different languages and have completely different cultures inside their borders. It’s an empire.
Then what do you call what they’re doing in Africa?
And how they got most of their current territory, like Tibet?
Same thing the US does, no? Except China is more efficient
You won’t see me defend the US’s imperial actions
It doesn’t matter. Folks see a foreign country doing foreign things foreign-ly, rather than toeing the NATO line, and they’re evil incarnate.
Meanwhile, NATO allies - from the Brits to the Saudis to the insanely corrupt Philippian government - go fully under the radar of liberals.
China’s biggest crime right now is their success. They aren’t being crippled by sanctions like Cuba, gunned down like Venezuela, or systematically genocided like Palatine. So they must be doing the most nightmarish things imaginable to their people - and to the rest of the world - in order to no-sell American foreign policy.
Qinxian made a decision that saved countless lives, much like Arkhipov in the 60s.
