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”.
Great, now reveal all epstein files without black outs.
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.
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
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.
Thats my take on them as well.
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
Like, duh? It’s all laid out in Neuromancer. 🤷♂️
Ice like in cyberpunk or…?
The fatal firewall shit.
That’s what the CIA is trying to hide! Don’t fall for it!
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
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?
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.
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
General Xu was 100% correct. The entire CCP and high ranking PLA officers should have thrown into a courtroom and sent to prison for murder.
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.
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.
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)
Good man. Too bad China kills good people. It’s a horrible empire.
Literally not an empire. Don’t get your terms mixed!
Then what do you call what they’re doing in Africa?
Same thing the US does, no? Except China is more efficient
You won’t see me defend the US’s imperial actions
And how they got most of their current territory, like Tibet?
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.
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.
It seems like all empires are horrible to me. Humans suck, especially when they have power
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.
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.
Power corrupts insecure people
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.
I agree, that’s why all empires must die
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
Did they kill him?
He went to prison for 5 years and then lived into his 80s.
With a clear continence.
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.
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.
Qinxian made a decision that saved countless lives, much like Arkhipov in the 60s.
Modern journalism headline
If you’re seeing anti China stories about literally pre Bush times - asks yourself: why?
This is “World News?”. Wtf? No, this is historical shit that belongs in a fucking museum. (Thank you Indiana).
Why are people commenting on China like the last 30+ years hasn’t happened? Does it make us feel good when they are absolutely dunking on us as our incompetent form of governance sends us spiraling to another financial crisis? Seriously. How the fuck is this world news?!
Like, would we be criticizing Germany today if some new photos of the concentration camps were found?
I’m sorry. The fact that we let this shit get posted in “world news” is just pandering to the right wings “war with China” narrative that is completely unjustifiable. Reddit levels of garbage mods.
How do you feel this changes the narrative of the Tiananmen Massacre? I know you guys are fond of saying the massacre never happened which is actually somewhat accurate. This makes it sound like it was going to happen, but was prevented by this general’s action.
Interesting comparison to Germany. As you may be aware, there was quite a significant change in government structure right around 1945. While yes - if new evidence from that period were to be released, it would indeed reflect poorly on Germany. But everyone would know it’s news from basically another country. Whereas in China nothing has changed when it comes to the structure of the nation. And they sure as hell did not go through a period of national mourning or apology to reflect on past mistakes.
Nothing has changed? Jesus Christ I didn’t think someone could be so ignorant.
Still the same party in control, still the same way folks get selected for power. Not exactly comparable to a country losing a war, getting split in two, one adopting liberal democracy, the other a Soviet style communist system. And then later rejoining into a single country again.
I appreciate what youre trying to say, but please do not glaze West Germany or western liberal democracy lmao.
If you see history as a change in “ideas” and not in a change in the material conditions of a people well then, yeah, your incorrect perspective of progress is what you will end up with.
China has surpassed the west in all aspects of material improvement to their citizens. They are leading the world into a green energy revolution. They have built more solar energy production in the last year than the entire rest of world has built in all of history.
Acting like China is “the same” today as it was 30-40 years ago is just absolutely ignoring material reality.
It’s hard to have this conversation with someone that views the world through the “idea” of having freedoms. Instead of looking at things being part of society that actually cause one to have freedom. Things like, healthcare, shelter, affordable food, transportation, education, etc.
If you judge China’s freedom by ones access to basic fundamental parts of a society that actually allow one to BE free. They have significantly more freedom than the average American does today.
Do I agree with their crackdowns on speech? No, especially now that they have solidified their position as a world superpower. I think it’s an unnecessary hold over from a time when they were in danger of outside influence meant to destroy their system of governance.
Having said that, they ARE heading in the right direction when it comes to free speech. The west is currently heading in the wrong direction with speech. America and Britain are especially moving in the wrong direction as they opress anyone that criticizes, not just the countries leaders, but even the leaders of a foreign country like Israel.
You saying China is “the same” as it was 30-40 years ago. Is just cope.
I really wish the people in the west would learn from China’s success. Unite in improving the material conditions of both nations and all nations. But for some reason there is just blind hostility towards a country that has done nothing but trade peacefully with us for most of its history.
Disagree on the last part but rest is pretty good.
For context: AfD is the most popular party today in Germany. Their leader Alice weidel publicly praises the time of her grandfather while her grandfather was a member of NAZI party. Another high ranking member of AfD was recently caught doing a zeig heil in front of parliment building. In early 2023, they were caught attending a neo-nazi meetup.
And despite all that, they are today number 1 in polls. This doesn’t look very “reflecting on past mistakes” tbh.
Well it’s been that long that they went full circle again. I guess my age is showing (I’m a geriatric millennial). Until a decade ago, or maybe two, a successful AfD would have been unthinkable. Just goes to show how far off OPs comparison with Germany is.
Yeah
I thought this was a pro China story.
I criticize all camps including those of the states: Germany, USA, China, Japan and Russia. Anarchists don’t like state monopolies on violence. Your favorite state sucks. History is important.
Every year before the Christmas holidays, Romanian TV channels show many images, videos and testimonies from the Romanian revolution, where the military fired into, and killed many civilians. We’re not afraid to grapple with our history, even 36 years later.
Sure. But this is World News. And it’s constantly filled with “remember when China was a shit hole and America was a superpower?!”.
Do you think if new footage of the Romanian revolution was found it would be on the top of a World News sub? No. Because the West isn’t trying to manufacture consent for a war with Romania.
That’s my point. It’s not that the footage isn’t meaningful. It’s WHAT the footage is being used for by it being covered by western media and the response (see the comments here) that it instills.
Bro no one cares about Romania because we’re not worthy of anyone’s attention, genuinely, we’re like a tiny speck of dust in the global economy or geopolitics, don’t give me this “manufacture consent” talk.
I do think that China gets portrayed unfairly negatively in western media sometime, but look at our society that thinks Nazis were cool because the Hitler or Mussolini edit some 14 yo did on Tiktok. People need reminders of the horrors of the past, not just the rosey state approved calls to a “period of former glory”
I don’t disagree. But you didn’t really get my point.
No I don’t think I do. My bad
It’s ok. Respect to anyone that knows more than one language. I just found your initial comment interesting.
I was trying to make the point that China is a focus of western media because they are a threat to the interest of the wealthy people that rule the US; or at the very least want them to be seen as a threat. So, any chance to talk about past events the western audience views as negative towards China, like Tiananman Square, makes world news.
In contrast to your comment about Romania. I agree. The west would not care. Not because it is not historically interesting or relevant, but because Romania is not a threat to western interests. So they don’t jump on the opportunity to display them in a negative light. They largely ignore anything that happens there. Unless one of our sex offenders like Andrew Tate decides to make his home there. Sorry about that lol.
Not sure if that clarifies it. But I don’t disagree with what you said about the west not caring about Romanian history. Our media decides to cover things that uphold the interest of our ruling wealthy class.
People get excited when new documents are re-discovered about Japanese Americans in interment camps during WW2, or the Pope apologizing for the church killing indegeonous people in Canada. You can suffer through knowing there was at least one good person in the PLA ~30 years ago.
If you can’t acknowledge the CCP’s ongoing march to retake Taiwan by any means, I would ask if you even read any news. I don’t understand how you think it is a left or right issue, at least in the US, former President Obama was who started the American pivot to the pacific foreign policy in the ancient history of the year 2011.
Rare footage of chinese General’s dissent being open and available is very interesting news, at least to me.
Maybe you should unsubscribe from worldnews and subscribe to USAnews (or rather please make that community and not annoy us with USA garbage deluge).
In many ways, you’re mostly criticizing as if this was a malicious attempt to hide current USA events and further USA foreign policy narratives. Not really seeing any USA in the article. And the factual happenings are interesting.
I more just hitting a breaking point of being tired of cold war agit-prop with China. No one is watching a 6 hour long video or talking about the historical context here. They’re just getting fed “China Bad” so America can justify more wars for oil.
You know it’s a good article when a dumb tankie is seething in the comments
Wheezing even
Poor Wheezy
If you listen carefully you can hear the entire .ml instance buffering while they wait on marching orders to spin this
Like, would we be criticizing Germany today if some new photos of the concentration camps were found?
This isn’t criticism. The new release would be news. Go away tankie.
The discussion isn’t so much what has happened in the past, it’s much more the combination of continued denial and justification of inhumane crimes done in the past by the same regime.
Their continued denial and justification makes the current regime just as complicit in the crimes of their predecessors regardless of their material achievements.
