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”.
You mean the six hour video that I’m assuming is in Mandarin? How about you tell us all about it since certainly you watched it, right? Right?
That’s literally my point. My comment is in frustration to all the comments just using this article to uphold an incorrect world view of China as some authoritarian state that ships innocent people to foreign prisons for torture (shit, sorry, that’s the US).
I never said I watched it. But literally no one here has. Or, honestly, even read the article. It’s just being used for the purpose of cold war agit-prop.
Do… Do you expect people to watch a six hour video in a language they don’t speak?
Yes. That’s what I said. Definitely what you should take from that comment. Absolutely. /s