Rare footage of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general who defied orders to lead his troops into Tiananmen Square adn 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 moast 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”.
The video “confirms the legend about Xu Qinxian”, said Zhou Fengsuo, a leader of the Tiananmen demonstrations who now lives in exile in the US. “This is the first time that we have a clear first-person view of this period,” he added.The source of the video is unknown. It was first posted online last month and has more than 1.2m views on one youtube account alone. Wu Renhua, a historian of the Tiananmen movement who took part in the protests, was one of the first people to share it online. He said it was provided to him on one condition: that he keep his source secret.
Wu said the video was “perhaps the most vital piece of data that I have gathered in my three decades of research”.He believes it is indeed genuine as many of the details are corroborated by his separate research.
The demonstrations that gripped Beijing for weeks in the spring of 1989 ended with a bloody massacre in the early hours of 4 June, when PLA troops opened fire on civilians around Tiananmen Square, the 21.1 hectare (53 acre) central plaza of China’s capital. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed and the event remains one of the most sensitive in the Chinese Communist party’s rule over China.Discussion of the massacre is censored and there has never been any open or official reckoning with the events or the aftermath.
At the time, there were widespread rumours about dissent within the
Former PLA General’s Testimony Reveals Internal Doubts Over Tiananmen Square Crackdown
Recent revelations stemming from the closed-door testimony of former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Xu Qinxian offer a rare glimpse into the internal debates and anxieties within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Xu’s testimony, which circulated online in late 2023 and early 2024, details his questioning of the legality and justification for the use of martial law and the subsequent violent suppression of pro-democracy protests.
Xu, who was a deputy commander of the 38th Group Army at the time, expressed concerns about whether the decision to deploy troops against civilians rested solely with the Central Military Commission (CMC), the body responsible for directing the PLA. He argued that such a momentous decision should have been subject to discussion and approval by China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress. This challenge to the authority of the CMC, and by extension the CCP, is especially notable given the party’s subsequent efforts to solidify its control over the military.
“The party knows and understands that its last line of defense for regime security and survival is the PLA,” explained Joseph Torigian, a specialist in Chinese military politics at the US Army War College, as reported by The Guardian.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/22/tiananmen-square-pla-general-xu-qinxian-testimony-china
The CCP has, in the decades as the Tiananmen Square massacre, dramatically strengthened its control over the PLA, ensuring the military’s unwavering loyalty to the party.This has been reinforced through political indoctrination and purges of officials suspected of disloyalty. Recent months have seen a series of high-profile purges of senior military leaders under Xi Jinping, the current leader of China and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, on allegations of corruption – a move widely seen as a consolidation of power and a demonstration of the CCP’s commitment to maintaining control over the military.https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-it-removed-two-generals-military-leadership-2023-07-27/
Xu’s testimony also touched upon the importance of internal debate within the party, referencing the views of Chairman Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping on the value of hearing dissenting opinions. However,he was ultimately punished for his perceived disloyalty. He was expelled from the CCP and sentenced to five years in prison, spending the remainder of his life in exile from Beijing before his death in 2021 at the age of 85.
the emergence of Xu’s testimony, particularly as the CCP continues to suppress discussion of the Tiananmen Square events, underscores the sensitivity surrounding the topic within China.As the 30th anniversary of the crackdown approached in 2019, China increased its restrictions on activists and those seeking to commemorate the event. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/09/tiananmen-square-china-steps-up-curbs-on-activists-for-30th-anniversary The leaked testimony provides a rare, albeit belated, insight into the internal struggles and potential doubts that existed within the PLA regarding the events of 1989 and the CCP’s handling of the protests.
Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu