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”.
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”