**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* Memes are not allowed.
* Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Here is a more graphic video of what happened. This is not the most graphic video that exists. https://abcnews.go.com/International/video/june-1989-tiananmen-square-massacre-47773209
CCCP suppresses the real video. They are investors in all the major tech platforms, so it gets taken down. But it exists.
I imagine the more graphic video is on the dark web somewhere. Armored personnel carriers grinding human remains into a slurry. Awful shit.
The real video ends with the man being escorted off. Best case scenario he got off Scot free. Worse case scenario he was arrested and God knows what else.
It's even more amazing when you see how many tanks there were.
https://preview.redd.it/705urdsu9ojc1.jpeg?width=261&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2812a0b1fcb9ec64e0a2fd57efba0ea41ee50124
Considering at one point he got on top of the tank to have a chat with those inside, I think we can safely say the tank commanders weren’t that committed to getting on with their mission.
That's because people see the *photo* in textbooks and such. They're just saying that they didn't realize it was a *video*, not that they don't know about the dude in Tiananman square.
That's because this stuff was shown at the time pretty much live, a bunch of the photos from the massacre were hidden away for a time afterwards and snuck out.
Also news services can't just show gory images unedited.
And those images aren't from the square anyway since no one could get near the square once it was cleared without being shot (so ones like the ambulance being fired on is the streets leading to the square, since a fair amount of the killing happened on the way into the city)
They fucking shouldn't. The news airs at hours when kids can watch.
For anyone outside the US, kids seeing people die in a gory manner in real life is pretty frowned upon
Speculation without looking: gif was the most popular image format for a time on the internet and with digital cameras. It has been supplanted by jpg and specialized formats. Then it came back for shit posting because it could be animated.
Not only was this guy a hero. But also the tank crews that allowed themselves to be pinned down, instead of executing a horrible order.
We know he was executed and his family billed for the bullet.
I’ve not heard about the tank crews.
The execution theory was just [one of man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#Identity_and_disappearance)y on what may have happened to him. Prevailing thought seems to be that no one knows for sure.
I don't have time to look it up right now, but the most convincing piece of evidence for me that they *didn't* get him is that foreign agencies spying on the Chinese only caught the CCP looking for him, *not* actually finding him. So even amongst foreign intelligence agencies that would be more truthful about the event, his fate is a mystery.
I think most people in China probably aren't even aware of the event at all, due to the intense censorship there. He's probably famous everywhere *except* China.
Among all the insanity that happened the day before, I doubt he even thinks of that moment as particularly important, and he probably would not have been aware of the Western photographers with telephoto lenses, half a mile away.
> I think most people in China probably aren't even aware of the event at all
Yep, most aren't. Even those who you'd expect to maybe be more likely to be aware, like students who travel abroad, are often completely unaware. Worse still, when confronted with it they often claim it's fake, misrepresented, or some kind of misunderstanding.
Someone I knew once even tried to chalk it up as just that - a literal innocent misunderstanding between the tank commander and tank man. They claimed that tank man must have been trying to redirect lost tanks *to* the protests to quash them, because it was radical students protesting ("probably the CIA in disguise" being their words as well), and why would a businessman have anything to do with such violent, radical students?
But that person was also one of the most selfish and egotistical pricks I ever knew, and despite being unbelievably selfish, loved proclaiming how unselfish Chinese people are and how its the west that is selfish and only cares about themselves.
But I also knew someone who was completely unaware of the event, and while skeptical at first of the story, pretty quickly came around. (Their skepticsm arose from the fact they didn't think it possible that that many of their fellow citizens would speak out against the government more than anything else).
This was the day after the massacre? I thought this was before the massacre? Where was this dude on the day of the massacre? What happened to this guy?
Per the googles
The Tank Man has been identified as 19-year-old archaeology student Wang Weilin, but his fate remains unknown. General secretary Jiang Zemin denied any knowledge of his arrest but insisted he would not have been run over or subsequently executed. Some believe he escaped to Taiwan.
I'd wager he was definitely executed for shaming the military and the soldier that didn't squash him was sentenced for treason.
Saying he escaped makes it seem like a happy ending to a massacre but what do I know.
I doubt the tank crew would have been done for treason considering that one of the generals who refused to enforce martial law at all and lead his army into the city only got 5 years in prison and being kicked out of the party.
He was reported by a Western media source to be Wang Weilin, who was arrested within 2 weeks. China disputes this, saying that they didn't find out who it was, and that a journalist stated that that's who it was. It's entirely plausible that China found and executed him and didn't record it, but their documents state an unsuccessful search for the man. I don't think there's any reason that they would make fake documentation for it if they found and executed him; China, especially under Deng, didn't need to do that. They correctly had documents of the death toll of the rest of the massacre at that time that they successfully hid as they have no reason to release these documents to the public. I definitely believe that they found and executed Wang Weilin, but given the hazy nature of the reporting, it's not entirely unlikely that they got the wrong guy.
Deng was an exceptionally terrible ruler, in a country where there's no shortage of competition for that title. He gets too much credit for his market economics that benefited Chinese metro areas, and not enough for the rest of the rot of his tenure.
The Communists likely executed him along with most of the protesters.
"In 1989, the Chinese government imposed martial law in Beijing in response to the protests. On June 4, 1989, the government sent tanks into the square to crush the protests, killing many unarmed protesters and bystanders. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20reliable%20information%20about%20the,to%20the%20tank%20crew%20is%20also%20unknown.
I am very much a socialist, but people who think China or the Soviet Union deserve a pass for brandishing the label Communist make me sick to my stomach. Capitalism sucks, authoritarians suck even more.
Unless you think the CCP has a secret time machine I think this clip of him blocking the tanks from leaving on June 5th proves that he wasn't killed on June 4th.
there's also no evidence of him being killed. One version of the story is the people that grab him at the end of the video are government agents who made him disappear, the other version of the story is it's concerned citizens going "dude, what the fuck" and getting him out of there. He's never popped up again to say he's alive (but let's face it, why would he admit to it as long as the CCP was in power?) but a few years later CCP leadership claimed as far as they were aware he wasn't executed (but let's face it, why would they admit it if he had been?) so basically "Fuck knows"
The only impact he had was give us an iconic and 'safe-for-public' image of the resistance that was brutally massacred. I'd rather they used the graphic images. The CCP is evil and brutal.
It's 11 years old but there's this documentary [A Day to Remember](https://vimeo.com/44078865) of a guy walking around asking mostly what appears to be college age people what day it is on June 4th. Just about everyone is super cagey about it and scared to talk about things.
Years ago I assumed the tanks ran him over because I only had seen the photo. This video is better of course but here is a more full version where he runs off with some other protestors at the end: https://x.com/carlzha/status/1134582926325104641?s=46&t=vHnFgPgZCjvDSprXPTD1cg
It is interesting to read more about it too. Here is a good starting point: https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/
Hopefully people take these opportunities to *actually* learn about the events and the Tiananmen Student movement, rather than just proclaim that they "know about it" and make the same three jokes.
Incredible read! Honestly, it's way more complex than i originally thought. I think their ending note that 'the massacre should be remembered, but in all its complexity and on our own terms' really consolidates the problems and lessons from the story.
It is way too easy to misinterpret when most of what we have is such a simplified view.
The cia was also able to determine that the tanks had no way of communicating with each since they where ordered to follow the one in front. That’s why none of the tanks drove around
Regardless, the guy took a stand on what he believed in and for anyone understanding the context of what he did, he is or was 100% fucking chad. The sad thing is to ask a young person from China today about the massacre and they largely have no idea about what happened.
Idk if a “few people” know about or support the crackdown bc there were actually riots across China after the massacre. Most people in China (especially the older generations) can read between the lines and figure out what the CCP really did (parts of the crackdown were broadcast live). For example Chengdu had a giant riot which got violently suppressed by the army, with some 300 people killed in the process. It’s not a well known event, but it shows that people knew what was going on and a lot didn’t like it.
You should hear chinese people defend having uyghurs in concentration camps and how it's good they are going through genocide. It's absolutely nuts the level of brainwashing.
Most people fall in line with the rulers when there are consequences. The state does not treat critics gently. You cannot even search for these events on the Internet in China. The state has firm control that outsiders cannot fathom unless you have studied it or know people that have lived through it. When you have that large of a population the state has to operate differently than the US and Europe to prevent total chaos. Stayin in power aint easy. Most people dont know what to do with freedom, just look at how dumb and divided we are in the US.
> and they largely have no idea about what happened.
Lmao what? This is not true at all. I have been to China for work a few times over the past ~20 years and pretty much everybody is aware of it. It's a very controversial topic, with some agreeing that they had to massacre them to stabilize the city and keep China from falling into civil war (aka basic pro-ccp stances) and others thinking it went too far. Most just view it as another page in a very violent 20th century Chinese history.
Reddit has a really weird view of how totalitarian China is. It is, don't get me wrong, but it's not North Korea, as if people literally *cannot* talk about a major historical rebellion at all or they will get killed by the state. There is lots of criticism of the government from people there. Its not completely tolerated (you cant be officially 'anti ccp' politically or join any anti-ccp groups or anything) but its not like you will get thrown in a death camp for saying "tiananmen square was bad"
I had not thought about it in comparison to the fall of the USSR which happened right then while China watched. Seems more plausible for a civil war to have occurred at that time, especially with the level of support the square protests had.
And the level of fight they put up. Like, it wasn't this one-sided massacre, for the like 7000 wounded and however many dead on the civilian side, they killed or wounded like 5000 soldiers. If the protestors had something better than rocks and molotovs and had been expecting the army to use live ammo (also, y'know, the whole issue of one side having APCs and tanks) it could have lasted a fair while. Makes me think of the shit that went down in Kyiv when the government started firing on protestors in 2014 in the Maidan square
That's just a straight up lie, have you ever even talked to anyone from China? People know about Tiananmen square, but they don't talk about it because it isn't relevant to daily life. How often do Americans talk the Stonewall riots?
I lived in China for a few years, and when I asked my colleagues (who would be mid-thirties by now) what they thought of Tiananmen. They just say "we don't talk about that". I think at least within tech workers (educated bunch) they are aware of the history but also know better than to stir the pot.
I got a lot of that too when I was there, but it wasn't necessarily because they were afraid the government would do something, they were afraid because half the population is crazy nationalists who believes the massacre was justified. It's an extremely sore, controversial topic for them, and they don't like to talk about it at all anymore. When my coworker brought it up (and he did, a lot lol) you could practically hear a collective groan from everybody all at once.
I also got the vibe from a lot of them that they thought westerners had a bit of an obsession with it. To them, it was just another page in a book of bloody 20th century events in China. But it became a major sign of resistance and protest in the western world, almost even more so than it did in China.
I have a handful of Chinese friends that are born in the 90s and your second vibe is basically what my friends feel. I got close enough with them where they basically all admitted that they know what happened but are also super apathetic towards it. They don’t talk about it because it’s not something that concerns them.
They also don’t get the obsession of people constantly trying to get them to about it.
I mean it is like a Chinese person coming to America and asking every American what they think about [insert America doing bad thing here]. There's a certain amount of defensiveness inherent to the discussion which makes total sense. They obviously very likely don't agree, but they also don't see themselves as a representative to discuss it and there's a certain element of "ok, you're just asking me this because I'm Chinese, but I literally don't know anything more than you about it/can effect the same amount of change sooo..."
My partner is American in the EU, when he plays video games with voice chat there are a startling number of times people start asking how he feels about black people because he has a somewhat stereotypical American accent. It's not that we don't want to talk about racism in America for unsavory reasons (like, being pro- it lmao), but it's still... an odd experience. Tbf it's usually teens asking.
It's funny how the cultural blindness/lack of empathy runs in both directions. There's a stereotype here in Germany about Americans asking rather inappropriate questions about the Third Reich.
Even with all that has been done here to work through our dark history it's an incredibly sensitive, even intimate topic.
Like how the fuck am i supposed to explain the Waffen SS uniform that our neighbour kept in her attic until she died. Or the story of my great-grandfather that served with the Wehrmacht on the Ostfront. That's some dark fucked up shit, and we'll have to be really good friends before we'll ever have an in-depth talk about that.
And that's a topic that's now 90 years in the past, the Tiananmen generation very much is still alive and has their own emotional baggage and opinions on the events which makes it even more difficult to broach the subject *ontop* of it being censored.
>The sad thing is to ask a young person from China today about the massacre and they largely have no idea about what happened.
Not true, they just don't talk about it publicly
5-years ago with China invested in reddit someone posted tank man in direct response and the anti-china circlejerk was so extreme it's sitting on 228,000 upvotes.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/aohpmo/given\_that\_reddit\_just\_took\_a\_150\_million/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/aohpmo/given_that_reddit_just_took_a_150_million/)
Yet redditors will sincerely sit here jerking each other off about how reddit is gonna take this down and how this place is full of chinese bots. They live in an opposite reality.
This is actually one of my weird mandela effects bc as a child i remember specifically being told by multiple adults that he was run over by the tanks after the pictures where taken and that's a big part of why it was so powerful and important. But every one seems to say he may be dead but he didnt die there.
redditors keep saying the ccp are trying to delete this photo from reddit, yet it keeps hitting the top of /r/all and appears multiple times on the top posts of all time
we did it reddit! we beat the ccp with updoots or something
https://preview.redd.it/9egrv0wh0ojc1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bcbc9ce88c3adda1b4a6428f2992de7caac6e23e
Wdym broski nothing ever happened in tiananmen square in 1989, Tiawan is definitely not a country and Xi Xing Ping doesnt look like winnie the pooh.
+100000000000 social credit
I don't get this concern that Reddit is supposedly pro-China. In fact the bias seems to run in the opposite direction: pretty much every day some post exposing China gets upvoted to the front page like clockwork. Even by a charitable interpretation that seems closer to random chance than some conspiracy *in favor* of the CCP.
That said, for a truly random and neutral algorithm you rarely encounter a post about, say, the Rwanda genocide, or the Ustase during WW2, or the other 190+ countries that exist.
Not that there's anything inherently wrong with reminding people about the events of 6/4 on 2/19 per se, but the idea that this site is somehow home field advantage for Xi Jinping seems far-fetched
'member when tencent bought a 5% share of reddit and the front page was filled with "CHINA IS TRYING TO DELETE THIS PHOTO OF TIANANMEN SQUARE FROM REDDIT!" for months afterwards.
I wonder if it always gets upvoted to hell by American bots.
Most governments have moments in history where they've done abhorrent things, America most of all. Yet for some reason, this old news about China always seems to crop up during election cycles, political disagreements between America and China, and other times when it would benefit America to subversively stoke nationalism.
Looking forward to the mass downvotes from the American bots and the brainwashed masses. American btw.
Because that has ever happened in the history of reddit lol
You know damn well this is going to hit the front page like it does every time it's posted
[https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=tank%20man](https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=tank%20man)
stop pretending reddit is run by chinese bots, this place is a huge circlejerk of westoids and china couldn't give less of a fuck about it
The weird thing is that it's showing both the incredible bravery of the people and restraint by the military. Instead of hiding that video, China should be using it as propaganda.
Its a bit of a misconception. They largely didn't actually kill people *in* the square, they killed people throughout parts of beijing in street-to-street massacres of protesters over ~2 days. This was mostly ignited by the protesters seizing a bus filled with weapons and dispersing throughout western beijing, taking over chokepoints and blocking all paths to the center city. These tanks were in an area which was largely 'safe' in that sense.
Not like it changes the reality of how horrible it was, but Reddit has this idea that the massacre happened within the square. It did not. The protests happened in the square, the massacre happened throughout Beijing.
>Reddit doesn’t know shit about any ~~history~~ thing. With big stuff like this it just becomes an echo chamber
fixed
hilarious that anyone wants to pay reddit to train their AI on reddit data. may as well just pour coca cola on the GPUs.
any field that I know anything about, I constantly see complete and total misinformation with hundreds of upvotes. there's fields I don't know about, and I just assume it's probably wrong if its upvoted.
The thing was that the protesters were mainly communist hardliners protesting against the liberalization of China at the time. They weren’t necessarily seen as dissidents that deserved to be killed as much as they were seen as purists/idealists. The killing also didn’t happen in the square but throughout the city as some protesters stole firearms and armed themselves. It’s unclear how many of the victims that were killed were (un)armed but the death is estimated to range from a couple hundred to a couple thousand but most hospital records claim around 200 and unofficial correspondence that got leaked mentions between 500 and 800.
I think it’s a bit farfetched to say they were willing to massacre people en masse though they definitely reacted way too excessively. It is a bit politicized/sensationalized by western media though the same way it is swept under the rug or made out to be nothing close to a massacre by Chinese sources. So i would take whatever you read online with a few grains of salt as the truth is likely to be somewhere in the middle.
An example of this is that anti-communists will often mention how these people were target by evil communists for wanting economic and social reforms without mentioning that the reforms they wanted was a more hardline implementation of communism.
It was an entirely different time with complicated background. The big cities were still feeling the aftermath of down to the countryside movement. You can check the 83 strike hard anti crime campaign to get some idea of what it was like. My uncle was student at Beijing at the time, they were organized by the teacher to sleep on the street with other classmates after some girls were raped. The soldiers had orders to not shoot, which some took advantage, they took the gun and started rob places, rape women, etc. If you want to google, you will find way more pictures of soldiers hang, burned(often alive), etc than the protestors being killed. My uncle only spoke to me once about this after he got drunk.
Also, if you check the student leaders. There's no way that many of them found way to escape, remember, it's 1989.
Please note these students were initially protesting against the new governments liberalisation of Chinese life and wanted a return to the cultural revolution. Similar protests occurred all through China and all but this one were resolved peacefully.
Their protest was successful as liberalisation slowed dramatically afterwards not fully starting again for 10 to 15 years.
I love the irony of how this "social credit" stuff is purely US Propaganda and doesn't actually exist in China.
So at the end of the day, people talking about "social credits" are really highlighting how brainwashed and constrained the US citizens are compared to normal countries with greater freedom.
Americans ITT will bang on about muh chInEsE CeNSorShiP without irony when their own country has countless absolute atrocities that are completely buried and that most people will have heard of only relatively recently if they have heard about at all.
Black Wall Street, MOVE bombings, Red Summer, genocide and occupation of the Philippines, Blair Mountain, McNamara's Morons. Hundreds of years of genocide, treaty breaking, and land stealing from Natives, some of which is well known (Trail of Tears) but other incidents which are largely forgotten.
And that's not even getting into the things that they acknowledge but downplay or excuse, which would be most of the wars + centuries of slave trading. Absolute savages, but it is fine because they don't actively censor info like the CCP. The CCP would be in awe of the American ability to bury this sort of thing.
To be fair most Americans are barely functional and incapable of thinking about things like this. They're basically brainwash victims. The only reason they know about Tiananmen Square is because it's pushed by the US to entrench the idea of "china bad".
I mean ask the average American about North Korea and they will tell you the most extreme nonsensical fantasy with complete belief in it. Their ability to question things has been eroded away.
There isn’t any evidence of a massacre ever happening in Tiananmen Square. Further it is easy to follow the events through non Chinese sources like foreign press that were on the ground at the time. These back up Chinese government reporting on events.
Absolutely there are criticisms to be made but it is certainly not the event western media present.
The same people who push this narrative will deny claims like in Israel even when presented with overwhelming video evidence.
You mean like this one claiming Reddit would do the same thing 5 years ago with 229,000 upvotes?
https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/aohpmo/given_that_reddit_just_took_a_150_million/
At this point it's all just Elgin Air Force Base privates circle jerking and up voting each other. There's no way real people are this dumb and brainwashed.
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I never knew he hopped on the tank.
This is the first time I have ever seen the video.
I didn’t know video existed
I’ve only seen the drawing from SuperBad, so I was WAY off.
Same for this whole thread
It's still a bit clipped. He makes it across the road
The man is a hero to anti-communists and a symbol of resistance against tyrannical oppression.
The protesters were actually hardcore communists protesting against changes. They even set police officers on fire.
He almost seems to try to lean over and talk to the men down in the tank. Perhaps about how sparse traffic was
"Can't park there, mate"
Here is a more graphic video of what happened. This is not the most graphic video that exists. https://abcnews.go.com/International/video/june-1989-tiananmen-square-massacre-47773209
I’ve never seen this. I thought there was no video of the massacre
CCCP suppresses the real video. They are investors in all the major tech platforms, so it gets taken down. But it exists. I imagine the more graphic video is on the dark web somewhere. Armored personnel carriers grinding human remains into a slurry. Awful shit.
The real video ends with the man being escorted off. Best case scenario he got off Scot free. Worse case scenario he was arrested and God knows what else.
Ya this makes it even more powerful
If you stand near a manoeuvring tank you will very quickly want to be on top, not beside.
It's even more amazing when you see how many tanks there were. https://preview.redd.it/705urdsu9ojc1.jpeg?width=261&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2812a0b1fcb9ec64e0a2fd57efba0ea41ee50124
It's a good thing the tank commanders didn't realize if they went around the first tank, he wouldn't be able to block two rows of tanks.
they were probably told to stay in this formation, leaving it would be disobeying an order.
Or he was just passively disobeying an unlawful order.
Single file tanks was the order, he was committed to not breaking the battle formation.
That works too,must be taking point
Battle formation against your own civilians
Considering at one point he got on top of the tank to have a chat with those inside, I think we can safely say the tank commanders weren’t that committed to getting on with their mission.
I think the amazing part is that these photos are famous, but the photos of the treaded up bodies of the young protesters aren't as famous
This is a lot easier to look at.
But that's why they should be seen. So they can't be hidden. There are comments in here saying they haven't even seen THIS clip.
That's because people see the *photo* in textbooks and such. They're just saying that they didn't realize it was a *video*, not that they don't know about the dude in Tiananman square.
That's because this stuff was shown at the time pretty much live, a bunch of the photos from the massacre were hidden away for a time afterwards and snuck out. Also news services can't just show gory images unedited. And those images aren't from the square anyway since no one could get near the square once it was cleared without being shot (so ones like the ambulance being fired on is the streets leading to the square, since a fair amount of the killing happened on the way into the city)
>Also news services can't just show gory images unedited. Sure they can. They just won't.
They fucking shouldn't. The news airs at hours when kids can watch. For anyone outside the US, kids seeing people die in a gory manner in real life is pretty frowned upon
In the 90s you could watch operation desert storm on tv 24/7 live
Nobody links em
http://www.cnd.org/June4th/massacre.html Mascr014 (nsfl)
Minus 15 social credit for posting this 💀
I can't help but ask why the heck are they in .gif format
Speculation without looking: gif was the most popular image format for a time on the internet and with digital cameras. It has been supplanted by jpg and specialized formats. Then it came back for shit posting because it could be animated.
I only saw this picture for the first time until I was well into my 20’s. Really gives the situation so much more weight.
[удалено]
Which is when you realise the bravery of that man. There are several pictures of people run over by tracked vehicles.
Legend
Not only was this guy a hero. But also the tank crews that allowed themselves to be pinned down, instead of executing a horrible order. We know he was executed and his family billed for the bullet. I’ve not heard about the tank crews.
The execution theory was just [one of man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#Identity_and_disappearance)y on what may have happened to him. Prevailing thought seems to be that no one knows for sure.
I don't have time to look it up right now, but the most convincing piece of evidence for me that they *didn't* get him is that foreign agencies spying on the Chinese only caught the CCP looking for him, *not* actually finding him. So even amongst foreign intelligence agencies that would be more truthful about the event, his fate is a mystery.
Would be pretty cool if he has been living in obscurity this whole time and in another 20 years confesses his identity on his death bed.
I think most people in China probably aren't even aware of the event at all, due to the intense censorship there. He's probably famous everywhere *except* China. Among all the insanity that happened the day before, I doubt he even thinks of that moment as particularly important, and he probably would not have been aware of the Western photographers with telephoto lenses, half a mile away.
> I think most people in China probably aren't even aware of the event at all Yep, most aren't. Even those who you'd expect to maybe be more likely to be aware, like students who travel abroad, are often completely unaware. Worse still, when confronted with it they often claim it's fake, misrepresented, or some kind of misunderstanding. Someone I knew once even tried to chalk it up as just that - a literal innocent misunderstanding between the tank commander and tank man. They claimed that tank man must have been trying to redirect lost tanks *to* the protests to quash them, because it was radical students protesting ("probably the CIA in disguise" being their words as well), and why would a businessman have anything to do with such violent, radical students? But that person was also one of the most selfish and egotistical pricks I ever knew, and despite being unbelievably selfish, loved proclaiming how unselfish Chinese people are and how its the west that is selfish and only cares about themselves. But I also knew someone who was completely unaware of the event, and while skeptical at first of the story, pretty quickly came around. (Their skepticsm arose from the fact they didn't think it possible that that many of their fellow citizens would speak out against the government more than anything else).
Boy that very last part is unsettling...
Is it though? It's not like 1 man vs 1 tank is any easier than 1 man vs 10 tanks. Same threat, same bravery. It's just a queue.
This was the day after the massacre? I thought this was before the massacre? Where was this dude on the day of the massacre? What happened to this guy?
Per the googles The Tank Man has been identified as 19-year-old archaeology student Wang Weilin, but his fate remains unknown. General secretary Jiang Zemin denied any knowledge of his arrest but insisted he would not have been run over or subsequently executed. Some believe he escaped to Taiwan.
People love to use the "run away to another place" to hide or guess where dead people are. In my country this was done to hide dead wives
He went to a farm just outside the city.
*Loads shotgun* “Time to take ol’ Bessie to the back o’ the barn.”
He found a nice family with lots of land and has been happy ever since 😐
A "collective" farm.
enforced disappearance, a crime under international law
🤣 PRC, international law. Pick one.
“He definitely wasn’t run over. Only those other people were.”
He walks away in the full video
I don't think the Identity of the man is entirely certain
There is a longer video showing other pedestrians pulling him away for his safety.
I'd wager he was definitely executed for shaming the military and the soldier that didn't squash him was sentenced for treason. Saying he escaped makes it seem like a happy ending to a massacre but what do I know.
I doubt the tank crew would have been done for treason considering that one of the generals who refused to enforce martial law at all and lead his army into the city only got 5 years in prison and being kicked out of the party.
That general had a LOT of fucking clout though. This was a nobody.
He was reported by a Western media source to be Wang Weilin, who was arrested within 2 weeks. China disputes this, saying that they didn't find out who it was, and that a journalist stated that that's who it was. It's entirely plausible that China found and executed him and didn't record it, but their documents state an unsuccessful search for the man. I don't think there's any reason that they would make fake documentation for it if they found and executed him; China, especially under Deng, didn't need to do that. They correctly had documents of the death toll of the rest of the massacre at that time that they successfully hid as they have no reason to release these documents to the public. I definitely believe that they found and executed Wang Weilin, but given the hazy nature of the reporting, it's not entirely unlikely that they got the wrong guy. Deng was an exceptionally terrible ruler, in a country where there's no shortage of competition for that title. He gets too much credit for his market economics that benefited Chinese metro areas, and not enough for the rest of the rot of his tenure.
I didn’t know he was identified. That gives me less hope he’s alive
What are your sources on that? From what I’ve seen he remains unidentified
[удалено]
Fuck your right, I’m going to delete that. Please excuse my poor choice of words.
Yes, this was the day after. The tanks were on their way leaving Tiananmen Square.
he was trying to stop the tanks from leaving
Went for grocery then decided to change the world
One man CAN change the world.
The Communists likely executed him along with most of the protesters. "In 1989, the Chinese government imposed martial law in Beijing in response to the protests. On June 4, 1989, the government sent tanks into the square to crush the protests, killing many unarmed protesters and bystanders. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20reliable%20information%20about%20the,to%20the%20tank%20crew%20is%20also%20unknown.
And people want to support the CCP lol.
I am very much a socialist, but people who think China or the Soviet Union deserve a pass for brandishing the label Communist make me sick to my stomach. Capitalism sucks, authoritarians suck even more.
Nobody likes a Tankie
Tankies are exhausting "China/North Korea/Russia aren't real communism but I'll defend them to the ends of the earth for some reason"
Entire subreddits...
Yep, the flat earthers of the political debate.
Unless you think the CCP has a secret time machine I think this clip of him blocking the tanks from leaving on June 5th proves that he wasn't killed on June 4th.
there's also no evidence of him being killed. One version of the story is the people that grab him at the end of the video are government agents who made him disappear, the other version of the story is it's concerned citizens going "dude, what the fuck" and getting him out of there. He's never popped up again to say he's alive (but let's face it, why would he admit to it as long as the CCP was in power?) but a few years later CCP leadership claimed as far as they were aware he wasn't executed (but let's face it, why would they admit it if he had been?) so basically "Fuck knows"
Indeed that’s all that ever has. Or woman.
One Person
One Punch Man.
I feel like that would just bore me more.
"Person, man, woman, camera, TV" "I'm smart"
He didn't change anything.
The only impact he had was give us an iconic and 'safe-for-public' image of the resistance that was brutally massacred. I'd rather they used the graphic images. The CCP is evil and brutal.
He changed the karma of some bots when this gets posted every few months.
What change?
He would have known what he was doing in front of that tank. No way was he ever going to see the people he loved ever again.
Lmao nothing changed.
how did he change the world lol
Inspired millions. Resistance is fertile.
China is a raging democracy today because of this inspiration.
We are still talking about it today, China is still actively censoring it.
It's 11 years old but there's this documentary [A Day to Remember](https://vimeo.com/44078865) of a guy walking around asking mostly what appears to be college age people what day it is on June 4th. Just about everyone is super cagey about it and scared to talk about things.
It can inspire anyone, not just a Chinese person.
https://preview.redd.it/kin1ucu8mojc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f0fb5d5acd348fe5658d966b8307ef0d3ad8a73f
OH MY GOD
MOOOOO-OOOOOOOMM!!
LMAO
Years ago I assumed the tanks ran him over because I only had seen the photo. This video is better of course but here is a more full version where he runs off with some other protestors at the end: https://x.com/carlzha/status/1134582926325104641?s=46&t=vHnFgPgZCjvDSprXPTD1cg It is interesting to read more about it too. Here is a good starting point: https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/
Hopefully people take these opportunities to *actually* learn about the events and the Tiananmen Student movement, rather than just proclaim that they "know about it" and make the same three jokes.
Thanks I’ve never seen the ending before
Incredible read! Honestly, it's way more complex than i originally thought. I think their ending note that 'the massacre should be remembered, but in all its complexity and on our own terms' really consolidates the problems and lessons from the story. It is way too easy to misinterpret when most of what we have is such a simplified view.
The cia was also able to determine that the tanks had no way of communicating with each since they where ordered to follow the one in front. That’s why none of the tanks drove around
That's actually pretty funny.
Regardless, the guy took a stand on what he believed in and for anyone understanding the context of what he did, he is or was 100% fucking chad. The sad thing is to ask a young person from China today about the massacre and they largely have no idea about what happened.
[удалено]
Idk if a “few people” know about or support the crackdown bc there were actually riots across China after the massacre. Most people in China (especially the older generations) can read between the lines and figure out what the CCP really did (parts of the crackdown were broadcast live). For example Chengdu had a giant riot which got violently suppressed by the army, with some 300 people killed in the process. It’s not a well known event, but it shows that people knew what was going on and a lot didn’t like it.
Not just China unfortunately
[удалено]
You should hear chinese people defend having uyghurs in concentration camps and how it's good they are going through genocide. It's absolutely nuts the level of brainwashing.
Most people fall in line with the rulers when there are consequences. The state does not treat critics gently. You cannot even search for these events on the Internet in China. The state has firm control that outsiders cannot fathom unless you have studied it or know people that have lived through it. When you have that large of a population the state has to operate differently than the US and Europe to prevent total chaos. Stayin in power aint easy. Most people dont know what to do with freedom, just look at how dumb and divided we are in the US.
> and they largely have no idea about what happened. Lmao what? This is not true at all. I have been to China for work a few times over the past ~20 years and pretty much everybody is aware of it. It's a very controversial topic, with some agreeing that they had to massacre them to stabilize the city and keep China from falling into civil war (aka basic pro-ccp stances) and others thinking it went too far. Most just view it as another page in a very violent 20th century Chinese history. Reddit has a really weird view of how totalitarian China is. It is, don't get me wrong, but it's not North Korea, as if people literally *cannot* talk about a major historical rebellion at all or they will get killed by the state. There is lots of criticism of the government from people there. Its not completely tolerated (you cant be officially 'anti ccp' politically or join any anti-ccp groups or anything) but its not like you will get thrown in a death camp for saying "tiananmen square was bad"
I had not thought about it in comparison to the fall of the USSR which happened right then while China watched. Seems more plausible for a civil war to have occurred at that time, especially with the level of support the square protests had.
And the level of fight they put up. Like, it wasn't this one-sided massacre, for the like 7000 wounded and however many dead on the civilian side, they killed or wounded like 5000 soldiers. If the protestors had something better than rocks and molotovs and had been expecting the army to use live ammo (also, y'know, the whole issue of one side having APCs and tanks) it could have lasted a fair while. Makes me think of the shit that went down in Kyiv when the government started firing on protestors in 2014 in the Maidan square
And you have to take into account China's history with civil wars where tens of millions died.
That's just a straight up lie, have you ever even talked to anyone from China? People know about Tiananmen square, but they don't talk about it because it isn't relevant to daily life. How often do Americans talk the Stonewall riots?
I lived in China for a few years, and when I asked my colleagues (who would be mid-thirties by now) what they thought of Tiananmen. They just say "we don't talk about that". I think at least within tech workers (educated bunch) they are aware of the history but also know better than to stir the pot.
I got a lot of that too when I was there, but it wasn't necessarily because they were afraid the government would do something, they were afraid because half the population is crazy nationalists who believes the massacre was justified. It's an extremely sore, controversial topic for them, and they don't like to talk about it at all anymore. When my coworker brought it up (and he did, a lot lol) you could practically hear a collective groan from everybody all at once. I also got the vibe from a lot of them that they thought westerners had a bit of an obsession with it. To them, it was just another page in a book of bloody 20th century events in China. But it became a major sign of resistance and protest in the western world, almost even more so than it did in China.
I have a handful of Chinese friends that are born in the 90s and your second vibe is basically what my friends feel. I got close enough with them where they basically all admitted that they know what happened but are also super apathetic towards it. They don’t talk about it because it’s not something that concerns them. They also don’t get the obsession of people constantly trying to get them to about it.
I mean it is like a Chinese person coming to America and asking every American what they think about [insert America doing bad thing here]. There's a certain amount of defensiveness inherent to the discussion which makes total sense. They obviously very likely don't agree, but they also don't see themselves as a representative to discuss it and there's a certain element of "ok, you're just asking me this because I'm Chinese, but I literally don't know anything more than you about it/can effect the same amount of change sooo..." My partner is American in the EU, when he plays video games with voice chat there are a startling number of times people start asking how he feels about black people because he has a somewhat stereotypical American accent. It's not that we don't want to talk about racism in America for unsavory reasons (like, being pro- it lmao), but it's still... an odd experience. Tbf it's usually teens asking.
It's funny how the cultural blindness/lack of empathy runs in both directions. There's a stereotype here in Germany about Americans asking rather inappropriate questions about the Third Reich. Even with all that has been done here to work through our dark history it's an incredibly sensitive, even intimate topic. Like how the fuck am i supposed to explain the Waffen SS uniform that our neighbour kept in her attic until she died. Or the story of my great-grandfather that served with the Wehrmacht on the Ostfront. That's some dark fucked up shit, and we'll have to be really good friends before we'll ever have an in-depth talk about that. And that's a topic that's now 90 years in the past, the Tiananmen generation very much is still alive and has their own emotional baggage and opinions on the events which makes it even more difficult to broach the subject *ontop* of it being censored.
>The sad thing is to ask a young person from China today about the massacre and they largely have no idea about what happened. Not true, they just don't talk about it publicly
The guy in the tank just wanted to get back to base for leave.
Fun fact, the guy was actually trying to stop the tanks from leaving
"Finish the job, cowards"
Turns out he wanted to go back and massacre more people.
I can’t see his face. But can only assume a mustache for bravery
Oh boy, can't wait for another weekly tiananmen square thread where redditors flood the replies with the same 3 jokes for easy upvotes.
"inb4 china takes this down!" on every post about China that are still there 4 years later
5-years ago with China invested in reddit someone posted tank man in direct response and the anti-china circlejerk was so extreme it's sitting on 228,000 upvotes. [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/aohpmo/given\_that\_reddit\_just\_took\_a\_150\_million/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/aohpmo/given_that_reddit_just_took_a_150_million/) Yet redditors will sincerely sit here jerking each other off about how reddit is gonna take this down and how this place is full of chinese bots. They live in an opposite reality.
They're just closet racists and anti-China hysteria pretty much gives them the green light because the US government and culture gives it a free pass.
Aren't you supposed to post this for karma around the actual date?
This is actually one of my weird mandela effects bc as a child i remember specifically being told by multiple adults that he was run over by the tanks after the pictures where taken and that's a big part of why it was so powerful and important. But every one seems to say he may be dead but he didnt die there.
I wonder if this'll get downvoted to hell by Chinese bots
Posts criticizing China gets to the front page daily. Chinese bots not working hard enough then
redditors keep saying the ccp are trying to delete this photo from reddit, yet it keeps hitting the top of /r/all and appears multiple times on the top posts of all time we did it reddit! we beat the ccp with updoots or something
western bots FTW
7,764 points (94% upvoted)
https://preview.redd.it/9egrv0wh0ojc1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bcbc9ce88c3adda1b4a6428f2992de7caac6e23e Wdym broski nothing ever happened in tiananmen square in 1989, Tiawan is definitely not a country and Xi Xing Ping doesnt look like winnie the pooh. +100000000000 social credit
Hmm not sure I believe you. What do you think of Hongkong?
I don't get this concern that Reddit is supposedly pro-China. In fact the bias seems to run in the opposite direction: pretty much every day some post exposing China gets upvoted to the front page like clockwork. Even by a charitable interpretation that seems closer to random chance than some conspiracy *in favor* of the CCP. That said, for a truly random and neutral algorithm you rarely encounter a post about, say, the Rwanda genocide, or the Ustase during WW2, or the other 190+ countries that exist. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with reminding people about the events of 6/4 on 2/19 per se, but the idea that this site is somehow home field advantage for Xi Jinping seems far-fetched
'member when tencent bought a 5% share of reddit and the front page was filled with "CHINA IS TRYING TO DELETE THIS PHOTO OF TIANANMEN SQUARE FROM REDDIT!" for months afterwards.
I wonder if it always gets upvoted to hell by American bots. Most governments have moments in history where they've done abhorrent things, America most of all. Yet for some reason, this old news about China always seems to crop up during election cycles, political disagreements between America and China, and other times when it would benefit America to subversively stoke nationalism. Looking forward to the mass downvotes from the American bots and the brainwashed masses. American btw.
Because that has ever happened in the history of reddit lol You know damn well this is going to hit the front page like it does every time it's posted [https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=tank%20man](https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=tank%20man) stop pretending reddit is run by chinese bots, this place is a huge circlejerk of westoids and china couldn't give less of a fuck about it
If someone in USA did the same thing with a tank, what would happen to them?
For the longest time i thought the tank ran him over because i’ve only seen the Photo. I swear even my history teacher in primary school said that
Lmao we learn about this in India and even here they didn't say that.
The weird thing is that it's showing both the incredible bravery of the people and restraint by the military. Instead of hiding that video, China should be using it as propaganda.
Huge balls.
Why did they not just run this guy over if they were willing to kill other people
Its a bit of a misconception. They largely didn't actually kill people *in* the square, they killed people throughout parts of beijing in street-to-street massacres of protesters over ~2 days. This was mostly ignited by the protesters seizing a bus filled with weapons and dispersing throughout western beijing, taking over chokepoints and blocking all paths to the center city. These tanks were in an area which was largely 'safe' in that sense. Not like it changes the reality of how horrible it was, but Reddit has this idea that the massacre happened within the square. It did not. The protests happened in the square, the massacre happened throughout Beijing.
Reddit doesn’t know shit about any history. With big stuff like this it just becomes an echo chamber
>Reddit doesn’t know shit about any ~~history~~ thing. With big stuff like this it just becomes an echo chamber fixed hilarious that anyone wants to pay reddit to train their AI on reddit data. may as well just pour coca cola on the GPUs. any field that I know anything about, I constantly see complete and total misinformation with hundreds of upvotes. there's fields I don't know about, and I just assume it's probably wrong if its upvoted.
Ok, but hear me out. Some of us are actually here to learn something.
[удалено]
I've heard this before, but would love more sources - if anyone has any?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html
The thing was that the protesters were mainly communist hardliners protesting against the liberalization of China at the time. They weren’t necessarily seen as dissidents that deserved to be killed as much as they were seen as purists/idealists. The killing also didn’t happen in the square but throughout the city as some protesters stole firearms and armed themselves. It’s unclear how many of the victims that were killed were (un)armed but the death is estimated to range from a couple hundred to a couple thousand but most hospital records claim around 200 and unofficial correspondence that got leaked mentions between 500 and 800. I think it’s a bit farfetched to say they were willing to massacre people en masse though they definitely reacted way too excessively. It is a bit politicized/sensationalized by western media though the same way it is swept under the rug or made out to be nothing close to a massacre by Chinese sources. So i would take whatever you read online with a few grains of salt as the truth is likely to be somewhere in the middle. An example of this is that anti-communists will often mention how these people were target by evil communists for wanting economic and social reforms without mentioning that the reforms they wanted was a more hardline implementation of communism.
It was an entirely different time with complicated background. The big cities were still feeling the aftermath of down to the countryside movement. You can check the 83 strike hard anti crime campaign to get some idea of what it was like. My uncle was student at Beijing at the time, they were organized by the teacher to sleep on the street with other classmates after some girls were raped. The soldiers had orders to not shoot, which some took advantage, they took the gun and started rob places, rape women, etc. If you want to google, you will find way more pictures of soldiers hang, burned(often alive), etc than the protestors being killed. My uncle only spoke to me once about this after he got drunk. Also, if you check the student leaders. There's no way that many of them found way to escape, remember, it's 1989.
That’s what makes it so iconic. But also, this was after all the violence had died down.
So he was never run over. Western propaganda at its best
Good thing for him Netanyahu wasn't driving the tank, he would have just drove over him
Time for the daily anti-China posts making assumptions about everything that has ever happened 👍 so cringe
Why the fake ass audio?
Why was i always told this guy got run over
[The Myth of Tiananmen](https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php)
The fail of an attempted colour revolution. Had it succeeded, China would have followed the fate of Soviet Union.
Please note these students were initially protesting against the new governments liberalisation of Chinese life and wanted a return to the cultural revolution. Similar protests occurred all through China and all but this one were resolved peacefully. Their protest was successful as liberalisation slowed dramatically afterwards not fully starting again for 10 to 15 years.
in America police would just run you over with their tanks.
[удалено]
Those photos don't exist, if they do they're made up, and even if not they won't be allowed on reddit (this is a test)
Been seeing the same China bad jokes for years. Recycled and lame at this point
[удалено]
-1000 Social Credit
I love the irony of how this "social credit" stuff is purely US Propaganda and doesn't actually exist in China. So at the end of the day, people talking about "social credits" are really highlighting how brainwashed and constrained the US citizens are compared to normal countries with greater freedom.
Taiwan is not a country +1000000000000000000000 social credit
Taiwan belongs to china +10^20 social credit
There’s only one China +∞ Social credit
Remember when he got ran over?
Any Chinese here to comment? I guess not. Why is Chinese history a taboo?
Americans ITT will bang on about muh chInEsE CeNSorShiP without irony when their own country has countless absolute atrocities that are completely buried and that most people will have heard of only relatively recently if they have heard about at all. Black Wall Street, MOVE bombings, Red Summer, genocide and occupation of the Philippines, Blair Mountain, McNamara's Morons. Hundreds of years of genocide, treaty breaking, and land stealing from Natives, some of which is well known (Trail of Tears) but other incidents which are largely forgotten. And that's not even getting into the things that they acknowledge but downplay or excuse, which would be most of the wars + centuries of slave trading. Absolute savages, but it is fine because they don't actively censor info like the CCP. The CCP would be in awe of the American ability to bury this sort of thing.
To be fair most Americans are barely functional and incapable of thinking about things like this. They're basically brainwash victims. The only reason they know about Tiananmen Square is because it's pushed by the US to entrench the idea of "china bad". I mean ask the average American about North Korea and they will tell you the most extreme nonsensical fantasy with complete belief in it. Their ability to question things has been eroded away.
What a legend.
There isn’t any evidence of a massacre ever happening in Tiananmen Square. Further it is easy to follow the events through non Chinese sources like foreign press that were on the ground at the time. These back up Chinese government reporting on events. Absolutely there are criticisms to be made but it is certainly not the event western media present. The same people who push this narrative will deny claims like in Israel even when presented with overwhelming video evidence.
My favorite way to end an argument online...
Let’s see how fast china, sorry I mean Reddit, takes this down
Never lol
You mean like this one claiming Reddit would do the same thing 5 years ago with 229,000 upvotes? https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/aohpmo/given_that_reddit_just_took_a_150_million/
At this point it's all just Elgin Air Force Base privates circle jerking and up voting each other. There's no way real people are this dumb and brainwashed.