video of the trial (6 hours): https://youtu.be/1RBV9i4jaPo?si=oesH721IFLnmzEcW
> China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was the little-known party chief of a city in the coastal province of Fujian during the unrest in 1989. But the PLA’s crushing of that unrest, and the failure of the Soviet army to do the same in Moscow in 1991, leading to the Soviet Union’s collapse, clearly left a deep impression. He has often referred to a critical lesson from it all: the PLA must remain the party’s army and it must be kept under control. It all helps explain Mr Xi’s relentless “anti-corruption” drives among the high command.
Xi was 36 years old in 1989, older than almost all of the current Politburo members. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had very minor roles at that time. Xi’s role was at least partly because he was a princeling - his father was a comrade of Mao Zedong from the old days.
I recommend reading Yashen Huang's "Rise and Fall of the E.A.S.T." [0] - it has a good overview of the cadre during Tiannamen - along with the dated but very comprehensive Tiannamen Papers [1]
[0] - https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300274912/the-rise-and-f...
[1] - https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/liang-zhang/the-tia...
Yes under Mao, but after Deng came to power the family regained significant political power.
Xi's father Xi Zhongxun was one of the Eight Elders [0] during the Deng era, and supported the Tiannamen crackdown. He was the Chairman of the Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee until 1993, and while the Chairman of the NPCSC (Wan Li) was in the US during the crackdown. He was also in charge of Guangdong after the Gang of Four were purged [1] and was the party leader who created what became the Shenzhen SEZ. And Xi Jinping's early mentor Geng Biao was the general who purged the Gang of Four [2] and worked with the US to modernize China's military capabilities [3].
The Geng Biao connection is a major reason why PLA Modernization is such a personal ambition of Xi's today - it was what gave him a major leg up in his career, and allowed him to differentiate himself from other Princelings and the Youth League cadre during his climb up the party ladder as well as during the succession showdown against Bo Xilai.
[0] - https://www.scmp.com/article/662093/eight-immortals-who-jock...
[1] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/07/16/x...
[2] - https://www3.nd.edu/~pmoody/Text%20Pages%20-%20Peter%20Moody...
[3] - https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v13...
Makes his complete commitment to the Party that much more interesting. I think Chinese leaders see the path they took - always venerating Mao (unlike the Soviets who denounced Stalin) and taking brutal action against any who would challenge the party’s power (in Tiananmen, unlike Soviet parties) as vindicating the approach of trusting the Communist Party. They firmly believe that only the Communist Party can control China and make it strong. Any reform like what the Russians did would leave them weak, like Russia is.
Obviously we can’t read his mind, but I’d guess that he justifies the Cultural Revolution as the right thing because the Party cannot be questioned. If you question that it opens up a whole can of worms that leads to the weakening and destruction of the Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
Edit: To address latincommie's claims based on one of 250k "cables" (meant to be quick reports without much vetting) from that Assange/Manning leak: I think that a plausible explanation here is deception from PRC counter-intelligence. Chile was in a state of flux at the time, to say the least.
The "massacre" of Tiananmen is nothing compared to any currently mass demonstration and their response in the USA (hello, G. Floyd, rest in peace).
Actually, the "massacre" of Tiananmen isn't, just take a look at https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html. I'm Brazilian, and if you've been to any demonstration here in Brazil or have ever organized any political struggle for basic rights, you're well aware of the real meaning of oppression and relentless pursuit for demanding basic rights -- the shallow part is having your house scouted by official police cars, your family receiving death threats.. you don't wanna know what happens next, but if you're curious, just search for what our military dictatorship practiced between the 60's and the 90's (trained by the USA, of course) and got away with it. By the way, the military and the police here are still doing people in ways you don't want to know. The only country with similar proportions where repression forces are more violent and tyrannic is the USA.
Funny how (possibly worse) anti-democratic massacres done by US allies (and much more recently) don't get continuous coverage US/Western/Business/Tech press.
“On 14 August 2013, the Egyptian police and to a lesser extent the armed forces, under the command of then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, used lethal force to clear two camps of protesters in Cairo. Estimates of those killed vary from 600 to 2,600.”
Egypts government is abhorrent.
Whataboutism doesn't give absolution, it's only meant to deflect, as ks2048 did.
The gaslighting is ongoing, IMO that’s what keeps it in the western consciousness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8zFLIftGk
And no, he did not die or anything - he just walked away with his bags full of food in the end - the food which he was carrying back to his comrades in the square, who were preventing the army from leaving.
Compare that how Tiananmen Square massacre is taught in China.
I assume the outsized focus on it is somewhat related to the lack of contrition and accountability.
More to the point, none of us control their country's relationship with massacre-friendly allies, making these discussions less than useful. If there's a useful point to be made by illustrating these relationships, it's that no one is really in control except those in the tanks and airplanes.
School taught you the wrong lesson about it. ~Half the country (guess which half) supported it... And I've no doubt that they'd do so again.
Or about an american commander refusing to sign papers to export offensive weapons to Israel knowing what is going on there (which was clear very soon after October 7th).
But instead, people in the west will continue to read such propagandistic stuff, and most will even believe, or pretend to believe, that they are better than Emmanuel Goldshtein.. (remember the archenemy from 1984?)
It is liable to suggest deregulation as the solution to everything. It is less likely to fabricate stories about Chinese human rights abuses.
And the point about "whataboutism" is very much true: used as a tool to silence people who dare to think differently.
You want another example of western hipocrisy? Everyone started worrying about a "massacre" on Xinjiang, WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE (the source was... Radio Free Asia, which is CIA). But then, the Palestian massacre came to news again with Israel large-scale deleting women and children from existence, and suddently everyone forgot of Xinjiang and genociding middle-east people is allowed. Wonder why?
What's important about it isn't that it happened, or what we think about it. What's important is how many people didn't think it was a mistake - and wouldn't when it happens again.
It reveals a major blindspot.
There were people who argued that the shooting was the students' fault, certainly. But the students knew at the time that they were antagonizing people, and felt that it was worth the risk, predicting (correctly: https://emersoncollegepolling.com/50-years-after-kent-state-...) that future generations would see why their cause was worth fighting for. The only lesson I can see to take away from that is that violence is not the last word, and you should (as students at the time did) keep protesting even if people get shot for it.
I suppose there's also the lesson that de-escalation is an important tactical skill. But that's not controversial at all. Many recent National Guard deployments have been extremely conflicted (I'm still mad about them!), but both guard members and protestors have done a solid job at not needlessly antagonizing each other.
Note: Historical records reveal that the people behind the coordination of the Tiananmen Massacre (which this post is talking about) is Deng Xiaoping.