video of the trial (6 hours): https://youtu.be/1RBV9i4jaPo?si=oesH721IFLnmzEcW
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...
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.
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.
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.