Tank Man: Transcript, Bibliography, and Photos
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Today I’ve got the transcript and bibliography for Unruly Figures episode 6, Tank Man. At the beginning of each paragraph is a time code for where you can find that in the episode. I also do endnotes throughout, in case you want to follow up with a resource for more reading!
🎙️ Transcript
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0:05 Hey everyone, welcome to Unruly Figures, the podcast that celebrates history’s greatest rule-breakers. I’m your host, Valorie Clark, and today I’m going to be covering a man who did something that I find completely terrifying—Tank Man.
0:18 Yeah, you might have noticed that that’s really not a name. That’s because the true identity of Tank Man is actually still unknown, although I’m certain you’ve seen a photo of him. The image of him standing in front of a line of tanks leaving the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 is one of the most famous images of all time. And I’m really excited to talk about him.
0:40 Real quick, before we get into his story: For a full transcript of today’s episode, head over to Unruly Figures dot Substack dot com. That’s U-N-R-U-L-Y-F-I-G-U-R-E-S dot S-U-B-S-T-A-C-K dot com. In addition to the full transcript, you can also get ad-free episodes, a bibliography of my research, photos of everyone I’m covering, discussion threads, and so much more. So check it out!
1:09 All right, let’s hop back in time.
1:11 As you probably are aware, China, as we know it today, is a country that has been through radical upheaval in the last 115 years. The country we know now was born out of a long revolutionary process that began with the Chinese Revolution of 1911 and escalated in the immediate aftermath of World War II.1 To make a very complicated story shorter for our purposes, I’m going to skip ahead to October 1, 1949, when Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic of China, ushering in an age of Communist leadership and reforms.
1:45 Just as a side note--I took Mandarin in college, but my pronunciation is part of why I got a B in that class. So I’m going to do my best here with words in Mandarin but I sincerely apologize now for all the times I will get the tones wrong.2
1:59 Though it was called the People’s Revolution, Mao’s reforms weren’t always popular among Chinese civilians. His Great Leap Forward in 1958 was an enormous failure, in fact, and caused an economic crisis that weakened his position within the government and the CCP.3 As a result of his weakening power, in the mid-1960s he began to call for the nation’s youth to recapture the revolutionary spirit of the late 1940s. His concern was that the government was moving away from Communist ideological purity. In August 1966, Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution by shutting down the nation’s schools and, quote, “calling for a massive youth mobilization to take current party leaders to task for their embrace of bourgeois values and lack of revolutionary spirit.”4 End quote.
2:48 The movement quickly escalated. Students formed paramilitary groups called the Red Guards, which they used to attack and harass members of China’s elderly and/or intellectual populations.5 This was the birth of the personality cult around Mao, fueled by Defense Minister Lin Biao’s publication and forced distribution of Mao’s Little Red Book, which was full of his sometimes-cryptic quotations.6 This of course led to the formation of factions within the movement claiming the true interpretation of Maoist thought. Together Mao, Lin, and the student groups urged China to, quote, “rid itself of the ‘Four Olds’: Old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas.”7
3:27 The Cultural Revolution was a disaster. It started as political infighting and continued that way. The wild swings of government leadership, the purging of party leaders as well as general discontents, and the massacres that occurred across Mainland China destroyed Mao’s and the party’s credibility with most Chinese citizens. There were famines and reports of cannibalism; minority populations and cultures, especially in Tibet and Mongolia, were destroyed by ethnic cleansing… I mean, in summation: It was awful. Because of the PRC’s secrecy around this, it’s hard to get solid numbers, but estimates of the death toll as a direct result of the Cultural Revolution range from 400,000 people to 20 million people.8 Mao’s goal, which had been to return China to revolutionary glory, instead caused people to lose faith in the Communist government.
4:20 Even after Mao’s death in 1976, which marks the real end of the Cultural Revolution, China was mired in economic stagnation and social discord. Deng Xiaoping became the de facto leader of the country and began to undo a lot of Mao’s choices, through a proposed approach of Boluan Fanzheng, which translates to ‘bringing order out of chaos.’ Instead of focusing on ideological purity, he focused the country’s resources on material prosperity. Deng’s plan was to decrease the state’s involvement in the market and allow for private production in certain industries. This is how we get today’s Special Economic Zones in China. In fact, Deng’s market economy reforms led to his epithet as the Architect of Modern China.
5:04 But the rapid economic development and social change happened unevenly across China. The main grievances by the late 1980s were monetary inflation, government corruption, and the impracticality of higher education, which had been extremely damaged by the Cultural Revolution and still had not fully returned to preparing students adequately for the world. At the same time, students didn’t have much political power either, which increased their frustration with what they saw as a hypocritical and failing government.
5:34 Protests from the students began in 1986 actually, after astrophysics professor Fang Lizhi returned from a position at Princeton University and began a tour of the country lecturing about human rights and separation of powers in government. At this point, there was an awakening of intellectuals in China who were trying to get the message out that China’s poverty was a direct result of the authoritarian regime that dominated it, and Fang was a large part of that.9 He was very popular among young intellectuals, and his speeches calling for government reform were widely circulated in China. He remained at the forefront of the movement as a leading dissident and, quote, “intellectual celebrity.”10 In December, after his tour, student protests began in Hefei, where Fang lived, but quickly spread to Shanghai, Beijing, and other cities. The General Secretary of the CCP, Hu Yaobang was accused of handling the protests too softly and was forced to resign as a result. The student protests were stopped by the government eventually, but the unease continued long past them.
6:45 So, our story really begins here: It’s 1989 in the People’s Republic of China. The aforementioned former General Secretary Hu died suddenly of a heart attack on April 15, 1989. University students, who remembered him as being a pro-reform leader, reacted strongly and began gathering together on their campuses, first to remember him, and then to discuss his ideas. At Beijing University, about 80 posters popped up that night eulogizing Hu.11 By April 19th, about 570 similar posters were popping up at universities around China, and many had begun to criticize the government and called for free press, free political association, and democracy.12
7:20 The very first demonstration began on April 17th around noon. Around 600 teachers and students from the University of Political Science and Law went to Tiananmen, a large square plaza in the center of Beijing. There, they laid a large wreath for Hu, which in itself was a bit rebellious because he had already been discredited by the party.
7:39 At 5 pm that afternoon, 500 CUPL students gathered to have a memorial for Hu. They gathered near the Great Hall of the People, near Tiananmen. People gave speeches eulogizing Hu and discussing some of the social problems he had tried to reform. It was deemed obstructive though, and the police tried to get the students to disperse.
7:59 That night, students from Beijing University marched to Tiananmen Square, arriving really early the next morning, April 18th.13 At some point in the night, students from Tsinghua University joined as well. However, as Dingxin Zhao, a sociology professor at University of Chicago and author of The Power of Tiananmen, says, “Most students had no idea of the specific purpose of this demonstration.”14 There wasn’t really group leadership established yet. He describes how in the memoirs and diaries of many of the students at Tiananmen, the actions they took were presented as very spontaneous and individualistic.15 Leaders emerged eventually, but this was not planned in advance.
8:37 We can see that especially in what happened on April 18th. Some students gathered around the Monument to the Peoples’ Heroes, on the south side of Tiananmen, singing patriotic songs. That day, the spirit at Tiananmen, was described as “carnival-like.”16 But a few thousand gathered at Xinhua Gate, the entrance to Zhongnanhai, which was where Party leadership worked from. There, they demanded a dialogue with party leadership. Police wouldn’t let them in, so they staged a sit-in.
9:03 Over the next few days, party leadership largely ignored the growing protest. There were reports of police brutality as they tried to break up the crowds of people who would gather, which sometimes numbered in the thousands.
9:14 Meanwhile, leadership within the movement was emerging. Seven demands on the government emerged from the people who gathered at Tiananmen:
Reevaluate Hu Yaobang, especially in relation to his prodemocratic views;
Renounce the [1987] Anti–Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign and the [1983] Anti–Spiritual Pollution Campaign and rehabilitate all the people prosecuted in these campaigns;
Reveal the salaries and other wealth of government leaders and their families;
Allow the publication of nonofficial newspapers and stop press censorship;
Raise the wages of intellectuals and increase government educational expenditures;
Turn down the “Ten Provisional Articles Regulating Public Marches and Demonstrations” promulgated by the Beijing municipal government; and
Provide objective news coverage of the student demonstration in official newspapers.17
10:07 On April 26th, an editorial ran on the front page of the party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, which condemned the gatherings as an anti-government revolt. It was intended to scare the students into compliance, but instead it inflamed the fury and galvanized more support for the protest.18
10:25 The next day, an estimated 100,000 students marched to Tiananmen Square in defiance of the editorial. Factory workers turned out in support of them as well. The students actually toned down the anti-communist slogans for this march, trying to focus on their love for China and framing their frustrations as concern for the future.
10:44 This march was seen as a success. The government was forced to meet with students in the days after, however not much was actually achieved in these meetings. But, the government’s tone became increasingly conciliatory and party leaders like Zhao Ziyang made speeches agreeing with some of the students’ concerns, especially the ones about corruption. With the government seeming to agree with them, many students started to lose interest. Universities resumed classes and the movement started to suffer from internal discord.
11:24 So, if the movement was winding down by early May, how did we get to Tank Man stopping a line of military tanks on June 5th?
11:31 Well, protests picked up steam again on May 13th, when students began using hunger strikes in Tiananmen to demonstrate against the state visit of USSR leader Mikhael Gorbachev. The use of a hunger strike gave the protests a moral high ground in the eyes of the larger public, which increased support for them. By the end of May 13th, some 300,000 people had gathered at Tiananmen, where Gorbachev was scheduled to be officially greeted.
11:56 Afraid that the movement would spin out of control, Deng Xiaoping ordered that the students be removed from the square. A softer touch was used, and negotiations were called for. They tried to convince the students that a televised protest at the Sino-Soviet Summit would be embarrassing for all of China, not just the government. But the students remained and Gorbachev’s welcoming at Tiananmen was cancelled; he was officially welcomed at the airport instead.
12:20 Around a million people began joining the protests during Gorbachev’s visit. Now it wasn’t just students--police, teachers, party officials with lower ranks… everyone was joining the protest. An estimated 1 in every 10 people living in Beijing joined this protest.19 That wasn’t 1 of every 10 students. One of every ten citizens of Beijing. The protests also of course spread to other cities as well.
12:32 Li Peng met with students on May 18th, trying to placate them and encouraging them to end the hunger strike.20 The students asked him for reforms; Li said his main concern was getting hunger strikers to the hospitals. The conversation was very confrontational and didn’t get results, except that it got the protesters a lot of air time on TV.
12:50 On May 20th, the government declared martial law. An estimated 250,000 troops were sent to Beijing, but they were blocked from passing the suburbs by throngs of protestors. And when I say ‘throngs’ I mean tens of thousands of people were blocking vehicles for days. Finally, on the 24th, the government ordered them to turn around. In Tiananmen, the students were facing internal divisions themselves as well as a mounting hygiene crisis.
13:17 On the first of June, Li Peng published a report titled “On the True Nature of the Turmoil” and circulated it among party leadership. He insisted on rebranding the students as terrorists and counterrevolutionaries because they would not leave Tiananmen.21 The report justified military action to force clearing the square.
13:36 The next day, there was a lot of military shuffling around to prepare just for that. The government still wanted a peaceful end, but was ready to authorize use of force against the protestors if necessary. Troops were secretly moved into the Great Hall of the People, on the west side of the square, and into the Ministry of Public Security compound on the east side. That evening, an army trencher, which is a piece of construction equipment, ran over 4 protestors, killing 3 of them, which prompted the protestors in the square to set up roadblocks at major intersections, so that the police and the military would not be able to advance further into the square.
14:11 On the morning of June 3rd, students discovered plainclothes soldiers smuggling weapons into the city. Somehow the weapons were seized and then the students turned them over to the police. I’m very surprised that they did turn them over; maybe they thought it would invite more trouble to keep them? Or maybe they thought it would undermine the peaceful aspect of their protest if any of them were armed? I’m not sure, but I keep wondering how June 4th might have gone if the protestors had been armed.
14:38 That evening, the official order for the enforcement of martial law and the clearing of Tiananmen Square was given. State news warned viewers not to be outside, but crowds of people took to the streets to try to block the incoming army.
14:51 At about 10 pm on June 3rd, the army began advancing toward Tiananmen. At first, they were shooting into the air, trying to scare away groups of people. But as we’ve seen, these protestors did not scare easily, and it didn’t have the intended effect once again. However, there was one death as a result of this type of firing; Song Xiaoming, a 32-year-old engineer, was the first confirmed death of the night.22
15:17 A convoy encountered a substantial blockade just to the east of the 3rd Ring Road, and this is when the movement shifted toward extreme violence. The military opened fire directly at protesters at the blockade. The troops were using expanding bullets, which are and were prohibited by international law for use in international warfare, if that tells you anything about damaging they are. The crowds were stunned that the army was using live ammunition on their own population and reacted by hurling insults and projectiles at them.
15:48 At this point, the army gave up on the peaceful disengagement of the protest and began shooting indiscriminately. The tanks kept shooting as they advanced, killing protestors and uninvolved bystanders alike. People were killed on their balconies or shot through their windows.
16:04 News of the violence was slow to reach the square. At around midnight the report of the first death came in, which turned the mood in the square somber. An estimated 80,000 people remained there, and student leaders encouraged them to remain committed to nonviolence.
16:18 At around 12:30 am, tanks began to arrive at the edges of the square. One stalled, and the students covered it in gasoline-doused blankets and set the blankets on fire; the intense heat forced the soldiers out of it.23 There was a rumor that the tanks had run over tents on the way there, killing whoever was inside, and some protestors wanted to beat the soldiers for that. But other students formed a protective barrier around the soldiers and escorted them to a medical tent.24
16:45 As you can probably guess, there are nearly minute-by-minute histories of this night. I can’t possibly get into all of that detail, so check out any of the several books about the protests to learn more. I’ve got several mentioned in the bibliography that will be up on the Substack.
17:00 Okay, so, soldiers have arrived. Between 1 and 4 am, protest leaders debated what to do next. The brutal violence that had occurred on the streets leading to Tiananmen was finally being recounted to people in the square, and some students were ready to leave in the face of that, believing that too many people had been killed already.
17:19 At 4 am, all the lights in the Square were turned off, and an announcement was made over the public government loudspeaker saying, “Clearance of the Square begins now.”25 The students braced for a last stand. The army continued to advance.
17:33 Around 4:30 am, the army began forcibly clearing the square. They shot out the students’ loudspeaker, so they couldn’t organize and began to beat students with clubs or prod them with bayonets. Dozens of students were beaten, their cameras and recording equipment destroyed. Another announcement came over the government loudspeaker, saying, “You better leave or this won’t end well.”26
17:55 By 6 am, the Square had fully emptied of protestors. The crowds slowly made their way back to their campuses and their homes, and there is at least one report of a tank driving through one of these crowds, killing 11 students and injuring dozens of others.27 Back at Tiananmen, soldiers began to clean the square. It’s worth noting that the soldiers who had been stationed inside The Great Hall of the People were confined there for another nine days after this, and reportedly only given one packet of dried noodles to eat per day, and that packet had to be shared between three people.28
18:26 Later in the morning of June 4, civilians tried to re-enter the Square; many of them were parents looking for their children who had been protesting there. The troops opened fire on the civilians and they fled; many were shot in the back as they ran. Another wave of civilians tried to approach the Square again later, and the troops opened fire again. An ambulance was caught in the crossfire.
18:47 The death toll and extent of bloodshed has been in dispute since the day it occurred. Some estimate that a couple hundred protestors died at Tiananmen, others say several thousand.29 Because the CCP never released a reliable number, the estimates are based on the testimony of survivors and family members. An estimated dozen to two dozen soldiers and police officers died on the night of June 3rd/4th.30
19:09 In the following days after the clearing of Tiananmen, other cities rose up in similar protest. One estimate says that there were tens of millions of people across China protesting the years of repression, government corruption, economic stagnation, and more.
Tank Man’s Stand
19:32 Obviously, we’ve covered a lot of rebels and revolutionaries here today, but the main moment that inspired me to do this episode happened around noon on June 5th.
19:41 Tanks began to pull out of Tiananmen Square using the northeast exit, driving along Chang’an Avenue. A man, now known to us only as Tank Man, ran into the middle of the avenue and stood directly in their path. He wore a white shirt and black pants, and carried two shopping bags. The lead tank attempted to get around him, but he moved with it, continuing to block them. He gestured at the tank with his bags. Maybe he shouted something; we don’t know. The tank tried to get around him a few more times, but he kept getting in front of it. Finally, the lead tank shut off its engines, and the tanks behind it did too. They reached a very quiet, very still impasse.
20:24 He stood there, alone, in front of a long column of enormous tanks. Witnesses have described the scene as nearly silent, and if you watch the video journalists took that day, it’s sort of equal parts scary and moving.
20:38 It’s unknown why the tanks stopped. Maybe they were tired of killing people. I mean, it can’t feel good to fire on your own countrymen, especially students. Maybe they had been ordered to stop using force. Maybe it’s because Chang’an Avenue means Avenue of Eternal Peace,31 and someone had the foresight to recognize the irony of killing a peaceful demonstrator there, of all places. After all, they could have simply run him over, as they did the eleven students the day before.
21:06 Many think that this man was a student, but no one is sure. The general agreement though is that he was young. Professor Timothy Brook, of the University of British Columbia, supposes that he was, quote, “probably just an ordinary person who was so disgusted at what he’d seen for the last few days [that] he said, ‘Right, that’s it, I’m going out and I’m just going to stand in front of that column.’”32 End quote.
21:26 After the moment of stillness, he climbed on top of the lead tank and banged on the lid. He appeared to have a conversation with a soldier at the gunner’s tower.
21:34 Now, Chang’an Avenue is full of hotels for international visitors to China, and there were several photojournalists on balconies watching this event happening. One, Charles Cole, talks in the PBS documentary, The Tank Man, about how he was sure that the man was going to be killed at any second. He was horrified and you can still kind of hear it in his voice in this documentary. He took photos in case the man was killed because, quote, “If he is, I can’t miss this. This is something that he’s giving his life for. It’s my responsibility to record it as accurately as possible.”33 End quote.
22:08 After the conversation, which only lasted a few seconds, Tank Man climbed back down, bags still in his hand. The tanks started up their engines, and started to turned to leave, and the young man jumped back in front of them, stopping them again.
22:22 Moments later, someone on a bike rode up, clearly trying to encourage him to move. Then, from the lower right side of the video, two men in short-sleeved blue shirts run to Tank Man, their arms raised in surrender to the tanks. They grab him and they hustle him away, and they are joined by a few other people as they push him.
22:43 No one knows who they were either. Were they police officers, arresting him? Were they civilians, trying to save his life?
22:50 This is part of the allure of Tank Man. Who he really is and what happened to him, after this moment, remains a complete mystery.
22:58 There are several theories out there, and I’ll cover a few:
23:01 One, the most hopeful, is that he wasn’t arrested. He disappeared into the crowd and no one ever found out who he was and he still lives somewhere in China. He looked about 20-something in the video, so he’d maybe be about 50-something today.
23:16 Another, put forth by a British tabloid stated his identity as Wang Weilin, a 19-year-old student who was later charged with, quote, "political hooliganism" and, quote, "attempting to subvert members of the People's Liberation Army.”34 End quote. Official statements and documents from the CCP refute this, siding instead with the first theory: they couldn’t figure out who he was. After all, his face is never seen in the video of his stand. They certainly searched for him, but never found him.
23:43 On the other hand, most theories believe his ultimate fate was arrest and death. Bruce Herschensohn, former deputy special assistant to President Richard Nixon, alleged that Tank Man was arrested and was executed 14 days later; others claim that he was executed by a firing squad a few months after the Tiananmen Square protests.35
24:02 I did some digging on historical Chinese military and police uniforms and it looks to me like the uniforms the soldiers and officers would have worn that day were usually some shade of green or brown and also typically long-sleeved. Even in the video of Tank Man’s stand, the soldier he speaks to appears to be wearing long-sleeves. To me, the fact that he was pulled away by two men wearing blue short-sleeved shirts says that he was probably being hustled away by fellow civilians who couldn’t bear to watch him be shot. But as I mentioned earlier, there were also soldiers disguised in plainclothes at Tiananmen, so no one can say anything definitive, at least not without someone coming forward with more information.
24:42 Whatever happened to him, whoever he is, his impact on the world is enormous. Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I clearly misspoke here, as we’re only 21 years into the 21st century and TIME hasn’t made this list yet. “Unknown Tiananmen Square Rebel” is listed on TIME’s “100 Persons of the Century” list, published in April 1999.
24:52 Let’s talk about the impact of his stand.
24:55 Images of his stand had to be smuggled out of China. One journalist, Stuart Franklin, who had stood on the same balcony as Charlie Cole, had help from a French student who ferried out his film in a box of tea. Cole himself had hid his roll of film in a toilet tank at the hotel; in the documentary he mentions they had only minutes between the stand and when the police broke down the door to confiscate their footage.36
25:20 The image of him standing in front of the tanks has inspired defenders of freedom and liberty for decades. But unfortunately, within China, the entire Tiananmen Square massacre, incident, stand, whatever you want to call it--is largely forgotten. Due to intense censorship, China’s youth are largely unaware of something that happened only a few decades ago, something their parents could reasonably have been involved in.
25:46 The image was only shown once within China, in the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen, as an example of the army’s restraint. The Chinese newscaster who commented on the footage called Tank Man a, quote, “lone scoundrel.”37 From within China, it can be very difficult to find any information about rebellions against the government, which is an ongoing controversy that embroils journalists and search engines and the whole concept of freedom of information. In the PBS documentary I watched, The Tank Man, footage is shown of students seeing the image of Tank Man and being quote, “baffled” by it, end quote. They think it’s perhaps a parade, and one student supposed the image was art, not documentary.38 However, it is noted in the documentary that that same young man whispered to the student next to him, “89.”
26:31 Referring to the Tiananmen Square Massacre as ‘8964’ has become very popular within China because it’s much harder to censor the numbers than the words.39 It signifies the date instead, the year 89, the 6th month, the 4th day.
26:45 According to the aforementioned Bruce Herschensohn, reminisced on the impact he saw Tank Man have from his government position, He said that Tank Man, quote, “Wanted to change China, but what he did was help to change the Soviet Union. I went to a number of countries in Eastern Europe, before the Berlin Wall came down, and I was complimenting their courage. They said, ‘If that kid in China stood in front of those tanks, we can do what we are doing.’”40
27:10 We may never know his identity. Because of the intense censorship in China, if he’s alive, he may not even know what an impact he’s had. He may not be aware that anyone even saw his stand. In some ways, I think his anonymity is part of what makes him inspiring; not being able to see his face allows people to fill in the blank a little , and even maybe put themselves in his shoes. Anyone can stop a line of tanks.
27:36 Well, that’s the story of Tank Man! I hope you enjoyed this episode of Unruly Figures, I know it’s a little bit shorter than usual. I also know that it can be kind of unsatisfying to have a mystery never be solved, but I still enjoyed researching this episode and look forward to covering more stories from China. I hope you are looking forward to it too.
🎒Further Reading
The People’s Republic of Amnesia, Louisa Lim
The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement, Dingxin Zhao
The Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces, Jonathan Unger
📚Bibliography
Books
Zhao, Dingxin. The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Documentaries
PBS Frontline. Frontline: The Tank Man. PBS, 2006,
https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=fHMZmthg-Vk&ab_channel=FRONTLINEPBS%7COfficial.
Websites
“1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre: Death Toll.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#Death_toll.
“1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre: June 1-3.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#June_1%E2%80%933.
“1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre: June 3-4.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#June_3%E2%80%934.
“1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre: Naming.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#Naming.
“Cultural Revolution - Humanitarian Crisis.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Humanitarian_crisis.
History.com Editors. “Cultural Revolution.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 9 Nov. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/china/cultural-revolution.
“The Chinese Revolution of 1949.” U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/chinese-rev.
“Pronouncing the Names (Published 1989) - The New York Times.” The New York Times Archive, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/26/world/pronouncing-the-names.html.
“Tank Man: Identity and Fate.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#Identity_and_fate.
Unruly Figures is an affiliate with Bookshop.org. That just means that if you click one of the links above to buy something, I’ll receive a few cents from your purchase, but it won’t cost anything extra for you!
“The Chinese Revolution of 1949.” U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/chinese-rev.
I checked my pronunciations against an article in the New York Times called, “Pronouncing the Names.” “Pronouncing the Names (Published 1989) - The New York Times.” The New York Times Archive, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/26/world/pronouncing-the-names.html.
History.com Editors. “Cultural Revolution.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 9 Nov. 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/china/cultural-revolution.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
“Cultural Revolution - Humanitarian Crisis.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Humanitarian_crisis.
Zhao, Dingxin. The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Zhao, pg 63
Zhao, pg 147
Zhao, pg 148
Ibid.
Ibid.
Zhao, pg 147
Zhao, pg 149
Zhao, pg 148-149
Zhao, pg 155
PBS Frontline. Frontline: The Tank Man. PBS, 2006, https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=fHMZmthg-Vk&ab_channel=FRONTLINEPBS%7COfficial.
Zhao, pg 181
“1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre: June 1-3.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#June_1%E2%80%933.
“1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre: June 3-4.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#June_3%E2%80%934.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
“1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre: Death Toll.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#Death_toll.
Ibid.
Frontline: The Tank Man
Ibid.
Ibid.
“Tank Man: Identity and Fate.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#Identity_and_fate.
Ibid.
Frontline: The Tank Man
Ibid.
Ibid.
“1989 Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre: Naming.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#Naming.
Frontline: The Tank Man