20 years ago today.

Martin, you couldn't be more correct.

Indeed. Thanks for the reminder of what we hoped at the time would be a seminal moment for the Chinese people.

Coincidentally, I'm about two-thirds of the way through a very interesting (and disturbing) book: "The Private Life of Chairman Mao." Highly recommend. The author was Mao Zedong's personal physician from 1954 until Mao's death in 1976.

More than the title suggests, the book offers much insight into the policies of that era and the Chinese leadership other than Mao, such as Deng Xiaoping, who was instrumental in the brutal suppression of the unarmed demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

http://www.amazon.com/Private-Life-Chair...2851&sr=1-1

Mao alarmed the Soviets in the 1950s when he told Soviet leaders that China could easily withstand the loss of tens of millions of its people in the event of a nuclear war. Thus, MAD was not a deterrent to him.

I cannot imagine standing like that, by myself, to block those tanks. I wonder whatever happened to that man?

He probably escaped to the west only to be run down by a soccer mom in a SUV.
I have no love for HUMMERS,either for military use or civilain. but look who we sold it too.
And now that your moderators have stepped close to the edge of our rules- please, temper all comments.

There was an article I JUST read the other day about him, I believe;he was either exiled to Taiwan, or migrated to the US, IIRC. There were two stories; one about that guy above & one about the student leader. I dont recall which was which.

Seven or eight years ago I spent July 4th wandering around Tiananmen Square and then walking through the Forbidding City.

Lots of guards. Lots of folks flying kites. Mostly tourists like me. Still, overall, it was pretty empty. I wondered if many locals just don't go there.

It was a very emotional experience having watched the uprising via television.

Same here. I was a junior in college when I watched this go down. I remember the Chinese grad students in a frenzy trying to pass information back to their friends in China as the news there had been blocked out...

I never would have guessed fifteen years later I'd be there.


It's probably a good thing that DW wouldn't let me bring along a line of toy tanks to re-create the scene...

-Blast

I'm going to be honest.

I can't say that I would have the courage to do the same.

20 years later we don't know for sure what his fate was, or even what his name was. I do know this:

We should all hope we can do as well in the same position.

i was out in the woods for this,when i got got back and saw all the re-runs of the tank man my first thought was that sooner or later things would work out in China because anyplace else--right here included--they would have run him right over..

Several experts in the history and culture of the USSR pointed out two points about that event and the picture. First, the event was and has not been widely advertised within China. As of a few years ago a random check of a few dozen Chinese the above picture had never been seen before.

Second, that picture had a profound effect ... within the USSR. The idea, and clear evidence, that an individual, using just the force of morality and humanity alone, could stand up to the power of the state was perhaps the final straw that made the fall of the USSR inevitable. Once the word gets out that soldiers are people, that they will hesitate to kill unarmed civilians, that moral persuasion not only works but is something a person might get away with, the end is near for totalitarianism.

Another point that I thing need to be made is that people need to look at the story behind the attack on the Universalist Unitarian, UU, church. Faced with an armed attacker intent on murder the unarmed people rushed him and disarmed him.

Anyone who tells you you absolutely have to meet lethal force with lethal force has no idea what they are talking about. An unarmed man can stop a column of tanks. A small number of men can stop a gunman. But first you have to stop being afraid and stop thinking it is the weapon that makes a man powerful.