This week is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Xu Qinxian told his friends, “I’d rather be beheaded than become history’s criminal.”
As Chinese netizens mark the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, many also celebrate Gen. Xu Qinxian as a voice of conscience in the military.
In 1989, Xu Qinxian refused to lead the 38th Grand Army against protestors in Tiananmen, and was subsequently stripped of party membership and jailed for five years. For two decades, no one knew what happened to him.