A man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 4, 1989, the morning after the Chinese
military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force, became known as
the Tank Man or Unknown Protester.
The tanks manoeuvred to pass by the man, and he moved to continue to obstruct them, in
something like a dance.
The incident was filmed and seen worldwide.
There is no reliable information about the identity or fate of the tank man.
Some have said he was Wang Weilin.
The incident The incident took place near Tiananmen on
Chang'an Avenue, which runs east-west along the north end of Tiananmen Square in Beijing,
China, on June 4, 1989, one day after the Chinese government's violent crackdown on
the Tiananmen protests.
The man stood in the middle of the wide avenue, directly in the path of a column of approaching
Type 59 tanks.
He wore a white shirt and black trousers, and held two shopping bags, one in each hand.
As the tanks came to a stop, the man gestured towards the tanks with his bags.
In response, the lead tank attempted to drive around the man, but the man repeatedly stepped
into the path of the tank in a show of nonviolent action.
After repeatedly attempting to go around rather than crush the man, the lead tank stopped
its engines, and the armored vehicles behind it seemed to follow suit.
There was a short pause with the man and the tanks having reached a quiet, still impasse.
Having successfully brought the column to a halt, the man climbed onto the hull of the
buttoned-up lead tank and, after briefly stopping at the driver's hatch, appeared in video footage
of the incident to call into various ports in the tank's turret.
He then climbed atop the turret and seemed to have a short conversation with a crew member
at the gunner's hatch.
After ending the conversation, the man descended from the tank.
The tank commander briefly emerged from his hatch, and the tanks restarted their engines,
ready to continue on.
At that point, the man, who was still standing within a meter or two from the side of the
lead tank, leapt in front of the vehicle once again and quickly re-established the man–tank
standoff.
Video footage shows two figures in blue pulling the man away and disappearing with him into
a nearby crowd; the tanks continued on their way.
Eyewitnesses are unsure who pulled him aside.
Charlie Cole said it was the Chinese government PSB, while Jan Wong thought that the men who
pulled him away were concerned bystanders.
In April 1998, Time included the "Unknown Rebel" in a feature titled Time 100: The Most
Important People of the Century.
Identity and fate Little is publicly known of the man's identity
or that of the commander of the lead tank.
Shortly after the incident, the British tabloid the Sunday Express named him as Wang Weilin,
a 19-year-old student who was later charged with "political hooliganism" and "attempting
to subvert members of the People's Liberation Army".
However, this claim has been rejected by internal Communist Party of China documents, which
reported that they could not find the man, according to the Hong Kong-based Information
Center for Human Rights.
One party member was quoted as saying, "We can’t find him.
We got his name from journalists.
We have checked through computers but can’t find him among the dead or among those in
prison."
Numerous theories have sprung up as to the man's identity and current whereabouts.
There are several conflicting stories about what happened to him after the demonstration.
In a speech to the President's Club in 1999, Bruce Herschensohn, former deputy special
assistant to President Richard Nixon, reported that he was executed 14 days later; other
sources say he was executed by firing squad a few months after the Tiananmen Square protests.
In Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, Jan Wong writes that she believes
from her interactions with the government press that they have "no idea who he was either,"
and that he's still alive somewhere on the mainland.
The government of the People's Republic of China has made few statements about the incident
or the people involved.
In a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters, then-CPC General Secretary Jiang Zemin was
asked what became of the man.
Jiang first stated, "I can't confirm whether this young man you mentioned was arrested
or not," and then replied in English, "I think...never killed" [sic].
At the time, the party's propaganda apparatus referred to the incident as showing the "humanity"
of the country's military.
International notability and censorship Internationally, the image of the lone man
in front of the tank has come to symbolize the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and
is widely considered one of the most iconic images of the 20th century.
However, a PBS interview of six experts noted that the memory of the Tiananmen Square protests
appears to have faded in China, especially among younger Chinese people, due to government
censorship.
Images of the protest on the internet have been censored in China.
When undergraduate students at Beijing University, which was at the center of the incident, were
shown copies of the iconic photograph some years afterwards, they "were genuinely mystified."
One of the students said that the image was "artwork."
It is noted in the documentary Frontline: The Tank Man, that he whispered to the student
next to him "89"—which led the interviewer to surmise that the student may have concealed
his knowledge of the event.
It has been suggested that the "Unknown Rebel", if still alive, never made himself known as
he is unaware of his international recognition due to Chinese media suppression of events
relating to government protest.
At and after the events in the square the PSB treated members of the international press
roughly, confiscated and destroyed all the film they could find, and forced the signing
of confessions to offences such as photographing during martial law, punishable by long imprisonment.
Photographic versions Five photographers managed to capture the
event on film which was not confiscated by the PSB.
On June 4, 2009, another photographer released an image of the scene taken from ground level.
The widest coverage of the event, and one of the best-known photographs of the event
as it appeared in Time and Life was documented by Stuart Franklin.
He was on the same balcony as Charlie Cole, and his roll of film was smuggled out of the
country by a French student, concealed in a box of tea.
The most-used photograph of the event was taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press,
from a sixth-floor balcony of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile away from the scene.
Widener was injured and suffering from flu.
The image was taken using a Nikon FE2 camera through a Nikkor 400mm 5.6 ED IF lens and
TC-301 teleconverter.
Widener was running out of film; a friend hastily obtained a roll of Fuji 100 ASA color
negative film, allowing him to make the shot.
Though he was concerned that his shots were not good, his image was syndicated to many
newspapers around the world, and was said to have appeared on the front page of all
European papers.
Charlie Cole, working for Newsweek and on the same balcony as Stuart Franklin, hid his
roll of film containing Tank Man in a Beijing Hotel toilet, sacrificing an unused roll of
film and undeveloped images of wounded protesters after the PSB raided his room, destroyed the
two rolls of film just mentioned and forced him to sign a confession to photographing
during martial law, an imprisonable offence.
Cole was able to retrieve the roll and have it sent to Newsweek.
Franklin won a World Press Award for a similar photo.
It was featured in Life's "100 Photographs That Changed the World" in 2003.
On June 4, 2009, in connection with the 20th anniversary of the protests, Associated Press
reporter Terril Jones revealed a photo he had taken showing the Tank Man from ground
level, a different angle from all of the other known photos of the Tank Man.
Jones wrote that he was not aware of what he had captured until a month later when printing
his photos.
Arthur Tsang Hin Wah of Reuters took several shots from room 1111 of the Beijing Hotel,
but only the shot of Tank Man climbing the tank was chosen.
It was not until several hours later that the photo of the man standing in front of
the tank was finally chosen.
When the staff noticed Widener's work, they re-checked Wah's negative to see if it was
of the same moment as Widener's.
Later, on March 20, 2013, in an interview by the Hong Kong Press Photographers Association,
Wah told the story and added further detail.
He told HKPPA that on the night of June 3, 1989, he was beaten by students while taking
photos and was bleeding.
A "foreign" photographer accompanying him suddenly said "I am not gonna die for your
country" and left.
Wah returned to the hotel.
When he decided to go out again, the public security stopped him, so he stayed in his
room, stood next to the window and eventually witnessed the Tank Man and took several shots
on June 5, 1989.
The scene was also recorded by crews from the BBC and CNN and transmitted across the
world.
One witness reported seeing Chinese tanks crushing vehicles and people early on June
4, the day before the "tank man" incident.
Dramatizations A fictionalized version of the fate of both
the Tank Man and a soldier in the tank is told in Lucy Kirkwood's 2013 play Chimerica.
See also Chinese democracy movement
History of the People's Republic of China Human rights in the People's Republic of China
List of peace activists References
Notes
Further reading June Fourth: The True Story, Tian'anmen Papers/Zhongguo
Liusi Zhenxiang Volumes 1–2, Zhang Liang, ISBN 962-8744-36-4.
Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, Jan Wong, Doubleday, 1997, trade paperback,
416 pages, ISBN 0-385-48232-9 The Tiananmen Papers, The Chinese Leadership's
Decision to Use Force Against their Own People—In their Own Words, Compiled by Zhang Liang,
Edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, with an afterword by Orville Schell, PublicAffairs,
New York, 2001, hardback, 514 pages, ISBN 1-58648-012-X An extensive review and synopsis
of The Tiananmen papers in the journal Foreign Affairs may be found at Review and synopsis
in the journal Foreign Affairs.
External links "Behind the scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen",
with link to video of the incident.
The Stuart Franklin photo at Life magazine 100 photos that changed the world.
(Chinese) Professor disclosed heroic Wang Weilin still in world, dajiyuan.com.
Retrieved June 1, 2006.
PBS Frontline documentary "The Tank Man", 2006, Program viewable online.
Last Retrieved July 29, 2008.
The Tank Man documentary, viewable online.
Time 100: The Unknown Rebel, Time, 1999