Tank Man
Tank Man is the nickname given to an unidentified individual, presumed to be a Chinese man, who stood in front of a column of Type 59 tanks on Chang'an Avenue near Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989. The confrontation occurred one day after the government of China forcibly cleared the square following six weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people, primarily in areas surrounding the square.
On the morning of June 5, a long column of tanks proceeded east along Chang'an Avenue after the military's clearing operations. A lone man carrying shopping bags stepped into the path of the lead tank and refused to move. When the tank attempted to steer around him, he repeatedly shifted positions to block its movement. The tanks came to a complete stop rather than run him over. The man then climbed onto the lead tank, where he appeared to speak with members of the PLA inside before returning to the road.
The moment was captured by international photographers and television crews watching from balconies and hotel rooms overlooking the avenue. Broadcast around the world, the scene quickly became one of the most iconic and widely recognized images of all time. Inside China, the image and the accompanying events are subject to censorship.
Multiple documentaries and exhibitions related to the Tiananmen protests highlight the tank confrontation, and the figure of "Tank Man" has become an enduring symbol of nonviolent resistance. The Sunday Express was the first to circulate the name "Wang Weilin" for the protester, though this identification has never been confirmed. His true identity and fate remain unknown, and various news organizations have reported different speculative names. In 2006, Frontline produced a detailed documentary focusing on the events surrounding the incident.
In April 1998, Time magazine included "The Unknown Rebel" in its list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Life magazine's 2003 book 100 Photos That Changed the World also featured the photographs of the tank confrontation. Despite the image's global status as a symbol of individual courage, the Chinese government continues to restrict the distribution and discussion of the photographs and the broader protests on the Internet.
Little reliable information exists regarding the identity or fate of either the protester or the crew of the lead tank. Witnesses have reported that other individuals also attempted to block the tank column at different points during the demonstrations.
Obstruction
At the northeast edge of Tiananmen Square, along Chang'an Avenue, shortly after noon on June 5, 1989, the day after the Chinese government's violent suppression of the Tiananmen protests, "Tank Man" stood in the middle of the wide avenue, directly in the path of a column of approaching Type 59 tanks. Stuart Franklin, who was on assignment for Time magazine, told The New York Times: "At some point, shots were fired and the tanks carried on down the road toward us, leaving Tiananmen Square behind, until blocked by a lone protester." He wore a white shirt and black trousers, and he held two shopping bags. As the tanks came to a stop, the man gestured at them with one of the 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, the lead tank stopped its engines, and the armored vehicles behind it followed 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 man is then seen briefly speaking with a second person who is riding his bicycle across the street in front of the stationary tanks, as they begin to start their engines again. It is unclear whether he is still seeking to obstruct the tanks.
At this point, the video footage shows two figures in blue running over to pull the man away and lead him to a nearby crowd; the tanks then continued on their way. Eyewitnesses are unsure who pulled him aside. Charlie Cole, who was there for Newsweek, claimed it was Chinese government agents, while Jan Wong, who was there for The Globe and Mail, thought that the men who pulled him away were concerned bystanders.
Identity and whereabouts
Little is publicly known of the man's identity or that of the commander of the lead tank. Shortly after the incident, the London newspaper 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." This claim has been refuted by internal Chinese Communist Party 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.Conflicting stories tell what happened to him after the demonstration. In a speech to the President's Club in 1999, Bruce Herschensohn, former deputy special assistant to US President Richard Nixon, said 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 media that they have "no idea who he was either" and that he is still alive on the mainland. Another theory is that he escaped to Taiwan and got a job as an archaeologist at the National Palace Museum. This was first reported by Yonhap News of South Korea.
The Chinese government has made few statements about the incident or the people involved. The government denounced him as a "scoundrel" once on state television, but the segment was never shown publicly again. In a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters, Jiang Zemin, then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, was asked what became of the man. Jiang first said, "I can't confirm whether this young man you mentioned was arrested or not", and then replied in English, "I think never killed." The government also argued that the incident evidenced the "humanity" of the country's military.
In a 2000 interview with Mike Wallace, Jiang said, "He was never arrested." He then stated, "I don't know where he is now." He also emphasized that the tank stopped and did not run the young man over.
In July 2017, it was reported by Apple Daily that the Tank Man's real name may be Zhang Weimin, a native of Shijingshan, Beijing, who was 24 years old in 1989. The man who gave the story claimed that he was in the same cell with Zhang in Beijing Yanqing Prison. The verdict stated that he struck a tank with a brick and was initially sentenced to life imprisonment, which was later reduced to 20 years. After winning an award at Yanqing Prison, he was released on parole in 2007. After his release, however, he had no relatives or housing and developed a gambling habit. A few years later, he was imprisoned at Kenhua Prison, and his sentence was increased by two years. According to the article, Zhang was still being held in the 11th division of Kenhua Prison, and at the time of the article's publication he was expected to be released shortly.
Censorship
In 2006, a PBS interview of six experts observed 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 photograph 16 years later, they were "genuinely mystified". One of the students said that the image was "artwork".It has been suggested that the "Unknown Rebel", if still alive, may be unaware of his international recognition.
After the events in the square, the local public security bureau treated members of the international press roughly, confiscating and destroying all the film they could find, and forced journalists to sign confessions to offenses such as photography during martial law, punishable by long imprisonment.
On August 20, 2020, a trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War showed footage of Tank Man. On video platforms in China like Bilibili, the segment of the trailer was replaced with a black screen. The next day, Activision Blizzard released a shorter version of the trailer worldwide that did not include the scene.
On June 4, 2021, the 32nd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, searches for the Tank Man image and videos were censored by Microsoft's Bing search engine worldwide. Hours after Microsoft acknowledged the issue, the search returned only pictures of tanks elsewhere in the world. Search engines that license results from Microsoft such as DuckDuckGo and Yahoo faced similar issues. Microsoft said the issue was "due to an accidental human error." The director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, said the idea that it was an inadvertent error is "hard to believe". David Greene, Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that content moderation was impossible to do perfectly and "egregious mistakes are made all the time", but, he further elaborated, "At worst, this was purposeful suppression at the request of a powerful state."