becaues it's extremely embarassing to have some kid block a tank line that long, especialy when the tanks have a job to do, so they got even, the chinesse government has kid more people for less of a cause any ways.

then that would be good evidence to help prove my original statement, that they killed him after they took him away.

I think it would be much easier and send a stronger message by running him over, since supposedly, they were going to kill hundreds in the Tiananmen Square anyway.

There are a lot of Chinese people who have embarrassed Beijing a lot more are still alive.


My argument did not provide any evidence as to whether he is still alive. At best, it might suggest the possibility that he is dead, either due to natural cause or the government's wrong-doing. But if that's what you want to believe, so be it.

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What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. --CHL

remember that the world was watching tienemin square, running him over would be extremly barbaric and it would hurt relations with every country that saw it.

the onlt 2 people that i can remember off hand is the head of the pharmacutical industry in china who was caught accepting bribes, he was exocuted. and the ma who threw black paint over a portrait of mao ze dong, he was released from prison a year ago i think.

It's Tian-an-men If Beijing cared about its image, wouldn't it be better to keep him alive? I don't see any benefit of killing him. Killing him secretly would send no message to anyone else who intended to do it again, and it wouldn't save Beijing's face either. Killing him openly would tarnish Beijing's image. It's not like that he posed an imminent threat to Beijing's rule once he was taken away. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, most people Beijing has executed were due to their criminal acts. Are you aware of a case where a political dissident was executed in China if it's not accompanied by another criminal acts (such as manslaughter, explosion, arson etc.)?

IIRC, he was executed partly for the large amount of bribes he has taken, but more importantly, because of these bribes, he greenlit a lot of drugs which should not be on the market (some went on sale abroad). This caused deaths and much more severe diplomatic and image problems than the tank man ever inflicted.

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What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. --CHL

LostInTranslation, you are my idol!

Well China is still waaaay behind on civil rights for its citizens. A quick look at the constitution of china shows how backwards it is on civil rights, ie the state is protected from the people rather then the people protected from the state.

All this leads to mistrust from within and without the Chinese mainland. We can;t trust anything Chinese media says because well its state owned, and any independent media that gets around at all in china are censored to the point where for outsiders most info is useless.

I hate the idea of giving nations that suck as bad as China does at civil rights the olympics but it does give us the opportunity to push them in the right direction and maybe see a bit more of the real china from sources we can trust.

Supposedly China is opening up to foreign journalists this summer for the Olympics hopefully the hold to that promise.

I thought that after Mao's cleansings executions were frowned upon by even the Chinese state much less its people. I thought the pretty much throw people away in prisons for life and at that point whatever happens happens and its not state sanctioned?