For anyone else that is interested in what came of him:
Xu was expelled from the CCP and sentenced to five years in prison. He lived the rest of his life exiled from Beijing and died in 2021 at the age of 85.
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
For anyone else that is interested in what came of him:
Xu was expelled from the CCP and sentenced to five years in prison. He lived the rest of his life exiled from Beijing and died in 2021 at the age of 85.
A much happier ending than I expected.
No kidding. If this happened in North Korea the trial would have lasted 15 minutes and the execution would have been a public spectacle.
Can't make a public spectacle of something that "never happened".
You're clearly not well-practiced at doublethink.
In Qing Dynasty, the entire family and close relatives would've gotten publicly executed.
Yay CCP is slightly less cruel than a medieval monarch
Somebody did something to make thing better, we need to do it again
(Xinhai Revolution 2025 Edition)
Sometimes I day dream how cool free China would actually be
If I'm understanding correctly he was a general. He was powerful enough to merely be court martialed. I doubt the same mercy extended very often to individual soldiers who refused orders.
Good man. Too bad China kills good people. It's a horrible empire.
It seems like all empires are horrible to me. Humans suck, especially when they have power
Yeah.
There’s lots of instances throughout history that prove that humans with power suck.
I like to think that it’s because nice people aren’t the type to accumulate power rather than power corrupts nice people who do get power.
I think we make the mistake of letting people govern groups of people that they are too distant from to care about. Leaders are essential, but they have to care about the people they lead. I dont think its actually possible to care about people a thousand miles away the same way as the people in your community. I think this is why the largest countries that are controlled by the fewest people have the most problems. Its a delegation issue essentially.
Power corrupts insecure people
A good point. Though I was surprised to read this particular dissident only got 5 years in prison and exile from Beijing.
Seems like standard procedure to higher ups in China. They did something similar to Xi Jinping‘s father when he spoke out against a violent solution for the protests. Too bad Xi learned all the wrong lesson‘s from his dad‘s political exile.
Did they kill him?
He went to prison for 5 years and then lived into his 80s.
They killed him in the slowest way possible 😔
We put him in the time machine but it only goes forwards at normal speed!
I build a time machine that allows you to travel into the future at 60 seconds per minute.
With a clear continence.
Too bad China kills good people.
He wasn't killed, he was court marshalled and released five years later. He died in '21 at the ripe old age of 85
Don't worry, I've been told by users that it didn't happen, and that if it did, it wasn't what we saw, and it wasn't that bad, and that, if it was, they deserved it.
It is really crazy that this weird china apologism is so common here.
Its the type of shit you'd expect to see more on reddit, but instead its on lemmy way more.
It's all AI anyway. If you saw tank man before, you are being lied to by western propaganda.
Ai in 1989 was so advanced lol
That's what the CIA is trying to hide! Don't fall for it!
Imagine if 2020 had AI becoming this popular.
Pretty sure there would be conspiracy theories that accuse the George Floyd's murder video of being "AI"
The future is so cooked.
Thats my take on them as well.
General Xu was 100% correct. The entire CCP and high ranking PLA officers should have been thrown into a courtroom and sent to prison for murder.
Qinxian made a decision that saved countless lives, much like Arkhipov in the 60s.
Modern journalism headline
Time to change some of my challenge responses on some of my equipment to include him as the greatest chinese citizen. I have the standard remember Tiananmen Square response. Always fun to let them port scan and attempt to brute force with those responses.