Unlike other vital Tiananmen Massacre documentaries (like Tiananmen: The People vs.The Party and Moving the Mountain), Tank Man largely focuses on events outside the Square, but that rather makes sense, considering the Tank Man was blocking tanks on the Boulevard leading out of the Square. In fact, one of the eye-opening aspects of Thomas’s report is the carnage that resulted when the PLA strafed apartment buildings around Muxidi Bridge with combat-grade ammunition.
Consequently, Thomas’s talking heads suggest the majority of killings happened at barricades set up by average working-class citizens to protect the students in the Square. Yet, the most senseless murders were those of groups of parents mowed down by the PLA, who had come to the Square desperate to find their children.
Thomas and company fully explain the circumstances surrounding the historic film of Tank Man and how determined the state security apparatus was to prevent it airing in the international media. They also establish how thoroughly blocked all images of the protests are on the Chinese internet—as well as the culpability of Western tech firms like Microsoft, Cisco, and Yahoo in aiding and abetting the CCP’s censorship.
Thomas also spends a good deal of time examining the vast economic disparities between the urban super-rich and the rural underclass. They make valid points regarding the inequality of China’s economic growth, which has been used to justify the Party’s ironclad grip on power post-Massacre, but it sort of distracts from sheer courage and abject horror of the events of 1989.
