When China’s rulers ordered tens of thousands of soldiers to crush pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989, Gen. Xu Qinxian was the commander who famously said no.

1989年，当中国统治者下令数万士兵镇压北京的民主示威活动时，徐勤先将军以拒绝执行命令而闻名。

He refused to lead his troops into the capital to help clear the protesters in Tiananmen Square by armed force. For decades, the story of his defiance remained murky.

他拒绝率领部队开进首都，以武力清剿天安门广场的抗议者。几十年来，他的反抗故事一直鲜为人知。

Now, a leaked video of his secret court-martial has shed a rare light on General Xu, and on the tensions inside the military as Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader at the time, prepared to send the soldiers into Beijing. That deployment culminated in the killing of hundreds — by some estimates, thousands — of unarmed people on June 3 and 4 as soldiers fired on protesters and bystanders.

如今，一段泄露的秘密军事法庭审判视频罕见地揭开了徐勤先的真实面貌，也展现了当时军队内部的紧张局势——时任中国最高领导人邓小平正准备向北京派遣军队。这一部署的高潮发生在6月3日和4日，士兵向抗议者和旁观者开枪，杀死了数百名手无寸铁的人（根据某些估计达到数千人）。

In the trial footage, General Xu explains that he refused the order as a matter of individual conscience and professional judgment. He tells judges that sending armed troops against civilians would lead to chaos and bloodshed, saying that a commander who carried out martial law poorly would go down as “a sinner in history.”

在审判录像中，徐勤先解释说，他拒绝命令是出于个人良心和职业判断。他告诉法官，派遣武装部队对抗平民会导致混乱和流血，并说执行戒严令不力的指挥官将成为“历史罪人”。

General Xu had risen from a family of small-time vendors to command the 38th Group Army, one of the military’s most prestigious units. But by the time of his court-martial in 1990, captured in the video, he had been stripped of his command, charged with disobeying martial law orders, and brought before the judges to defend the decision that abruptly ended his career.

徐勤先出身小贩家庭，却一路晋升至第38集团军司令——最负盛名的部队之一。但在1990年的军事法庭上，他被剥夺指挥权，被控违反戒严令，并且要在法官面前，为这个突然结束他职业生涯的决定辩护。

The six-hour video of the trial shows General Xu, in drab civilian clothes, entering a courtroom, guarded by three soldiers. Three judges gaze down from a podium. The courtroom is devoid of spectators.

长达六小时的审判录像显示，徐勤先穿着朴素便服，在三名士兵的看守下进入法庭。三位法官端坐审判席俯视全场。法庭中没有观众。

General Xu does not beg for mercy. Instead, he tersely lays out why he refused to comply.

徐勤先没有乞求宽恕。相反，他简洁地列出了他拒绝服从的原因。

“I said that whoever carries this out well could be a hero,” he tells the judges, “and I said that whoever carries this out poorly would become a sinner in history.”

他对法官们说：“执行这样的任务可能立功，也可能成为历史罪人。”

It is almost unheard of for such footage, describing internal decision-making and dissent within the Chinese military, to become public, and discussion of the 1989 crackdown is still heavily censored in China. The video, which has been shared on YouTube, a platform blocked in China, has drawn intense interest, with more than a million views on one channel alone.

这类描述中国军队内部决策和异议的录像非常罕见，而且关于1989年镇压的讨论在中国仍然受到严格审查。这段视频在中国被屏蔽的YouTube平台上分享，引起了人们的强烈兴趣，仅一个频道的观看量就超过了100万次。

“It is one thing to read about General Xu taking a stand and following his conscience. It is another to see him sitting in such a vulnerable position in court,” said Jeremy Brown, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada who wrote a history of the Tiananmen protests and crackdown. “To see Xu explain how he decided to refuse to follow a bad order from his well-informed military perspective forces the observer to think: ‘What would I do in this situation?’”

“读到徐将军秉持良知挺身而出的报道是一回事，亲眼目睹他在法庭上如此脆弱的姿态则是另一回事，”加拿大西蒙弗雷泽大学教授周杰荣(Jeremy Brown)表示。他曾撰写过天安门事件抗议与镇压的历史著作。“当看到徐勤先从深入的军事专业视角阐述拒绝执行错误命令的抉择时，观者不禁会自问：‘如果身处同样情况，我将如何抉择？’”

General Xu tells the judges that he was speaking only for himself, not for the 38th Army, in refusing the order.

徐勤先告诉法官，他拒绝命令只是代表他自己，而不是代表38军。

His account, along with the testimony of other generals cited by the judges and prosecutor at his trial, provides new insights into how Chinese leaders secretively developed and conveyed the plans for martial law and tried to stifle misgivings in the People’s Liberation Army.

他的陈述，以及法官和检察官在审判中引用的其他将军的证词，为中国领导人如何秘密制定和传达戒严令计划，并试图消除人民解放军的疑虑提供了新的视角。

General Xu, perhaps like other generals, was summoned individually to hear the orders. It may have been an effort to prevent them from sharing any concerns, said Wu Renhua, an independent historian from China who now lives in Taiwan. Mr. Wu, who has written several studies of the 1989 pro-democracy uprising and crackdown, also noted that General Xu’s trial showed how the martial law orders were delivered orally, leaving no paper trail.

徐勤先也许和其他将军一样，被单独召见听取命令。现居台湾的中国独立历史学家吴仁华说，这可能是为了防止他们相互交流自己的疑虑。吴仁华撰写过若干关于1989年民主起义和镇压的研究，他还指出，徐勤先的审判表明，戒严令是口头下达的，没有留下任何书面记录。

“This counts as the most important material I have come across in over 30 years of collecting material on June 4,” Mr. Wu said of the trial video.

“这可以说是我30多年收集六四资料当中所见到的最重要的一份，”吴仁华在谈到庭审视频时说。

“General Xu Qinxian’s insubordination was a pivotal event in the June Fourth events, but many details remained unclear before this footage emerged,” said Mr. Wu, who as a young scholar in Beijing went to Tiananmen Square in 1989 to join the protests.

“徐勤先将军抗命的事件，在整个六四事件当中是一个非常重大的事件，但是很多细节，这个录像出来之前的都是不明了的，尤其是关于戒严的决定，”吴仁华说。1989年，身为年轻学者的他曾前往天安门广场参与抗议活动。

Mr. Wu was among the people who posted the video online, but said he did so only after seeing that others had. He said he had been given the video by a trustworthy source, whose identity he declined to reveal, and that he checked details carefully to confirm that the footage was authentic. Professor Brown and another historian of the Tiananmen protests, Timothy Brook, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, also said they saw no reason to doubt the authenticity of the video.

吴仁华是在网上发布视频的人之一，但他说他是在看到其他人上传之后才跟进的。他说，他从一个值得信赖的消息来源那里得到这段视频，但他拒绝透露此人的身份。他还说，他仔细检查了细节，以确认视频的真实性。周杰荣及另一位研究天安门事件的历史学家、不列颠哥伦比亚大学名誉教授卜正民(Timothy Brook)均表示，他们认为该视频真实可信。

The trial centers on a tense meeting between General Xu and his commanders on May 18, 1989. For weeks, students had occupied Tiananmen Square, demanding political liberalization. China’s top leader, Deng, wanted a decisive end to the tumult.

审判的焦点集中于1989年5月18日徐勤先和他的指挥官们的一场紧张的会议。当时学生们已经占领天安门广场几个星期，要求政治自由化。中国最高领导人邓小平想要果断地结束这场骚乱。

General Xu was in a hospital, recovering from a kidney stone, when he was summoned to the Beijing Military Region headquarters. China’s leaders had decided to impose martial law, and General Xu was being ordered to send about 15,000 armed troops from the 38th Army — an elite force based about 90 miles from Beijing — to be part of an initial force of 50,000.

正因肾结石住院治疗的徐勤先被叫到北京军区总部。中国领导人已经决定实施戒严令，徐勤先奉命从38军——一支驻扎在距离北京约150公里的精锐部队——派出大约1.5万名武装官兵，作为最初的5万人部队的一部分。

“I said that I had disagreements about this,” General Xu told the court, referring to the martial law order. The protests should be resolved mainly through political means, not by force, he said. If the central government ordered troops in, they should be deployed only to Beijing’s outskirts.

“我说这个事情我有不同意见，”徐勤先对法庭说，他指的是戒严令。他说，抗议活动应该主要通过政治手段解决，而不是武力。如果中央政府命令军队进驻，应该只部署在北京的郊区。

General Xu acknowledged that the 38th Army would have to comply. But he did not want to be part of the operation, he told the commanders.

徐勤先承认38军必须服从命令。但他告诉指挥官，他不想参与这次行动。

“I said to them that my superiors can appoint me, and they can also dismiss me,” he recounted in court, seeming to indicate that he was willing to lose his job over his decision.

“当时我说，我说上级可以任我，也可以免我，”他在法庭上叙述道，似乎表明他愿意因为自己的决定付出丢掉职位的代价。

One of the generals at the meeting, Dai Jingsheng, told investigators that he and his colleagues went silent for about a minute while they absorbed General Xu’s defiance. “Nobody expected words like this from Xu,” said General Dai, according to the testimony.

会议上的一位将军戴敬生告诉调查人员，他和同事们沉默了大约一分钟，徐勤先的反抗让他们一时没回过神来。“没想到徐会说这些话，”戴敬生在证词中说。

Under questioning, General Xu acknowledged that the military answered to China’s Communist Party leaders. But he suggested that it should also be subject to a broader authority.

在质询之下，徐勤先承认军队听命于中国共产党领导人。但他表示，军队也应该受到更广泛的权威的约束。

He told the commanders that an order so momentous should first be discussed more widely among senior party and government officials and — crucially, perhaps — by the National People’s Congress, the legislature that some moderates in the party also hoped would step in to halt the slide toward carnage.

他对指挥官们说，如此重大的命令，首先应该在党政高级官员之间进行更广泛的讨论，最关键的是，也许应该由全国人民代表大会进行讨论。一些党内温和派人士也希望全国人民代表大会能够介入，阻止事态滑向屠杀。

To support his case, General Xu said the People’s Liberation Army had been “incorporated into the state system” and so answered not only to party leaders, but to the government and lawmakers. (Communist Party leaders, especially Xi Jinping, have since condemned the idea of a “national” military as a threat to the party’s control of the armed forces.)

为了支持自己的观点，徐勤先说，解放军已经“纳入国家体制”，因此不仅对党的领导人负责，也应对政府和立法者负责。（此后中共领导人——尤其是习近平——谴责“国家军队”理念威胁了党对武装力量的控制。）

General Xu “seemed to believe that there was a possibility that his expression of concern would go up the food chain to higher levels that would essentially pump the brakes on martial law,” said Joseph Torigian, a historian of the Chinese Communist Party at American University in Washington who has examined the trial video.

徐勤先“似乎相信，他表达的担忧有可能会上升到更高层，从根本上踩下戒严令的刹车，”华盛顿美利坚大学研究中国共产党的历史学家唐志学(Joseph Torigian)看过审判录像后说。

“The trial reveals, I think, that there was a sense even within the military that conversation, dialogue, to try to win over the students — that option had not been exhausted,” Mr. Torigian said.

唐志学说：“我认为，这次审判表明，甚至在军方内部也有一种感觉，通过对话争取学生支持的途径尚未穷尽。”

General Xu seemed to wrestle with how far to take his dissent.

徐勤先似乎在纠结该将异议表达到何种程度。

Pressured by his commanders during the Beijing meeting, he relayed the martial law orders to a 38th Army colleague in a phone call, but also told him that he did not want to participate. He later called one of the commanders who had passed on the orders, repeating that he did not want to be involved. The next day, after a 38th Army officer beseeched General Xu to stay with the army if it went into Beijing, he said he would. But by then, it was too late to change course.

在北京会议期间，迫于指挥官的压力，他在电话中向38军的一位同事转达了戒严令，但同时告知对方自己不愿参与。后来，他打电话给一名下达命令的指挥官，重申自己不想参与其中。第二天，一名军官恳求徐勤先若部队进京务必随行。徐勤先表示同意。但到那时，改变态度为时已晚。

“This is intolerable,” one vice chairman of the Chinese military said of General Xu’s actions, according to the trial testimony. Senior leaders cut off his contact with 38th Army officers, and he was later detained.

“这是不能容忍的，”根据审判证词，中国军方的一位副主席在谈到徐勤先的行为时说。高层领导人切断了他与38军军官的联系，他后来被拘留。

Under a new commander, the 38th Army became notorious for its bloody advance into Beijing, shooting bystanders as well as people who resisted.

在新指挥官的领导下，38军以向北京进军的血腥行动而臭名昭著，不仅射杀抵抗者，连路人也不放过。

General Xu was sentenced to five years in prison, and he died in 2021 at 85. Parts of his story surfaced in books and news reports. In 2011, he told a Hong Kong newspaper that he had no regrets about his decision.

徐勤先被判处五年徒刑，他于2021年去世，享年85岁。他的部分故事出现在书籍和新闻报道中。2011年，他对一家香港报纸表示，对自己的决定并不后悔。