To justify the repression of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations on June 4, 1989, pro-Chinese government Internet users claim that the majority of people who died that day were soldiers, killed during clashes with demonstrators. However, Chinese government archives show the opposite.

Published on: 05/06/2026 - 19:11

37 years ago, on the night of June 3 to 4, 1989, Chinese authorities ordered the evacuation of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, then occupied by students and workers demonstrating for political reforms. The repression carried out by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) was bloody. The armed forces opened fire and used armored vehicles against protesters in the streets near the square.

In China, as American Secretary of State Marc Rubio denounced in a press release on Wednesday June 3, the memory of the massacre is the subject of censorship: the event is not mentioned in history books and its mention is also hidden in Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like Deepseek.

On foreign social networks like X or Facebook, or through information blogs, the Tiananmen repression is however the target of disinformation from Internet users supporting the Chinese government. They claim that the massacre was ultimately not that of civilians by the Chinese army, but on the contrary that of courageous soldiers murdered by "rioters".

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Nury Vittachi, another pro-government influencer based in Hong Kong, who every June 4 publishes disinformation about the Tiananmen massacre, claims that "most of the victims were not students but soldiers."

However, these assertions are erroneous.

Archives that contradict the narrative of pro-Beijing influencers

It is correct that PLA soldiers probably died during clashes with protesters, as confirmed by the author of the iconic photo of the "Tank Man", this demonstrator who opposed the advance of a column of tanks.

But Chinese government records show that the number of military personnel killed was far lower than the number of civilian victims of the massacre.

According to a report published on July 18, 1989 in the "Bulletin of the State Council of the People's Republic of China", a government publication available on the Chinese government website, "several dozen" "martial law soldiers" and police and public security officers died during the massacre.

However, according to this same report, the "non-military" victims of June 4 amount to "more than 200". The official figures provided by the Chinese government therefore confirm that the losses of soldiers did not form the majority, or even only half, of the number of victims.

The real number of deaths during the Tiananmen repression is difficult to establish, but NGOs and historians agree that the official toll of civilian victims is underestimated: according to sources, it is between several hundred and 10,000 victims, estimates again much higher than the official number of soldiers killed. The Mothers of Tiananmen association has also undertaken work to identify the deceased and established a list – not definitive – of 202 names. This list, which mentions the profession of the deceased, is mainly made up of non-military personnel.

A new pro-government narrative

As explained in an article published on June 1 by researchers at Air University, an establishment linked to the American army, the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to rewrite the memory of Tiananmen have entered a “new phase”. Instead of erasing the memory of the massacre through censorship, the CCP's propaganda has since 2022 undertaken to portray the PLA soldiers as the "real heroes of Tiananmen".

The exaggeration of the number of soldiers killed therefore contributes to a reversal of victimization. This Thursday, June 4, 2026, numerous publications in Chinese commemorated the date of the massacre as being that of a sacrifice by PLA soldiers against “domestic terrorism”. The action of the soldiers would have avoided the advent of a “color revolution”, that is to say the supposed installation of a democratic regime led by foreigners.

“This story is aimed at the domestic population and apparently marks a new confidence: decades of censorship have created a blank page on which the Chinese Communist Party can begin to build a new collective national memory and a new narrative” without challenge, believes the Air Academy.

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