Shocking Historic Leak: 10 Revelations from the Secret Trial of the PLA General Who Defied Tiananmen Martial Law
This leak of the full six-hour video from high-level secret archives is one of the most serious breaches in CCP history, suggesting an internal rebellion.
On November 24, 2025, a six-hour video recording of a secret military court trial, long sealed and still classified at the highest level of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was suddenly uploaded to the internet.
The defendant in this extraordinary trial was Xu Qinxian. He is the former commander of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) 38th Group Army, who in 1989 refused to carry out the martial law order during the Tiananmen student movement.
The disclosure immediately caused a sensation both inside and outside China.
First, the very exposure of such a top-level state secret is itself an event of historic significance.
Second, the six hours of courtroom proceedings contain an overwhelming amount of information — far too much to absorb at once.
After spending nearly twenty days watching, translating, and carefully proofreading the entire six-hour video, I am now able to present the ten most critical revelations contained in this secret trial.
1. A Martial Law Order Prepared for Mass Killing
For decades, the CCP has remained deliberately vague about how many troops were deployed to Beijing to suppress the 1989 democracy movement. Official reports avoided numbers entirely, leaving researchers to rely on estimates.
This trial video, however, provides the first official confirmation of the scale of the military deployment.
A written testimony read aloud in court by Peng Cuifeng, Director of the Operations Department of the Beijing Military Region Headquarters, stated:
