On June 4, 1989, Chinese troops opened fire on civilians in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square — part of a bloody government crackdown on dissent that killed unknown numbers of unarmed pro-democracy protesters and bystanders throughout the city.
The army seemed in complete control. But the next day, something remarkable happened.
In an act that would reverberate around the world, a solitary man stood his ground before a column of advancing tanks on Chang’an Boulevard, which runs directly into Tiananmen Square.
His identity and his ultimate fate remain a mystery — but his lonely act of defiance, captured by photographers watching nearby, became an icon of the fight for freedom around the globe.
FRONTLINE investigated this extraordinary confrontation, and China’s attempts to erase it from history, in the 2006 documentary The Tank Man. On the anniversary of Tiananmen, revisit this landmark documentary, which is available to stream on PBS.org, the PBS Video App and on YouTube: