38th Army (People's Republic of China) - Tiananmen Square Protests

Tiananmen Square Protests

In 1989 during the students' protest, the 38th Army was one of the main units ordered to crush the protests and impose martial law on Beijing. However, because of its close connections with the population of the nearby capital, and the fact that many students had served in the unit before attending university and that some students had performed summer training with the 38th as members of the army reserve, the unit was reluctant to comply. The 38th, under the command of General Xu Qinxian (Chinese: 徐勤先), refused to use force against the students when martial law was declared, and was reported to have been in a tense stand-off with the 27th Army and other units which held the city in the days immediately following the bloody crackdown, giving rise to fears of a civil war.