Yang Jisheng's book covers topics of interest to everyone in China but which few dare to write about. One is the case of Xu Qinxian, commander of the 38th Army in Beijing in the spring of 1989. Because he refused to obey the order of the party's Central Military Commission to join the crackdown on student-led protest, he was relieved of his post, court-martialled, jailed for five years and exiled from Beijing.
Yang met Xu twice after his release, meetings made possible only because of Yang's good connections with senior civil and military officials during his 35 years at Xinhua.
According to his account, Xu was in the General Hospital of the Beijing Military Region during the protests and followed them carefully. On May 17, he was recovering well from an operation to remove kidney stones when he received a visit from the deputy commander of the Beijing Military Region, to inform him of the mobilisation order. Martial law would be declared on the evening of May 19. Commanders of the other armies had expressed their support and Xu was ordered to do the same.
'I will not implement a verbal order. I need one on paper,' he said. 'Today there was no written order, that will come later,' said the deputy commander. 'In times of war, it is like that.'
'Now is not a time of war,' Xu said. 'I will not carry out a verbal order.' He telephoned his superiors to inform them of his decision and told a friend that he was ready to be executed. 'I would rather be beheaded than be judged guilty in the court of history,' he said.
The next day, informed of Xu's decision, president Yang Shangkun was very uneasy and could not sleep well for several days. He informed Deng Xiaoping, who said that a soldier could not disobey an order.