On the previous day, the government of China cleared the square of protesting students after six weeks of standoff, in the process killing hundreds or even thousands of people mostly in other parts of Beijing.

The news documentary “Flying the Flag of the Republic” produced by the August 1st Film Studio described the man as a “gangster who tried to stop a car with his barehands”.

The man is then seen briefly speaking with a second person who is walking his bicycle across the street in front of the stationary tanks, as they begin to start their engines again.

At this point, the video footage shows two figures in blue running over to pull the man away and lead him to a nearby crowd; the tanks then continued on their way.

Charlie Cole, who was there for Newsweek, claimed it was the Chinese government agents,[16] while Jan Wong, who was there for The Globe and Mail, thought that the men who pulled him away were concerned bystanders.

Shortly after the incident, London newspaper Sunday Express named him as Wang Weilin (王维林), a 19-year-old student[18] who was later charged with "political hooliganism" and "attempting to subvert members of the People's Liberation Army.

"[19] This claim has been rejected by internal Chinese Communist Party documents, which reported that they could not find the man, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights.

[15] In Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, Jan Wong writes that she believes from her interactions with the government press that they have "no idea who he was either" and that he is still alive somewhere on the mainland.

[23][24] In a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters, then-General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin was asked what became of the man.

Jiang first stated (through an interpreter), "I can't confirm whether this young man you mentioned was arrested or not", and then replied in English, "I think [that he was] never killed.

[26] In July 2017, it was reported by Apple Daily that the Tank Man's real name may be Zhang Weimin (张为民), a native of Shijingshan, Beijing, who was 24 years old in 1989.

[28] A PBS interview of six experts observed that the memory of the Tiananmen Square protests appears to have faded in China, especially among younger Chinese people, due to government censorship.

[20] When undergraduate students at Beijing University, which was at the center of the incident, were shown copies of the photograph 16 years later, they were "genuinely mystified".

It has been suggested that the "Unknown Rebel", if still alive, would never have made himself known as he may have been unaware of his international recognition due to the Chinese media suppression of events relating to the government protests.

[20][failed verification] After the events in the square, the local public security bureau treated members of the international press roughly, confiscating and destroying all the film they could find, and forced the signing of confessions to offenses such as photography during martial law, punishable by long imprisonment.

[16] On August 20, 2020, a trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War showed footage of Tank Man.

David Greene, Civil Liberties Director at Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that content moderation was impossible to do perfectly and "egregious mistakes are made all the time", but he further elaborated that "At worst, this was purposeful suppression at the request of a powerful state.

[3] The most-used photograph of the event was taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, from a sixth-floor balcony of the Beijing Hotel, about one-half mile (800 m) away from the scene.

Martsen, the college student, hastily obtained a roll of Fuji 100 ASA color negative film, allowing Widener to make the shot.

[3] Though he was concerned that his shots were no good, his image was syndicated to many newspapers around the world[3] and was said to have appeared on the front page of all European papers.

On March 20, 2013, in an interview by the Hong Kong Press Photographers Association (HKPPA), Tsang told the story and added further detail.

When he decided to go out again, the public security stopped him, so he stayed in his room, stood next to the window and eventually witnessed the Tank Man and took several shots of the event.

[59] The animated series The Amazing World of Gumball referenced the moment in the episode "The Fraud", in which the character Mr. Small tries to halt Principal Nigel Brown by standing in front of him as a symbolic gesture of protest.