Tang Shizeng, Reporter Who Chronicled China’s Sensitive History, Dies at 65

On Aug. 23, acclaimed Chinese war correspondent and photographer Tang Shizeng, known for reporting from the Middle East and documenting politically-sensitive figures inside China, died in Beijing at the age of 65.

Tang, a former photojournalist for state media Xinhua News, had been seriously ill and was undergoing chemotherapy before his death. Friends and former classmates had described him as critically ill, with his white blood cell count nearly fully depleted and his immune system severely weakened.

Born in Beijing in 1961 with family roots in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, Tang studied international politics at Peking University before joining Xinhua in 1986. He gained national attention in the early 1990s through reporting from the Middle East, including coverage of the Gulf War in Iraq and Israel.

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He was also known for interviewing key political figures including Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, Muammar Gaddafi, and Ariel Sharon. A published author, Tang’s works included: I Returned From the Battlefield (我从战场归来), I Crawled Into the Pyramid (我钻进了金字塔 唐师曾), and Return to Baghdad (重返巴格达).

Recording Zhao Ziyang’s final home

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Beyond war reporting, Tang also turned his camera toward subjects deemed politically sensitive by Beijing. One of his most notable projects came in 2021, when veteran journalist Gao Yu asked him to document the Beijing home of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Zhao Ziyang before Zhao’s family was ordered to leave.

Zhao had been purged from power after opposing the use of force against student demonstrators during the 1989 Tiananmen protests and later spent years under house arrest.

Gao said Tang went alone to No. 6 Fuqiang Hutong carrying only a digital camera. He left his phone and identification behind and filmed the residence in one continuous take, recording the courtyard, Zhao’s study, bedroom, and other rooms where the family had lived for 32 years. The footage became a rare visual record of the conditions in which Zhao spent much of his final years.

The general who refused orders

Tang also interviewed and visited Xu Qinxian, the former commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s 38th Army who refused to carry out orders during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

On June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deployed troops and tanks to crush a nationwide pro-democracy movement led largely by students. Though publicly-available information is scarce, the military assault ended weeks of peaceful demonstrations centered in Beijing, resulting in the deaths of many civilians, with estimates ranging from several hundred to over a thousand.

Xu was ordered to lead troops into Beijing during the imposition of martial law but refused to sign the deployment order. He was later removed from his post, expelled from the CCP, and sentenced by a military court. He then served five years in prison before being placed under long-term restrictions in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province. He died there in 2021 at the age of 86.

Tang later released photographs and footage from his meetings with Xu, preserving another unusual record of an episode that remains heavily censored inside China. In previously undisclosed footage of Xu’s military trial that surfaced overseas in 2025, Xu questioned how soldiers could be expected to distinguish civilians from supposed enemies during the operation.

“I said, with such a mission, and with the weapons and equipment they were carrying, good people and bad people were mixed together, and the military and civilians were mixed together,” Xu recounted, “I said, how are we supposed to carry this out? Who are we supposed to shoot? I said that for something this serious, we should study it carefully and determine what would be the appropriate way to handle it.”