Below are some of the theories surrounding the mystery of the man captured in such an iconic picture.
He was a student
The Sunday Express went on to identify him as 19-year-old student Wang Weilin and quoted his friends as saying they feared he had been put to death. However, then General Secretary Jiang Zemin denied having nay knowledge of his arrest or even of the name.
He was pulled away to safety
Witnesses recall the man climbing up onto the first tank in the column and speaking to the person inside. Jan Wong, the former Toronto Globe and Mail Beijing correspondent, remembered seeing tanks repeatedly attempting to drive around him, before switching off their motors. The man then climbed into the tank.
Watch: Violence of Tiananmen Square still echoes after 25 years
He told Frontline: "After a while the young man jumps down and the tank turns on the motor and the young man blocks him again. [...] I started to cry because I had seen so much shooting and so many people dying that I was sure this man would get crushed.
"But he didn't. ... I think it was two people from the sidelines ran to him and grabbed him - not in a harsh way, almost in a protective way. I think that the people who took the Tank Man away were concerned people."
But other accounts contradict this however, with many claiming he was pulled away by security agents and arrested.
Soldiers in armoured vehicles fired on the public in Tiananmen Square Soldiers in armoured vehicles fired on the public in Tiananmen Square
He is still alive
American TV journalist Barbara Walters confronted Zemin a year after the crackdown with a photo of Tank Man and the question: "Do you have any idea what happened to this young man?" A flustered Zemin reportedly stressed that Tank Man had not been executed by the Government or run over. He highlighted the fact that the tanks in the picture were still and had not attempted to drive at him as indicative of his fate, and said: "The people in the tanks didn't want to run over the people standing in the way.
"I think ...never killed".
Others claim police were never able to locate the man after he was pulled away from the crowd and back into the tanks. One government official was quoted as saying, "We can't find him. We got his name from journalists. We have checked through computers but can't find him among the dead or among those in prison."
China allows no discussion of the Tiananmen Square events of 1989. Photo / AP
He escaped mainland China
A report cited a professor in Hong Kong who claimed Tank Man was an archaeologist and his friend who had come from Changsha to Beijing to join the protests. The professor claimed he escaped to Taiwan and was employed by the National Palace Museum but the museum allegedly denied this report.
The Yonhap news agency in South Korea also reported that he had escaped the massacre by fleeing to Taiwan.
He was executed
Bruce Herschensohn, a former deputy special assistant to former US President Richard Nixon, told the President Club in 1999 that Tank Man was executed 14 days later.
Others claim he was later put to death by a firing squad a few months after the protests. Many, however, remain hopeful Tank Man is still alive, and may have no idea of the intrigue his picture has created thanks to China's strict censorship of the image.
- UK Independent
