WI no Tianmen Square massacre

Tyr

What if the Tianmen Square protests were succesful? What if the Chinese government doesn't crack down and the PRC goes the way of the Warsaw Pact?
How would things develop in China towards a full overthrow of the government? What would happen next?


I wouldn't be very enthusiastic about the quality of China that would result. I would see a Ukraine type country at best; vaguely democractic, very corrupt, controlled by oligarchs.
Most of the world would have their attention focussed on Eastern Europe and its transition too.....it would be interesting to see Japan left in large part to itself to deal with this suddenly open China.
 

YLi

Deng could have quietly shooed the protesters out of Beijing had he waited a few more days. The students and workers couldn't advance anything resembling a cohesive, unified philosophy and were beginning to turn on each other. At some people, a good portion of the movement would have been like "fuck this, I'm going home", making Chai Ling and Wuerkaxi look ridiculous in the process.

Unfortunately, China is draconian in its laws and its application of force and apparently loitering (what the student movement ultimately amounted to) is a capital crime in the People's Republic of China.
 

Tyr

The WI here isn't just no massacre but WI the CPC loses its grip on power along with the warsaw pact.
 

Herzen's love-child

I wouldn't see an immediate overthrow of the CP but at least a transitional period led by reformers -- Zhao Ziyang being most prominent. It might have been possible for them to preserve the position of the CP. Or maybe he would have been the Chinese Gorbachev.

This is all unlikely but this is the most optimistically I could approach the OP's POD.
 
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YLi

A lot of bizarre shit would have to happen for the Tiananmen protests to bring down The Party, namely the students somehow appealing to the peasants and soldiers, which isn't happening since most people in the lower income brackets viewed the students as spoiled elites.

I seriously doubt that the students alone had the clout to overthrow the government unless the 38th and 40th Armies opened fire on the 14th and 22nd Armies as they tried to move into Beijing.

But that's a called a civil war and it would have been Very Bad (tm).
 

Sharunaku

YLi said:
Deng could have quietly shooed the protesters out of Beijing had he waited a few more days. The students and workers couldn't advance anything resembling a cohesive, unified philosophy and were beginning to turn on each other. At some people, a good portion of the movement would have been like "fuck this, I'm going home", making Chai Ling and Wuerkaxi look ridiculous in the process.
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You sure that would happen? It didn't happen in the recent Taiwanese Sunflower movement, for instance.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Basically I think the % chance of the CCP falling is rather significant.

Yeah the students were idealistic idiots, but revolutionary situations are awfully unpredictable and once stable regimes seems to fall very unpredictably in those situations.
 

YLi

Sharunaku said:
You sure that would happen? It didn't happen in the recent Taiwanese Sunflower movement, for instance.
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I'm fairly certain it would have happened. The students were beginning to squabble by May 35th and it wouldn't have taken long for them to start deserting in droves. Also, the Sunflower Movement had far clearer goals than the May 35th students did.
 
Vingilótë

Vingilótë

oberdada said:
?
Is this a reference to the Erich Kästner novel? And if it is, why?
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May 35th = June 4th. Well, in China at least.

And yeah, even some of the most anti-PRC Chinese people I know are quite willing to condemn the Party for the massacre, but still retain a good deal of venom for "idiot entitled students."
 

YLi

Opunium said:
June 4th is one of those words the PRC censors. Maybe Yli lives in the PRC, and thus if he wrote 'June 4th' his post wouldnt have shown up.
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I do live in the PRC but I write it as May 35th not because I'll get in trouble but because I'm rather against the sort of censorship and whitewashing that The Party pursues.
 

EternalCynic

The students simply put were totally irrational, and spent more effort plotting against each other than presenting a united front. Even today, they are still sniping at each other in comfortable exile. One of them even sued an indie film studio for making a documentary which portrays her in an unflattering light, all while professing to be an evangelical Christian who believes God will forgive Deng. :rolleyes:

Anyway, the protest descends into infighting and peters out by mid-June. The protest leaders find themselves harassed and are quickly forgotten both in China and abroad. Deng introduces some token reforms and launches a purge of corrupt bureaucrats who were ultimately the lightening rod of the protests. Everyone can claim to have won. Well, except.the student leaders, of course.
 
ScrewySqrl

ScrewySqrl

I saw a report that one reason the Protests were as string as they were was there was a similar, related demand for better pay coming from the Factory Workers who supported the Students.

Tank Man wasn't a student, just a guy carrying groceries.

If Tiananmen had succeeded in removing the CCP, it would be seen today as part and parcel of the 1989-91 revolutions, as just the first one of them.
 

LeX

I don't think the protesters themselves could have done anything to truly threaten political order, but I do think that the CCP could have been shaken into a greater degree of ideological factionalism. Probably the reason why the protesters were essentially given a mass execution instead of simply being arrested was to solidify inner resolve (to get rid of the Zhao Ziyang types) as well as to warn the general public.

EternalCynic said:
The students simply put were totally irrational, and spent more effort plotting against each other than presenting a united front. Even today, they are still sniping at each other in comfortable exile. One of them even sued an indie film studio for making a documentary which portrays her in an unflattering light, all while professing to be an evangelical Christian who believes God will forgive Deng. :rolleyes:
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Yeah what a bunch of 傻屄.
 
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