1989 Tiananmen Square protests don't end bloody: what happens?

Congratulations James G , i think you just mange to block this forum from being access from mainland China.

To go back to your question, i wonder if Taiwan will get involved.

Of topic, seems the forum is still accessible from within mainland China.

On topic, if the Army is not send in to crush the Tiananmen Square demonstration, then expect across China to also see these kind of demonstrations, and that is something the Regime can not tolerate.

Uhm, I have some serious trouble to devise a way to make the protests succeed in a bloodless way like 1989 Eastern Europe, as others pointed out Deng's reforms has put back some serious life in the regime and broadened its support base. To fall on its own would likely require the reforms to fail and the regime to keep the self-destructive course it had taken with late Mao and the Cultural Revolution, such as if the Gang of Four had won the succession struggle. Even so, I can think of a feasible way to make the pro-democracy movement successful with a 1989 PoD. IMO, what it takes is to create a dynamic similar to the 1991 Soviet coup, with Deng as (a much more influential, but dying) Gorbaciov, Li Peng and the neo-Maoist conservatives as the coupists, and Zhao Ziyang as (a non-alcoholic) Eltsin. Deng and his pro-reform faction need to think of the hard-left conservatives as the worst threat to their interests, and the pro-democracy students as the lesser evil (instead of a return of the Red Guards and Cultural Revolution chaos under a new guise) or potential allies.

This is a possible event sequence for a 1989 Chinese Revolution: Deng falls seriously ill just before the onset of the pro-democracy protests. This and the start of the protest embolden Li Peng and a neo-Maoist clique of hard-left conservatives and Marxist-Leninist ideologues to try to seize power, usurp the authority of Deng, and stall or reverse his reforms. This alarms Deng and his loyalists, who come to fear the neo-Maoist takeover as a possible comeback to the bad days of the Cultural Revolution, and regard the student protest as a lesser threat. On his deathbed, Deng instructs his loyalists to oppose the Maoists. This causes a serious division in the party and the army between Dengist moderates which wish to avoid disorder and keep the course of economic reforms, Maoist conservatives which favor a hardcore authoritarian regime and a return to a command economy, and reformists such as Zhao Ziyang who support political reforms and a compromise with the students, giving the latter room to maneuver. This division causes the first attempts of the Maoist clique to seize power, impose martial law, and repress the student movement to bungle. Deng dies, releasing a message to denounce the Maoist coup attempt as an usurpation. Rebellion against the Li Peng clique spreads across China, causing Dengist moderates and pro-democracy activists to cooperate in most cases. A few provinces that are especially committed to economic reforms openly rise up, and division in the army hampers the attempts of Li and his allies to crush their opponents in Beijing and elsewhere. In growing desperation, they try increasingly brutal acts of force, that only stir up more opposition. China falls into a brief civil war, which the reformist coalition wins. In the aftermath of the revolution, China becomes a multi-party democracy.

At least as bloody as OTL if not somewhat more so, given there is going to be some patchwork fighting across China, but the fallen revolutionaries shall be openly remembered and honored by a free Chinese people as heroes and martyrs. No doubt post-revolutionary China is going to experience a managed transition to democracy with a power-sharing compromise between the pro-reform faction of the CCP and the liberal revolutionaries. Broadly speaking, it is going to involve the top echelons of the Dengist faction retiring to the private sector as wealthy businessmen or setting up a reasonably influential party, the evolution of the pro-reform section of the CCP that embraces Deng's legacy combined with acceptance of multi-party democracy as its agenda, in all likelihood with Zhao Ziyang as one of its main leaders. I assume it is going to be a compromise acceptable to both sides, and given their respective roles in starting the reforms and waging the revolution in China, one that gets widespread popular acceptance. Also because the revolution would have radically discredited the appeal of CCP authoritarianism and considerably improved the legacy of Dengism. W/o the blood of the students on his hands, and his last act being apparent support of political as well as economic reforms, TTL Deng may get a much less blemished reputation as one of the founding fathers of modern China, together with Sun Yat-Sen and whoever leaders emerge during the revolution. In hindsight, he may come to look like a liberal mole in the CCP who quietly but doggedly struggled all his life to steer China a less destructive path than Mao's blood-soaked tyranny, famine, and crazy experiments, and eventually succeeded in his late years. On the other hand, even at home Mao's memory is going to get all the unquestioned scorn and condemnation it deserves as one of the worst dictators in history. Speaking of Sun, I assume ITTL the mainland and Taiwan can accomplish peaceful reunification w/o any serious difficulty, even if the island is still going to need some serious degree of autonomy. I am not sure what reunified democratic China is going to do about Chiang's legacy, Tibet, and Xinjiang/East Turkestan.

Besides the obvious vast advantages for China ITTL, its turn to liberal democracy is going to have huge regional and global positive effects. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Burma are going to follow similar paths, and w/o the generous PRC subsidies and strategic support, North Korea is pretty much sure to collapse in a half-decade, paving the way to democratic reunification of the Korean Peninsula. The only real issue is whether it happens because of sheer socio-economic collapse during the 1990s famine, some more enlightened member of the elite deciding the Chinese way is the path to survival and couping the Kims, or (perhaps more likely) the Kim dynasty embracing the Samson option and starting the Second Korean War when the USA turns the screws on the NK nuclear program. IOTL the PRC has been the textbook example of how authoritarianism can survive and thrive in the Information Age, a source of support and a model for would-be imitators across the world. Its revolutionary collapse is going to teach the opposite lesson and reinforce the one of 1989 in favor of liberal democracy, no matter what the backlash of globalization and neoliberalism's excesses. Anti-Western dictatorships such as Iran and Venezuela are going to miss an important source of support and may well collapse when they face their own domestic crises. Even Putin's Russia, assuming it still keeps the same main course ITTL, is going to be much weaker and forced to be more cautious on the global stage w/o soft-spoken but effective Chinese backing. Anti-Western dictators, far-right/left populist extremists, and fans of illiberal democracy can still try to tap Russia as a sponsor and model, but it simply won't be the same thing by any means.