Challenge: Tiananmen Square Turns Into A Successful Revolution

The Chinese Communist regime does a fold in 1989. Maybe it ends in a civil war, or a reform communist regime takes power, or maybe the whole edifice comes crashing down. How does it happen? How does it play out? What are the consequences?
 

Typo

Banned
I think this is actually ASBish, simply because the communists were pretty determined to keep power and as far as I remember there were no real support for the students among the military.

But then again the whole incident is not that well known, my mother mentioned how during the whole incident she was able to basically skip work at her state-ran company without getting into any trouble because the regime didn't want to provoke any further popular discontent.
 
You have to understand the protests were very much a rural vs urban phenonmenon.

The reforms of the previous decade had seen dramatic increase in standard of living for the farmers but did little for the urban people. This imbalance in the early days of reform caused significant social tensions. Privatization had caused many urbanites to become unemployed while a farmer selling surplus eggs could easily out earn a college professor.

What you saw on TV was urban people taking to the streets because they believed Deng's reforms failed them. What most observers did not see was the strong support the government enjoyed from the rural people, who made up 80% of the population at the time.

So really there was little chance of a collapse of the CCP. At most it might have resulted in more political freedoms to satisfy the urban people. This could have good or bad results. At best China would be more free and perhaps less authoritarian, with more rule of law. At worst China would have been more chaotic and fail to bring about the successful investment in infrastructure and business that gave it the sustained high growth in the years following.
 
Last edited:

tqm111

Banned
I have to agree. Revolutions work only if the whole system is rotted. Wasn't like that in the PRC in 1988.
 
You have to understand the protests were very much a rural vs urban phenonmenon.

......

What you saw on TV was urban people taking to the streets because they believed Deng's reforms failed them. What most observers did not see was the strong support the government enjoyed from the rural people, who made up 80% of the population at the time.

What lends this interpretation of the 1989 movement even more credence is the fact that in almost every major city there were demonstrations, protests, etc. along the lines of those in Beijing, which was really only the tip of the iceberg. But in the countryside? There were crickets. Students and intellectuals may serve as the motivating force behind a revolution, but when it's aux armes, citoyens time, you'll generally need a bit more support from the unwashed masses. I'm not sure that the attitude of rural dwellers towards the CCP was really one of "strong support"; I'd argue that "benign indifference" was more like it. But now we're just getting into semantics, and it's undeniably true that there wasn't any enthusiasm for revolution in the countryside.

Things could certainly have turned out differently than they did OTL in June 1989, and I don't want to be the one who says, "IMPOSSIBLE! IT CAN'T BE DONE! ASB ASB ASB!" But no matter what happens, I certainly don't see democracy at the end of the tunnel. Reformist elements in the CCP along Zhao Ziyang lines winning power is the most likely divergence, I'd argue.
 
Top