One of the most poignant moments that was caused by China's democratization was Japan's Emperor Akhito formally apologizing about war crimes from WWII in 2010. It was 65 years late, but for my grandparents who suffered during the Bataan Death March, it couldn't have come sooner. My guess is that without a democratic China applying political and economic pressure both at the United Nations and G-8 Summits, Japan would have dismissed calls for apology indefinitely.
What was even more remarkable was that the apology was spoken not in Japanese, but in surprisingly fluent English (we forget after World War II, Akihito learned English under the tutelage of Elizabeth Gran Vining, and he kept up his fluency by become a subscriber to National Geographic magazine; the editors at that magazine were so impressed that in 1960 he effectively got a free lifetime subscription). But why English? I think with good reason: the Japanese government wanted the apology to be easily understood by most people in the world, given that English arguably the most widely used language in terms of business and even science. The Imperial Household apparently learned from the experience of the Emperor Shōwa (aka. Hirohito), because that Emperor's use of the old kobun dialect of Classical Japanese made that speech to announce Japan's surrender in World War II almost unintelligible to even the average Japanese of the day, let alone trying to translate it to another language!