Plausible Alternative Results of the June Fourth Massacre? (Tiananmen Square)

[Tsarytsya]

It’s an one event that I’ve never seen an actually good response two, one seemingly confined to poorly drawn Reddit maps, more often as filler in highly problematic “my ideel wold” posts than dedicated timelines.

I’m more than aware that that kind of total collapse isn’t really plausible, -wholesome independent Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria aren’t my goal here. I just can’t help but feel that the alternative, that nothing could’ve gone differently and it was doomed to fail, is a bit deterministic.

Even so, I’m not really asking about a plausible democratic China, more just any alternate result. Could it have been fished enough to lead to prolonged instability and insurgency? Could it have caused more traditional hardliners to take over and attack Dengism as to blame for the uprising? I’m spitballing more than anything but that’s really the question, how could it have gone differently in a plausible manner?

 

[GBW]

If things had gone better between Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, there might have been the possibility of a more conciliatory approach to the demonstrators, which would have set off the conservative hardliners in the government. The hardliners may have seized control of some PLA units to either break up the demonstrators themselves, overthrow Deng, Zhao and others of their political stripe, or both. Deng had retired a lot of the older, cronyist military officers of the PLA earlier in the decade in exchange for younger officers more receptive to modernization, so they may gain support from a portion of the military, alongside the support of the demonstrators and the public at large. A minor civil war may eventually erupt that will have the outside world looking on anxiously due to wondering whose hands China's nuclear arsenal are in. In the end, I think Deng's pro-reformers would eventually win with more support internally and internationally. Depending on how critical the civilian support ended up being, more of the demonstrators' demands for political democratization may be met, but I highly doubt the People's Republic would go full democracy. Regions like Tibet might try to take advantage of the situation, but they'll likely be met without support among the rest of the population and eventually be quashed.

This might lead to gradual democratization of the PRC during the 1990s, which might pick up pace as Hong Kong and Macau are welcomed back into the fold, and could lead to more of a rapprochment with Taiwan. However, this being the PRC, there could easily be a relapse into a hardliner government that tries to undo all the reforms, which could lead to more immediate and more widespread demonstrations than the '89 ones to counter them, which might end up as a check on Chinese governments showing that they're pushing things too far. There would probably be referendums in Taiwan over their relations with the PRC starting in the 2000s, but they'd likely be non-binding as in OTL due to low voter turnout, in turn due to the Kuomingtang asking its supporters to boycott them, as I see Taiwan's own democratization still occurring in this ATL during the 1990s. So I see unification of the PRC and Taiwan probably still an open question in this TL as well.

 

[Tsarytsya]

Apparently the protesters were more hardline leftists, could there be a path forward towards a return from Dengism back to more hardline communism?

 

[Ricardolindo]

It’s an one event that I’ve never seen an actually good response two, one seemingly confined to poorly drawn Reddit maps, more often as filler in highly problematic “my ideel wold” posts than dedicated timelines.

I’m more than aware that that kind of total collapse isn’t really plausible, -wholesome independent Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria aren’t my goal here. I just can’t help but feel that the alternative, that nothing could’ve gone differently and it was doomed to fail, is a bit deterministic.

Even so, I’m not really asking about a plausible democratic China, more just any alternate result. Could it have been fished enough to lead to prolonged instability and insurgency? Could it have caused more traditional hardliners to take over and attack Dengism as to blame for the uprising? I’m spitballing more than anything but that’s really the question, how could it have gone differently in a plausible manner?

FWIW, I once saw it argued that China could have become a softer Singapore-style regime.