Jun 7, 2014 2 min read

The late spring of 1989 was a heady time for those who believed democracy was on the march and repression was on the run.

Mikhail Gorbachev was trying, unsuccessfully in the end, to renovate Soviet communism. Citizens within the Kremlin’s client states in Eastern Europe were becoming increasingly bold in demanding greater freedom. The Berlin Wall was six months away from crumbling and, within nine months, Nelson Mandela would be freed from 27 years of confinement in South Africa.

The string of good news was interrupted, however, with the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989, by Chinese troops. Following days of protests and demands for greater openness and individual liberty, the tanks and security forces moved in, indiscriminately killing upward of 1,000 protesters and bystanders. Unlike their counterparts in places like Romania and Czechoslovakia, the inheritors of Mao’s regime triumphed in keeping their people under the authoritarian yoke.

Today, from all reports, there are no reminders within Tiananmen Square about the events that transpired there 25 years ago. And though China has become a greater economic powerhouse in the quarter-century since the killings in Tiananmen Square and is a bigger player than ever on the world stage, there is still no hint of political pluralism on the horizon.

China’s transformation will remain incomplete until one-party rule is ended.