The title speaks for itself. What if the Chinese government decided to crack down on the protests in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, and in other parts of China.
DBWI: Tiananmen Square protests crushed
- Thread starter not_an_original_name
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We'd probably not see the creation of a federal Chinese democracy which is thriving and is seen as the new superpower as a crackdown would have probably led to a civil war.
James G
Gone Fishin'
If those protests had been crushed, there would have been a civil war. The Soviets would have invaded too, Gorby be damned, and the US and Japan would have got involved. WWIII would have happened. We should all be greatfull for the flourishing democracy we have there now where they no longer forcibly kill unborn babies when they are second children.
I'm not sure a full fledged war would have occurred. But it would have resulted in serious economic reprisals. Congress would have revoked their MFN status and squeezed their economy. The Politburo then splits into factions, with the reformist side eventually winning and pursuing a glasnost/perestroika policy similar to the USSR.
Unless Bush vetoes the MFN bill and lets the hardliners know there are no consequences for human rights abuses. But that would be so colossally stupid that it borders on ASB.
Unless Bush vetoes the MFN bill and lets the hardliners know there are no consequences for human rights abuses. But that would be so colossally stupid that it borders on ASB.
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Full fledged war? Nah, I seriously doubt that. Forceful cracking down protesters wasn't something new in the communist states after all.
Still, I don't think that it would change too much. Democratization of China would take more time, more people would die, but eventually people would manage to overthrow the communist system, in a similar way like in the Europe (except those few unlucky states that still tries to maintain the dictatorship). I'm more concerned about the fate of North Korea...
Still, I don't think that it would change too much. Democratization of China would take more time, more people would die, but eventually people would manage to overthrow the communist system, in a similar way like in the Europe (except those few unlucky states that still tries to maintain the dictatorship). I'm more concerned about the fate of North Korea...
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Kim Il Sung was always going to cling to power until his death; I don't know enough about the last decade of his rule to say if Chinese events had any effect. It does bear remembering that events in China will effect neighboring Asian nations transitioning toward democracy around this time. For example, would the 8888 Uprising go differently in a world where the Communist government in China was firing more on their own protestors?
I mean, an army like China's wouldn't have any physical trouble with putting down the protesters, but you'd need to do something to address the poor morale and incipient revolutionary tendencies in the rank and file. By 1989, the CCP had just mucked up the country too much for the troops to be willing to fight for them any longer.
How do you think would this have affected the Soviet Union? Are hardliners emboldened to launch a coup against Gorbachev and we see a Soviet collapse as opposed to the reformation of the Soviet Union into a looser and more democratic union?