"The government would crush any public protest in its early stage, so that there is no way for it to develop into a major one. Since the late 1990s, the Chinese government has also tended to banish the political dissidents to limit their influence at home. So it is highly unlikely to have another major democracy movement." ~Dr. Tao Wang, Assistant Professor in Modern Chinese History, Iowa State University
Long -Term Impact
The massacre of the Tiananmen Square protesters in their stand for democracy completely ruined any chance of major political reform in China (Chinoy). The Chinese government knows that if anything like the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened in present-day China it would have a very negative impact on China. Every year since the Massacre, tens of thousands of people attend the candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on June 4th to remember the crackdown in 1989.
"The legacy of Tiananmen is hard to assess. On the one hand, it destroyed the possibility of significant political reform and liberalization in China. It convinced the Communist Party to do whatever was necessary to ensure that nothing like this would happen again. So in the years since then, we have seen a dramatic increase in the security apparatus of the state, and continuing pressure on dissidents, lawyers, and other independent voices. At the same time, though, after Tiananmen Deng Xiaoping and the Communist Party made a kind of implicit bargain with the Chinese people--you don't challenge the Party's monopoly on political power, and we'll give you much greater personal--as opposed to political--freedom, greater opportunities to make money, travel, enjoy life etc. And by and large, as China's economy has boomed, the Chinese people have accepted this bargain. How long this will continue, and under what circumstances popular sentiment will change again, is a question everyone's asking, but there are no clear answers." ~Mike Chinoy, former CNN correspondent at Tiananmen Square
"The only way China can achieve its dream is by protecting its very basic rights for each individual, for each family, for each community/churches, for each country." ~Chai Ling, student leader (Ling, Chai. “China's Tiananmen Activists")