The fact that Tiananmen happened in China is one reason it did not happen in Europe, writes Timothy Garton-Ash. “Both opposition and reform communist leaders saw what could happen if it came to a violent confrontation, and redoubled their efforts to avoid it,” he writes.
However, the influence then reversed as the Communist Party in Beijing conducted an exercise in authoritarian learning with an exhaustive study of the lessons of the collapse of communism to pre-empt attempts to democratize China.
“Today’s China is a result of that learning process,” Garton-Ash concludes.
He could have added that Iran’s Supreme Leader and Revolutionary Guard Corps have also studied democratic transitions with a view to suffocating prospects for reform. Indeed, as Abbas Milani has observed, IRGC chief Mohammad Ali Jafari “made a name for himself by studying how to stop any form of velvet revolution.”
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