From The Washington Post:

Tiananmen Square is somnolent this June. Chinese tourists in T-shirts loll in the shadows along its northern perimeter. Two small police cars roll softly by on opposite sides of the world’s largest square to ensure that it stays this peaceful.

The eye tells you in this and other ways that China has moved far beyond the uprising of students, workers and some officials that captured the world’s interest and admiration before being brutally repressed 18 years ago this month — the last time I was here.

Beijing has become an urban Godzilla since then: Concave, convex and cantilevered skyscrapers march erratically across the ridges of an unending, perpetually smog-filled skyline. These canyons of steel and glass corporate fortresses visually testify that money and material ambition have totally eclipsed the demands for democracy — and honesty in government — that filled the streets in one of the 20th century’s great moments of peaceful public protest. [Full Text]

See also China’s Unpredictable Future by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine:

Eighteen years ago, with protesters marching through scores of Chinese cities and giant crowds gathering in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, many outside observers, myself included, assumed that the era of Communist Party rule in China was nearing its end. The June 4 Massacre of 1989, which demonstrated that the Party was determined not to go gently into that good night, led us to backtrack quickly.

But when the Berlin Wall collapsed a few months later, many began again to assert again that the Beijing regime must be on its last legs. After all, not only had domestic developments shown how disliked the Party was by the “People” in whose name it claimed to rule, but the international zeitgeist seemed to be pointing to a future free of Communist rule in all lands.

How then have observers accounted for the failures of those confident “end of history” predictions in a 21st century that sees Communist Party leaders continuing to call the shots in Beijing, Pyongyang, Hanoi and Havana? [Full Text]