Tiananmen 1989

The Beijing student rebellion of 1989:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/jun/03/tiananmen-square-1989-in-pictures

did carry a hope that welled up in the bosoms of the all nations in the West that at last here was a chance for the expulsion of the CPP (Chinese Communist Party) from its position of dominance and power.

The subsequent slaughter to quell the rebellion of the students was horrendous.

However, if the students did succeed, the consequences for the Chinese nation as a whole would have been catastrophic. China would have fragmented into regional fiefdoms owned and ruled by a wild scan of high bureaucrats, top industry personnel, high officials, top generals and crime lords.

The West would have rushed in to "HELP"!

Western "HELP" would have carved China up into a collage of independent democracies and trading blocks and in this way China would cease to be a potential threat to the West.

The CPP was faced with Hobson's choice. End the student's rebellion or . . . !

If you really think on the matter really seriously - for the student rebellion to have succeeded to the extent that it did was an anomaly. For it to attempt to doom the .gov.China.com was a silly immature wild dream and like all nightmares it ended in the only way it was to.

For China, it is only one episode in its long history.
It carries:

no glory for the Chinese nation. 

For this, they rather opt to forget it.

Lesson:
There is an argument that the West best go along with forgetting an utterly inglorious moment in Chinese history as well.
To keep harping on it, would be deemed offensive and discourteous.

It would be like China continuously carping about the Watts riots and other disgraceful urban disturbances in the history of the U.S.