Memes

This isn't accurate at all. The fighting happened when would-be insurgents ambushed pla troops. The pla had unarmed soldiers in the square for a long time. And i mean really unarmed. No helmets, no shields, no batons, no tear gas. When things finally touched off with the cia-backed "pro democracy) faction that was a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the people involved the pla ordered everyone out of the square and everyone left. That was it. When the cia backed wannabe insurgents started attacking the pla everyone was ordered to leave and they left. They didn't do any brutal state repression. The cpc was in an extremely awkward position bc the vast majority of people involved in the June 4th incident were protesting against Dengist market liberalization, asking for a return to a more socialist economy. Others were protesting the restrictive social norms of contemporary China, arguing that the restrictive social norms were anti-communsit and that people should have more freedom to do simple stuff like publicly date and be publicly affectionate.

Ultimately a big part of the reason there was little reprisal is bc the cpc couldn't crack down on pro-socialist protestors, and because in the end the whole thing ended mostly peacefully. The narrative around it is so utterly twisted and distorted. And if you ask people in China about it they don't understand why westerners think it's important. It's just a minor incident in history from a long time ago.