30 years on from Tiananmen Square crackdown, why Beijing still thinks it got it right

• Three decades have passed since the Tiananmen Square crackdown when troops fired on student-led pro-democracy protesters
• The shots were heard around the country and reverberate today despite persistent official censorship of the events

In the first of a six-part series, Jun Mai looks at why the Communist Party refuses to reverse its condemnation of student-led pro-democracy protests that were subject to a bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

When US president Ronald Reagan and Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang walked out of the White House arm in arm on January 10, 1984, a sense of optimism and hope swept across the Pacific.

Nobody could have missed the symbolic and diplomatic importance of Zhao’s visit, which also underscored his leadership position in the Chinese hierarchy. Moreover, the American public liked this all-smiling new face of China. Many were convinced that Zhao’s trip would mark the beginning of a relationship that could shape the world and transform the ancient Asian civilisation into something “more like us” in the process.