The comparison between Iran's crackdown on protests and China's 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has become a common analytical shortcut. Ali M. Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, told The Wall Street Journal it fails for a fundamental reason: Beijing had something to offer its people afterward. Tehran does not.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing the WSJ's weekend interview, Ansari spelled out the contrast. After Tiananmen, China's message to its citizens was: "Yes, we've politically suppressed you, but we've bought you off with economic success, and we're now going to be a superpower." Iran has no equivalent offer. "All the regime can say to Iranians is, 'You are going to have a great time in heaven when you get there.'"
The economic dimension makes the gap impossible to bridge. Iran's salaries "no longer meet the basic needs of life," the regime has drained the water table, and corruption has hollowed out the state. Under President Ahmadinejad, auditing bodies were dismantled and $800 billion in revenue went missing. There is no prosperity to trade for political obedience.
Ansari also pointed to the pattern of Iranian resistance. After brutal repressions in 2019 and 2022, analysts declared the protest movement finished. Yet each time, a new wave erupted - larger and more defiant. "Then suddenly, this burst on the scene in January," he said, describing the latest uprising. The Chinese model of repression-plus-prosperity bought decades of stability. Iran's model of repression-plus-poverty has produced only accelerating cycles of revolt.
With the regime's support base estimated at just 10% to 20% of the population and an international military confrontation now added to every domestic crisis imaginable, the Tiananmen analogy does not merely fall short - it obscures the far more precarious reality the Islamic Republic faces.
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