The West is very selective of information and who it puts out as heroes, people Westerners can relate to. We remember Tiananmen for the students when in reality, from some of the books I read, most of the people killed were regular urban working class people who lost their jobs and benefits in Northern China when they began transitioning to capitalism, economic growth favoring places like Guangzhou in the South. They protested outside the square where most of the violence took place, very few students were killed compared to the working class people as many of them were well-connected. On top of that, the 1989 protest wasn’t as powerful as Westerners like to believe as it was limited only to Beijing and Shanghai. Urban residents and college-educated people were an extreme minority in 1989 compared to 2018 as most Chinese still lived in the countryside and would have gone about unaware of the protest.