Prague Spring lead to reforms and set the inspiration for the next generation that ended in victory (source https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...) .
Rabaa, the situation is still ongoing, and unfortunately it's not a completely peaceful movement right now as it escalated to insurgency... (Source https://timep.org/esw/non-state-actors/revolutionary-punishm... )
The Prague Spring’s reforms were quickly reversed and the country was communist business as usual for decades afterwards. Crediting it for the fall of communism in 1989 seems like quite a stretch; for any successful protest, there will be failed ones that came before and provided influence. Does that mean that all protests are successful by definition when you look at a long enough timeline? Seems like a highly pointless metric if so.
CCP is still grappling with it.
Quote "As foundational as the crackdown at Tiananmen may have been to the CCP’s current strength, it remains largely invisible to the people. Despite claiming the moral high ground against what it calls a “counter-revolutionary” rebellion, the Party is still sensitive to the fact that its slaughter of students and laborers put a stain on its legitimacy."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5600363/china-tiananme...
Sorry, but you can't just burry a massacre, especially if it's been well documented.
> Does that mean that all protests are successful by definition when you look at a long enough timeline?
They may also look like separate events on the timeline, but still part of the same overall movement. Change doesn't happen overnight.
No, it's certainly not visible to the people. If you are talking about Chinese people, not HK people.
It began the process of deterioration of relations between the PRC and the Western democracies, a process that has continued to the present day. People began to realize that China may not liberalize on its own the way Taiwan did—that the government of the PRC is often hostile to liberal democracy. One of the consequences of this realization is in fact these Hong Kong protests. There are numerous other consequences of this cooling in relations too—for example, protectionist tariffs against a country seen as hostile to Western values are easier to sell politically in the West. Tariffs obviously impact China.
Tiananmen didn't achieve what the protestors wanted, but it's clearly a significant historical event.
The aftermath of a massacre comes down to the government’s willingness and ability to control the narrative and suppress further dissent. Some governments can be quite successful at this. There’s absolutely no guarantee that a massacre of protestors results in anything beyond dead protestors.