But I think it is fair to take the student's and those they were inspired by at their word and theorize that China might have been 'more democratic' had the movement been embraced.
But we'll never know for sure.
You may want to re-read the article. There's at least one passage of a group of the protestors approaching a surrendering soldier with pipes, rocks, and other weapons. The reporter continues, "surely the man would be killed. There was nothing I could do to help him in the chaos."
Perhaps the argument here is that the guy got what he deserved, but I think if you want to argue that it's okay to kill someone who's surrendering, you might be fairly classified as militant.
Even the first, democratic-inspired revolution can look pretty dangerous in retrospect. I am sympathetic to many ideals of May ’68, yet at the same time I feel like Western Europe dodged a bullet, because the subsequent regime could have turned out very badly.
A better question might be; will China ever have self determination? Or will it always be a self selected leader with a “5 year plan”
I don't think that this is an accurate description of the process for selecting the PRC's General Secretary.
I also wish for a more liberal China, I am just trying to explore some of the complexities of such events. To be fair, if by "if the Tiananmen uprising had succeeded", you mean "if the Tiananmen uprising had made China democratic", then some of my points do not make sense. It is just that, based on my reading about history, I know that successful revolutions often lead to outcomes that are very different from what idealists who root for those revolutions have in mind.