[They were brought in after local military units refused to fire on the students.]
“If one of those leaders had Yeltsin’s guts, China would be a democracy today.”
Zhang Ziyang didn’t have the power.
Deng was paramount leader, as they called it. He’d been in the Long Narch. An immortal.
There was no one equivalent in the USSR to Deng in terms of authority when Yeltsin was there.
Today there is no Deng equivalent in China. .