> That would be an interesting tradeoff conversation if true.
While no-one can predict the future, we can have a good guess what a democratic China would be like, because one exists. It's called Taiwan. Which is richer per capita and arguably more stable than the PRC.
Wikipedia claims: the official PRC position at the time was 300; many other estimates are in the thousands ranging up to 10,000. Of course now they are trying to erase it altogether.
But they basically do deny the event by claiming only 300 dead and then villainizing the victims of an atrocity.