The uncontrolled passion and power of the student demonstrations, that took place in Beijing, in 1989, and which had such a tragic outcome, shocked and enraged an unbelieving world.
Through the heroic self-sacrifice of those who gave their lives, a positive and promising future emerged, for millions of their contemporaries in this vast and uncompromising land of China.
Levels of economic and social development, since 1989, have attained heights, that would have been considered an impossible dream, before Tiananmen.
However, the cataclysmic floods and droughts have combined with the unrelenting poverty of the peasants, to subjugate the majority of the people to the vagaries of both nature and men, and held them captive in a perpetuity of grim and soul-destroying hopelessness.
In recent times, several of the great humanitarian organisations based in the West have played an important role in China.
Groups such as Orbis, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Oxfam and the International Red Cross, have done more to win and maintain the respect, affection and admiration of the Chinese people, than all the loud-mouthed China watchers and critics have accomplished in the last half century.