As expected, the 15th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown on Friday has passed without major incident.
University campuses and Tiananmen Square in Beijing were blanketed with calm and silence - amid tight security - despite the depth of tension and anxiety beneath the surface.
In Hong Kong, tens of thousands of people turned Victoria Park into a sea of flickering lights as they commemorated the deaths of people in the heart of Beijing 15 years ago. In major cities overseas, former student leaders reunited to remember the deaths and express fresh hopes for a free and democratic China.
Speaking during a tour of Europe, Politburo Standing Committee member Wu Bangguo reiterated that the party had dealt correctly with the political incident. Stability and unity, he said, were above everything for the nation.
To the ruling party, the phenomenal growth of the economy in the past 15 years is solid evidence they took the right decision in ordering troops to suppress the student-led protest.
Hu Jinbao and Wen Jiabao, successors of the third-generation of leaders who took over less than two years ago, had hoped that the stability and momentum of development would not be disrupted by incidents such as a fresh dispute over the handling of June 4.