I, too, at times have difficulty avoiding comparisons between that moment to this one: I was a student in Beijing in 1989 and witnessed the massacre that took place in early June. Like here today, the long weeks of demonstrations were marked by moments of hope and small triumphs, and moments of helplessness and anguish. When the tanks rolled in during the night of June 3–4, I was jolted out of bed before dawn by a screaming crowd outside my dorm window. I joined the group and saw busloads of dead bodies and injured people being taken into the university’s clinic. Like me, many onlookers were still wearing their pajamas, as they shouted at the troops that their sin would never be forgiven. The trauma certainly can’t be forgotten: I don’t know anyone who lived through those days who isn’t filled today by the gutting apprehension that any mass protests against Beijing can only end in blood.

But Tiananmen is not a useful prism through which to analyze the current situation in Hong Kong. It may set up, almost predetermine, observers — as well as participants — into believing that evermore violence cannot be avoided. And it risks distracting us from the significance of what has already happened here and now.

Not only is Hong Kong today not what Beijing was in 1989, but China as a whole isn’t what it was back then. Among other things, China no longer is a clumsy newcomer on the international scene, stumbling out of decades of political upheaval; it is a leading power, fully integrated in the world economy. The Chinese Communist Party still has all political control, and it still resorts to repression to quell or prevent dissent. But even as it has less to fear today, it has more to lose from a blood bath against civilians — including any credibility to the claim that its system can be a viable political alternative to Western democracies.

Beijing doesn’t need to take any such risks. It has many more weapons than brute force at its disposal to bend the population of China, or Hong Kong, to its will. Yes, it has made sure to broadcast photos and videos showcasing the Chinese army’s might. But the Chinese government can also repress dissent through simple coercion or just legislation — and perhaps soon, too, in Hong Kong as on the mainland, thanks to sophisticated system of high-tech controls. It has also encouraged nationalism to reach fever-pitch, so that it can deploy mass indignation to target a business or a whole country. It can make victims without shedding blood.