Additional reading:
BBC Reporters, CBS News, and New York Times reporter who were actually in the city the day it happened who report mainstream news got it all wrong. BBC Source | CBS Source | NYTimes Source
Readings into what happened with the protests:
https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen
https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt-2/
Probably – we can’t assume they would have started firing into the crowd. There weren’t any confrontations like this that tturned violent during the fall of the USSR, for instance, and Cuba has also broken up protests without simply shooting people. Most states do everything they can to avoid getting to that point; AES states are not an exception. Crowd control is its own discipline and intimidation is part of it. We also have the fact that they rolled all that stuff out there and backed off.
What should they have done? Do you just open the doors to any unelected group that shows up on the doorstep of the capitol?
There actually were some brief instances of crowds firing rifle rounds at the Kremlin and getting return fire in response during the August 1991 protests. I don’t think it escalated though and I don’t think anyone died.
Although these were pro-government demonstrators who wanted the USSR to remain intact.