Eighteen years have passed since the events associated with Tiananmen. Deng Xiaoping passed away in 1997, Zhao Ziyang in 2005, and Li Peng retired from his last official post in 2003. Zhao's successor as general secretary, Jiang Zemin, officially retired in 2002, though he retained some important influence in the years after. Other leaders associated with Tiananmen – such as Beijing city leaders Chen Xitong and Li Ximing, conservative elders Li Xiannian and Chen Yun, and military leaders such as Yang Shangkun – have all either left office or passed away.

At the same time, the economy has developed more rapidly than anyone expected. On average, the Chinese economy had expanded by over 9 percent per year for 16 years. In 1989, China had a GDP of 1.7 trillion yuan; by year-end 2006 its GDP stood at 20.9 trillion yuan. Foreign trade had expanded even faster than the domestic economy. In 1989 China had a foreign trade of $415 billion; at year-end 2006, foreign trade stood at $1.76 trillion, making China the third largest trading nation in the world. Foreign reserves stood at over a trillion US dollars, causing trade frictions with the US, but insuring against the risks of any sort of economic upheaval such as the Asian financial crisis. Visitors to China were dazzled not only by the modernity of Shanghai (recall that the Pudong financial district was only begun in 1992) and the imposing architecture of Beijing, but also of secondary cities, places like Suzhou and Wuxi in Jiangsu and Wenzhou in Zhejiang.