China is lucky that that year didn't turn China into another Soviet Union, and that major event marked the start of the Chinese economic takeoff, from then on, Chinese nation became unprecedentedly united with her sight relentlessly set on the goal of development and progress.
If year 1989 turned the other way around, today's China could be worse than Russia, even India maybe, Russia was a developed and powerful country back then but China was nothing. The similar events set two countries into two different paths in the roughly the same time, but the result turned out to be hugely different.
China narrowly escaped from a massive disaster for the Chinese nation.