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"The comparisons are inescapable, and for many pundits, irresistible. Thousands of jubilant protestors gathered under often tense and volatile circumstances on a landmark national square to voice opposition to their government. It could be Cairo, it could be Beijing. As the world waits to see how Egypt's mass protests will end, talk of China's own disastrous uprising in 1989 continues on. In China, the Tiananmen Square uprising is on the minds of many watching the situation in Egypt, and the political content is being carefully managed and filtered for China's domestic audience."

"Could a Tunisian fruit vendor's self-immolation spark political turmoil - in China? That may be less far-fetched than it sounds. Revolutionaries have always inspired each other, from French san-culottes channeling Thomas Paine to South American Marxists embracing Chairman Mao. And as recent events in Egypt show, civic anger these days is viral; it shows little respect for frontiers. Noted economic historian Barry Eichengreen, for one, thinks Beijing should worry. He sees parallels between the dire political and economic conditions that lit the fuse in Cairo and circumstances in China."

"There are, of course, many different ways of categorizing historical revolutions. But for the purposes of understanding what is happening in Egypt -- and the challenges it may pose for the United States -- one simple, rough distinction may be especially useful. This is the distinction between revolutions that look more like 1688 and revolutions that look more like 1789. The first date refers to England's "Glorious Revolution," in which the Catholic, would-be absolute monarch James II was overthrown and replaced by the Protestant William and Mary and the English Parliament claimed powerful and enduring new forms of authority. The second is, of course, the date of the French Revolution, which began as an attempt to create a constitutional monarchy but ultimately led to the execution of King Louis XVI, the proclamation of the First French Republic, and the Reign of Terror. "

"For the first time in memory, places like Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen are starting to understand what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote that "when the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." Middle East citizens have long been fearful -- but now with protesters overwhelming the streets, the regimes finally are too. Yet as people power has swept autocrats out of Tunis and Cairo, Middle Eastern regimes aren't the only ones getting nervous. Beijing is also paying rapt attention. "

"There are frequent analogies going around these days between events in Cairo and the rise and fall of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. "We cannot afford a Tiananmen Square in Cairo," Senator John McCain said on CNN. One of the few who is well qualified to draw a comparison is Nick Kristof, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1989 protests and crackdown in Beijing. Arriving in Tahrir Square yesterday, he wrote that the mood "reminds me, painfully, of the equally giddy mood at Tiananmen Square before the shooting started. Some of the regime's moves-earlier curfew, buzzing protesters with fighter planes, nasty media-don't seem conciliatory at all." One of the few to frame the comparison in positive terms is the liberal Chinese activist-lawyer Teng Biao; when he saw the video of a lone Egyptian protester, standing before a truck fitted with a water-cannon, he wrote on Twitter, "'Must see! Egypt's Tiananmen movement, a warrior blocks a military vehicle!'""