I'm convinced that covering up Tiananmen is possibly the biggest error of CPC propaganda, another ugly consequence of their beliefs about the administration of «harmonious society» (and, I suppose, lack of reality-based feedback, the yes-man culture in the Party apparatus). To be precise, they suppress the discussion but do not outright deny something happening...
Alas, the Chinese think they know better than me.
Certainly I'm inclined to extend them the benefit of the doubt, in view of their improbable and sustained success, defying Western policy oddsmakers for decades on end, prompting much resigned muttering over our dashed hopes for their liberalization.
The most amazing part of the CCP to me is the genuine support they seem to enjoy from their country. The most elite segments of society seem to be the most supportive. One can look at isolated cases of connected members of the elite (Jackie Chan, Liu Cixin, etc.) and wonder if they would blink twice for duress when prompted, but I haven't seen any evidence that the Chinese elite aren't on board.
The Great Leap Forward was incredibly traumatic, and it was a function of runaway youth and populist culture. The entire elite stratum of their country probably looks back on that era with the horror that Jewish community has for the Holocaust, albeit more quietly, and probably no effort in their eyes is too much to prevent a relapse among the hindquarters of their society. Never Again and all that.
Anyway, what has transparency and sincerity gained America in reckoning with the crimes of its past? From my perspective, sunlight has been an accelerant rather than a disinfectant. We hear more about Emmett Till with every passing year. Redlining, Tulsa's "Black Wall Street," Jim Crow, Rosa Parks, Tuskegee, George Wallace in the schoolhouse door... all are attack surfaces for people who wish to see America more rather than less divided along racial lines, and rather than healing, these wounds seem to be reemerging, their scar tissue regressing to scabs and then reopening as time goes by (who among us, truly, had even heard of Juneteenth before last year?). Some agitprop mythmaking -- such as the utterly false claim that black trans women led the charge at Stonewall -- arise and metastasize with increasing frequency, even being tacitly rebunked by the same reputable papers that previously debunked them. Unchecked spread on social media leads to nationwide riots that tear our cities apart in literal fashion after isolated occurrences, defying all attempts to recenter rationality via the broader statistical view. I can't imagine CCP looking at our gruesome example and agreeing that the path to healing leads through acknowledgement of any kind.