More than 20 years have passed since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which brought tremendous change to China's political environment. In the years leading up to Tiananmen, the Chinese were more prone to express their thoughts on political affairs. After Tiananmen, as the Chinese economy began its more market-oriented evolution in the early 1990s, the Chinese people became less interested in politics and more interested in money. Ideologically, the emerging "Neo-Leftism," which accepted authoritarianism while emphasizing equality and justice in the path toward economic liberation, gained support among academics. It was also adopted by the Communist Party of China (CPC) as its dominant ideology, in part to enhance the Party's legitimacy. Meanwhile, the Chinese people became reluctant to promote radical political reform for fear of undermining economic growth and thereby disturbing the social order. In other words, after Tiananmen Square, China entered a phase of relative stability and consensus between the public and the ruling elite. Still, Tiananmen Square was a watershed event, generating the largest number of pro-democracy activists that the People's Republic of China had ever seen, advocating for political reform, human rights and the end of single-party rule. But most of this energy would continue to be generated abroad, from China's so-called "overseas democracy movement." And over the last 20 years or so, this movement has been fragmented and distanced from people on the mainland, problems that could see some remedy with the "Jasmine" movement. Pro-democracy activism in China actually originated long before Tiananmen Square, going all the way back to the crackdown on the "Gang of Four" in 1976, when four CPC officials were blamed for the worst social abuses of the 10-year Cultural Revolution and charged with treason. The democratic wave that followed, consisting of student leaders, professors, journalists and workers, would crest at Tiananmen Square. The CPC's bloody crackdown at Tiananmen isolated the party internationally and generated tremendous international sympathy and support for the pro-democracy activists. Shortly after the crackdown, a number of activists, including Chai Ling, Wu'erkaixi and Yan Jiaqi chose exile with the help of foreign countries and organizations. Major destinations included the United States, Hong Kong, France, Australia and Japan. Consequently, a number of pro-democracy groups were established outside of China by exiled activists and students studying abroad. In mainland China, while some prominent activists remained in the country and called for Beijing to redress grievances surrounding the Tiananmen protests, the government's heavy-handed security apparatus nipped any sign of protest in the bud — making it hard for the pro-democracy movement to regain any momentum. Many prominent activists also were imprisoned, such as Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xianbin. This resulted in a flourishing of the overseas pro-democracy movement and a withering of the domestic movement in the 1990s, when considerable international pressure began being applied against the Chinese government. Since then, the most prominent Chinese pro-democracy groups to evolve overseas include:

• The Union of Chinese Democracy Movement (UCDM), which was established in New York 1983 by overseas student turned activist Wang Bingzhang. The UCDM was the first Chinese pro-democracy organization established overseas. A year earlier, Wang had founded the first movement magazine, titled China Spring, which received widespread international attention. The founding of the magazine and the organization institutionalized China's pro-democracy movement. Before Tiananmen, however, their message did not have much of an audience among overseas students, who were generally cautious about the movement. Tiananmen Square changed all that. The Chinese government's response to the protesters shocked the overseas student community, bringing most of it into the movement and unifying and enlarging the UCDM. Today, with some 3,000 active members, the group has branches in a number of other countries, including Australia, France and the United Kingdom.
• The Federation for a Democratic China (FDC), which was established in September 1989 with its headquarters in Paris. It absorbed a number of well-known Tiananmen activists, including Yan Jiaqi, Wu'erkaixi and Liu Binyan. The FDC later established branches in several other countries, including the United States, Canada, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. With 2,000 to 3,000 members, it claims to be the largest political party opposed to the current regime in Beijing.
• The Chinese Freedom Democracy Party (CFDP), which was established in December 1989 in Virginia to gather under one banner a number of independent groups of Chinese students and scholars at U.S universities in support of the student protests in China. Attracted to its more radical doctrine, students comprise the party's largest group. Compared to the UCDM and the FDC, the CFDP takes a more revolutionary approach, calling for the "eradication" of CPC rule in China.
• The China Democracy Party, which was established by activist Wang Youcai in 1998 in mainland China and shortly thereafter declared an illegal organization by the CPC. After its founders left the country, the group's headquarters moved to New York. Today it is perhaps the most influential group among all Chinese pro-democracy groups overseas. Its leaders, including Wang Juntao and others in its New York headquarters and branches in Thailand, Taiwan and Canada, are actively supporting the Jasmine gatherings in China, according to one major website affiliated with the Jasmine movement.

Over the past 20 years or so, as the overseas pro-democracy movement has evolved, it has experienced a series of fundamental fractures among its component groups, which have fragmented into even smaller subsets. These divisive events include the 1993 Washington Conference in Washington, D.C., when the UCDM and FDC announced unification and then became locked in conflict over who would lead the unified group. The union never occurred, and although further attempts have been made, the 1993 conflict caused a number of pro-democracy activists to leave the movement, and there has been very little progress in unifying the two groups in the years since. There have been conflicts over ideology as well as leadership. In one well-known incident, Wei Jingsheng, who initiated the pro-democracy movement in China in 1978 by posting a signed document promoting individual liberty on a brick wall in Beijing (later to be known as "Democracy Wall"), publicly criticized Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo for his moderate stance on democracy in China. Although it is common for Chinese pro-democracy groups to disagree with one another, a tendency toward disabling disagreement undermines their ability to pursue a common goal in a coordinated manner, garner more international support and put effective pressure on the CPC. There is also an identity issue. For many years, despite being in exile and against CPC rule, many overseas activists remained staunchly Chinese, with great affection for and loyalty toward the culture and its people. While they are calling for the end to CPC rule, they didn't necessarily want to see another revolution or internal fragmentation of the country. Most pro-democracy organizations kept their distance from other overseas activist groups that supported independence for Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan. While this gave pro-democracy activists a certain non-violent reputation, it also made it more difficult to attract foreign attention and financial support, which diminished their influence. However, as older activists from the 1978 to 1989 period became less active and were replaced by younger activists, this new generation of American-born Chinese, students abroad and newly exiled dissidents brought more of a youthful and radical energy to the movement. After the 2008 riots in Xinjiang, some of the smaller overseas pro-democracy groups came out in support of Uighur independence. While none of this suggests that the movement's disparate parts will ever unite behind such revolutionary change in China, its ongoing evolution could see a greater consensus form between the pro-democracy groups and the pro-independence groups in resistance against the CPC. Even more important, because these groups have been rooted overseas for so long they are becoming less able to reach out to people in China, given the CPC's increasingly strict media censorship and social controls. While some overseas activists remain well known, the movement's loose structure and apparent lack of unity draws little recognition by the Chinese public. The ongoing Jasmine gatherings in China could make it easier for this connection to be made. Turnout has been insignificant so far, but the gatherings do represent a potential link to activists abroad that certainly alarms Beijing, which is intensifying its efforts to crack down on domestic dissidents, journalists and publishers and to monitor connections between domestic and overseas groups. Meanwhile, the use of social media, which are beyond the CPC's control, facilitate these connections. While it is unclear where the Jasmine organizers are located or whether overseas pro-democracy groups are involved in organizing the gatherings, if the events become more successful they could provide a substantial boost to the overseas movement, which must have a domestic anchor to achieve its goals.