As I walked around Tiananmen Square on Wednesday evening, being photographed by the huge number of plain-clothes police, one point was clear: the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 massacre is still a highly sensitive moment in China. Yet it was only a few years ago that the anniversary was also a big diplomatic event. Earnest declarations would be made by foreign governments about political prisoners and large vigils would be held around the world.

It is a measure of how effectively China has managed to alter the terms of discussions about its human rights record that Wednesday’s 19th anniversary passed off with only modest comment, even after all the questions that the unrest in Tibet has raised about the real nature of the country’s political system. Despite all the “dialogues” still going on with western countries, China has managed to neuter human rights diplomacy.