If tramp and bannon get their way, maybe billionaires will finally realize that democracy and rule of law is better for themselves than an arbitrary dictatorship and that this is a dangerous game that will get to them eventually e.g. putin's russia.
they're trying to establish a dominance hierarchy When all you care about is power and flush ethics, honesty, reason, law, empathy, respect, comptence, decorum, thoughtfulness, etc down the toilet, humans behave like these dumb apes.
The most intriguing alt-history stuff I've read about it was that the protesters were "lefties" protesting the Dengist attempts at liberalization and confucianist reform, because in one of the videos the protesters were singing socialist anthems e.g. 1st international. It looked like the last gasp of the cultural revolution. But I'm not sure how to check any of this (certainly not from the Chinese archives and the rest of the world only has videos...and the cables you mention), it's probably just another bullshit story to cover up what happened.
The question is what will it take for other billionaires/oligarchs to learn this lesson and stop supporting dictators?