Zhao Ziyang (simplified Chinese: 赵紫阳;
traditional Chinese: 趙紫陽; pinyin: Zhào Zǐyáng; Wade-Giles: Chao Tzu-yang)
(October 17 1919–January
17 2005) was a politician in the People's
Republic of China. He was Premier of the People's Republic of
China from 1980 to 1987, and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1987 to 1989. As a high-ranking government official, he was a leading reformer who implemented market reforms that greatly increased
production and sought measures to streamline the bloated bureaucracy and fight
corruption. Once slated as Deng Xiaoping's
successor, Zhao Ziyang was purged for his sympathetic stance toward the student demonstrators in
the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and spent the last fifteen years
of his life under house arrest.
Rise to power
Zhao was born Zhao Xiuye (赵修业), but changed his given name to Ziyang while attending middle school. The son of a wealthy
landlord in Hua County, Henan province, he joined the
Communist Youth League in 1932 and worked
underground as a Communist Party official during the Sino-Japanese War
(1937-1945) and subsequent Chinese Civil War. His father was killed by party
officials in the late 1940s. He rose to prominence in the party in Guangdong from 1951 and introduced numerous successful agricultural reforms. In 1962, Zhao began to disband the commune system in order to return private
land to peasants while assigning production contracts to individual households. He also directed
a harsh purge of cadres accused of corruption or having ties to the Kuomintang. By
1965 Zhao was the Party secretary of Guangdong province, despite not being a member of the
Communist Party Central Committee.
As a supporter of the reforms of Liu Shaoqi, he was dismissed as Guangdong party leader in
1967 during the Cultural Revolution, paraded through Guangzhou
in a dunce cap and denounced as "a stinking remnant of the landlord class". He spent four
years in forced labor at a factory. In 1971 he was assigned to work as an official in Inner Mongolia and then
returned to Guangdong in 1972.
Zhao was rehabilitated by Zhou Enlai in
1973, appointed to the Central
Committee, and sent to China's largest province, Sichuan, as first party secretary in
1975. Sichuan had been economically devastated by the Great
Leap Forward, and the consequent Cultural Revolution. Zhao turned the
province around by introducing radical and successful Market-oriented rural reforms, which led to an increase in industrial
production by 81% and agricultural output by 25% within three years. Deng Xiaoping saw the "Sichuan Experience" as the model for
Chinese economic reform and had Zhao inducted into the
Politburo as an alternate member in 1977 and as a full member in 1979. He joined the
Politburo Standing Committee in 1982.
Survived Assassination Attempts
Since Sichuan province was a strong base of Radicalism during the Cultural Revolution, the ardent followers of the Gang of Four
vehemently opposed Zhao's reforms. However, Zhao's policy had huge popular support and the supporters of the Gang of Four turned
to assassination after all other supposedly legal means failed. Over the years in Sichuan during
the Cultural Revolution, there were no fewer than half a dozen attempts on Zhao's
life, and the most serious one happened when Zhao's jeep was ambushed in a valley during one of his trips, where he narrowly
escaped death, but in an attempt to save Zhao's life, his driver/secretary was crushed and buried by an artificially induced
landslide. Although attempts on Zhao's only resulted in this single loss of life, the last culprits were not caught until 1983,
well after the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Reformist leader
After six months as vice-premier, Zhao was appointed premier in 1980 to replace Hua
Guofeng, Mao's designated successor, who was being pushed out of power by Deng
Xiaoping. He developed "preliminary stage theory," a course for transforming the socialist system that set the stage for much of the later Chinese economic reform. As premier, he implemented
many of the policies that were successful in Sichuan, including giving limited self-management to industrial enterprises and
increased control over production to peasants. Zhao sought to develop coastal provinces with special economic zones that could lure foreign
investment and create export hubs. This led to rapid increases in both agricultural and
light-industrial production throughout the 1980s, but his economic reforms were criticized for
causing inflation. Zhao also persisted in advocating an open foreign policy, fostering good relations with western nations that could aid China's economic development.
Zhao was a solid believer in the party, but he defined socialism much differently than party conservatives. Zhao called
political reform "the biggest test facing socialism." He believed economic progress was inextricably linked to democratization. As early as 1986, Zhao became the first high-ranking Chinese
leader to call for change, by offering a choice of election candidates from the village level
all the way up to membership in the Central Committee.
In the 1980s, Zhao was branded by many as a revisionist of Marxism. He advocated government
transparency and a national dialogue that included ordinary citizens in the policymaking process, which made him popular with the
masses. In Sichuan, where Zhao implemented economic restructuring in the 1970s, there was a saying: "要吃粮，找紫阳 (yao chi liang,
zhao Ziyang)." The wordplay on his name, loosely translated, means "if you want to feed yourself, follow Ziyang."
In January 1987, Deng forced reformist leader Hu Yaobang to
resign for being too lenient to student protestors; Zhao replaced him as CPC General Secretary, whose vacated premiership was in
turn filled by Li Peng. This put Zhao in the position to succeed Deng as paramount leader. While
General Secretary Zhao favored loosening government controls over industry and creating free-enterprise zones in the coastal
regions, Premier Li favored a cautious approach that relied more on central planning and
guidance.
In the 1987 Communist Party Congress Zhao declared that China was in "a primary stage of socialism" that could last 100 years.
Under this premise, China needed to experiment with a variety of economic systems to
stimulate production. Zhao proposed to separate the roles of the party and state, a proposal that has since become taboo.
According to western observers, the two years Zhao served as General Secretary were the most open in modern Chinese history—many
limitations on freedom of speech and freedom of
press were relaxed, allowing intellectuals to freely propose improvements for the country.
Equally important, in the economic arena, Zhao was one of the first leaders that advocate the reduction of state control in
enterprises by increasing private ownership via stock. Although the idea also became taboo during
Zhao's era, it did begin to become a reality since 1990s.
Zhao's proposal in May 1988 to accelerate price reform led to widespread popular complaints about rampant inflation and gave
opponents of rapid reform the opening to call for greater centralization of economic controls and stricter prohibitions against
Western influence. This precipitated a political debate, which grew more heated through the winter of 1988 to 1989.
The second half of 1988 saw the increasing deterioration of Zhao's political environment. In fact, Zhao found himself in
multi-front turf battles with the party elders, who grew increasingly dissatisfied with Zhao's hands-off approach to ideological
matters, as well as the conservative faction in the politiburo led by Li Peng and Yao Yilin, who were constantly at odds with him in economic and fiscal policy making. In the mean time, Zhao
was under growing pressure to combat the runaway corruption by the rank-and-file officials and their family members. As the year
of 1989 kicked off, it was evident that Zhao was faced with an increasingly difficult uphill battle, to some extent he was
fighting for his own political survival. If he was unable to turn things around rapidly, a showdown with the party conservatives
would be all but inevitable. As it happened, the student protests triggered by the sudden death of former CCP Genereal Secretary
Hu Yaobang, widely seen as a reform-minded leader, provided Zhao with a golden opportunity to
regain political upperhand and to advance his reform agenda.
Purged after Tiananmen Square Protests
Zhao Ziyang (accompanied by then-Chief of Staff
Wen Jiabao)
addressed the student protestors at Tiananmen on
May 19,
1989. He
apologized to the students, saying "Students, we came too late. We are sorry."
The death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, coupled with growing economic hardship caused by high inflation, provided the backdrop for the large-scale
protest of 1989 by students, intellectuals, and other
parts of a disaffected urban population. Student demonstrators, taking advantage of the
loosening political atmosphere, reacted to a variety of causes of discontent, which they attributed to the slow pace of reform.
Ironically, some of the original invective was also directed against Zhao. The party hardliners increasingly came to the opposite
conclusion, regretting an excessively rapid pace of change for causing the mood of confusion and frustration rife among college
students. The protesters called for an end to official corruption and for defense of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. Protests also spread
through many other cities, including Shanghai and Guangzhou.
The tragic events of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 sealed
Zhao's fate and rendered impossible any further democratic movement. While he was paying an official visit to Pyongyang, the party hard-liners exploited the opportunity to declare the ongoing protests
"counter-revolutionary." Upon returning from Pyongyang, Zhao made several attempts to steer the course toward what he called "a
track based upon democracy and the rule of law". He opened up channels for direct dialogues between students and the government
at multiple levels. He also ordered the news media to cover the student demonstrations with unprecedented openness. A number of
legislative initiatives aimed at the reform of press, news media and education were also under way. However, Zhao's initiatives,
along with his conciliatory attitude toward the students, were seen by the elders and other party hard-liners as hastened steps
toward breaking free the party control, therefore a recipe for ultimate disaster. The evening of May
16 marked the point of no return of Zhao's political career. At the onset of his meeting with the visiting Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhao made a stunning announcement declaring that Deng Xiaoping, though officially no longer a member of the
party central committee, was still having final say in major decision-making. Zhao's move was viewed as an unmistakable sign of
departing company with the party leadership, especially the aging paramount leader. It was at this point that Zhao completely
lost the trust of Deng Xiaoping, his long-time political patron and mentor. On the night of May
18, Zhao was summoned to Deng's residence and a hastily called Politburo Standing Committee was called to endorse
martial law with Zhao casting the lone dissenting vote.
Shortly before 5 A.M. on the morning of May 19, Zhao appeared in Tiananmen Square and wandered
among the crowd of protesters. Using a bullhorn, he had the following famous speech with the students at the square. It was first
broadcast through China Central Television nationwide.
| “ |
"Students, we came too late. We are sorry. You talk about us, criticize us, it is all necessary. The reason that I came here
is not to ask you to forgive us. All I want to say is that students are getting very weak, it is the 7th day since you went on
hunger strike, you can't continue like this. As the time goes on, it will damage your body in an unrepairable way, it could be
very dangerous to your life. Now the most important thing is to end this strike. I know, your hunger strike is to hope that the
Party and the government will give you a satisfying answer. I feel that our communication is open. Some of the problem can only
be solved by certain procedures. For example, you have mentioned about the nature of the incident, the question of
responsibility, I feel that those problems can be resolved eventually, we can reach a mutual agreement in the end. However, you
should also know that the situation is very complicated, it is going to be a long process. You can't continue the hunger strike
for the 7th day, and still insist for a satisfying answer before ending the hunger strike.
You are still young, there are still many days yet to come, you must live healthy, and see the day when China accomplishes the
four modernizations. You are not like us, we are already old, it doesn't matter to
us any more. It is not easy that this nation and your parents support you to study in colleges. Now you are all about early 20's,
and want to sacrifice lives so easily, students, can't you think logically? Now the situation is very serious, you all know, the
Party and the nation is very antsy, the whole society is very worried. Besides, Beijing is the capital, the situation is getting
worse and worse from everywhere, this can not be continued. Students all have good will, and are for the good of our nation, but
if this situation continues, loses control, it will cause serious consequences at many places.
In conclusion, I have only one wish. If you stop hunger strike, the government won't close the door for dialogue, never! The
questions that you have raised, we can continue to discuss. Although it is a little slow, but we are reaching some agreement on
some problems. Today I just want to see the students, and express our feelings. Hopefully students will think about this question
calmly. This thing can not be sorted out clearly under illogical situations. You all have that strength, you are young after all.
We were also young before, we protested, lied our bodies on the rail tracks, we never thought about what will happen in the
future at that time. Finally, I beg the students once again, think about the future calmly. There are many things that can be
solved. I hope that you will all end the hunger strike soon, thank you."
|
” |
[citation needed][1]
"We are already old, it doesn't matter to us any more." became a famous quote after that. That was his last public
appearance.
House arrest until death
The protesters did not disperse. A day after Zhao's May 19 visit to Tiananmen Square, Premier
Li Peng publicly declared martial law. In the power struggle that ensued, Zhao was stripped of all his positions. What motivated
Zhao remains, even today, a topic of debate by many. Some say he went into the square hoping a conciliatory gesture would gain
him leverage against hard-liners like Premier Li Peng. Others believe he supported the
protesters and did not want to see them hurt when the military was called in. After the incident, Zhao was placed under
house arrest and replaced as General Secretary by Jiang Zemin, who had suppressed similar
protests in Shanghai without much bloodshed.
Zhao remained under tight supervision and was allowed to leave his courtyard compound or receive visitors only with permission
from the highest echelons of the party. There were occasional reports of him attending the funeral of a dead comrade, visiting
other parts of China or playing golf at Beijing courses, but the government rather successfully
kept him hidden from news reports and history books. Over that period, only a few snapshots of
a gray-haired Zhao leaked out to the media. On at least two occasions Zhao wrote letters, addressed to the Chinese government, in
which he put forward the case for a reassessment of the Tiananmen Massacre. One of those letters appeared on the eve of the
Communist Party's 15th National Congress. The other came during a 1998 visit to China by U.S. President Bill Clinton. Neither was ever
published in mainland China.
Death and muted response
In February 2004, Zhao had a pneumonia attack that
led to a severe lung malfunctioning and was hospitalized for three weeks. Zhao was hospitalized again with pneumonia on
December 5, 2004. Reports of his death were officially denied
in early January 2005. Later, on January 15, he was
reported to be in a coma after multiple strokes. According to
activist Frank Lu, Vice President Zeng Qinghong visited
Zhao in the hospital. Zhao died on January 17 in a Beijing hospital at 07:01 at the age of
85. He is survived by his second wife, Liang Boqi, and five children (a daughter and four sons).
The government's response to Zhao's death was notably muted, probably out of fear that mass mourning would spark national
protests as had occurred after the deaths of Zhou Enlai and Hu
Yaobang. The official government Xinhua News Agency reported as "Zhao Ziyang
died at 85" in the English version,[2] while the Chinese
title was "Comrade Zhao Ziyang died." It did not make any note of his official titles or legacy as a leader. This is considered
unusual, because people who have lower ranks than he did would usually get lots of titles, such as the great revolutionist, loved
by the people, etc. Zhao's death was not mentioned on state-run television and radio programs. All Chinese newspapers carried the
exact same 59-word obituary on the day following his death, leaving the main means of mass dissemination through the
Internet.[3] Internet forums, such as the Strong
Nation Forum and the SINA.com Forum were flooded with messages expressing condolences
for Zhao, but these messages were promptly deleted by moderators, leading to more
postings attacking the moderators for deleting the postings.
In Hong Kong, 10,000–15,000 people attended the candlelight vigil in remembrance of Zhao.
Mainlanders such as Chen Juoyi said that it was illegal for Hong Kong legislators to join any
farewell ceremony, stating "...under the 'one country, two systems' a Hong
Kong legislator cannot care anything about mainland China." The statement caused a political
storm in Hong Kong that continued for three days after his speech. Szeto Wah, the chairman of
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of
Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, said that it was not right for the Communists to suppress the memorial ceremony.
The twenty-four pan-democrat legislators went against the chairperson of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, insisting that security be tightened at Tiananmen
Square and at Zhao's house, and that the authorities try to prevent any public displays of grief.
Similar memorials were held around the world, notably in New York City and
Washington, DC where American government officials and exiled political dissidents attended.
Zhao's positions would have normally entitled him to a state funeral, but the PRC
government stated that the funerary arrangements for past leaders had been streamlined and state funerals were no longer held.
Skeptics have questioned whether future funerals of Chinese ex-leaders will be as muted as Zhao's.
On January 29, 2005 the government held a funeral ceremony
for him at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, a place reserved for
revolutionary heroes and high government officials, that was attended by some 2,000 mourners that had been pre-approved to
attend. Several dissidents, including Zhao's secretary Bao Tong and Tiananmen Mothers leader Ding Zilin, were kept under house arrest
to prevent them from attending. The most senior official to attend the funeral was Jia
Qinglin, fourth in the party hierarchy. Mourners were allowed five at a time to view Zhao's flag-covered body and to pay
respect to his family. They were forbidden to bring flowers or to inscribe their own messages on the government-issued flowers.
There was no eulogy at the ceremony because the government and Zhao's family could not agree on
its content: while the government wanted to say he made mistakes, his family refused to accept he did anything wrong. On the day
of his funeral, state television mentioned Zhao's death for the first time and issued a short obituary acknowledging his contribution to economic reforms, but saying he made "serious mistakes" during the
1989 protests. After the ceremony, Zhao was cremated. His ashes were taken to his Beijing home
as the government denied him a place at Babaoshan.
Push for rehabilitation
In 2005, former NPC Chairman Wan Li joined more than 20 retired Politburo members, including
Tian Jiyun, former Vice Premier, in asking the Central Government to rehabilitate Zhao’s name and hold memorial services for him
for his many important contributions to China. The Chinese government agreed to hold a ceremony to honor the late Communist Party
chief Zhao Ziyang, but the response fell far short of satisfying the requests from both inside and outside the CPC.
See also
References
- ^ Zhao Ziyang's Speech at Tiananmen[1]
- ^ [2]
[4]
External links
cdo:Diêu Ciē-iòng
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