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Power, Policy and Elite Politics under Zhao Ziyang

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2010

Alfred L. Chan
Alfred L. Chan
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario. Email: achan@uwo.ca
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Extract

Heir apparent to Deng Xiaoping but illegally deposed as general secretary, Zhao Ziyang was held under house arrest after the Tiananmen events of 1989 until his death at 85 in 2005. A three-year special investigation to prove that Zhao “supported turmoil and split the party” simply fizzled out. In 2000, after many failed attempts to regain his freedom and to reverse the verdicts against the students and himself, he secretly recorded his memoirs for posterity. Gaige licheng, a transcript of about 30 cassette-tapes, was smuggled out of China and, together with an English translation entitled Prisoner of the State: The Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang, published on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in June 2009.

Type
Review Essays
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 203 , September 2010 , pp. 708 - 718
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2010

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References

1 Bao Pu is the son of Bao Tong, a former aide to Zhao and an important player of high politics in the 1980s who is now a persecuted and harassed political dissident.

2 One such set of documents is The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leadership's Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People (New York: Public Affairs, 2001) edited by Andrew Nathan and Perry Link, one of the most comprehensive and potentially valuable collections of materials on the fateful events of 1989. See Alfred L. Chan, with a rejoinder by Nathan, Andrew J., “The Tiananmen Papers Revisited,” The China Quarterly, No. 177 (2004), pp. 190–214Google Scholar. The stilted and artificial language used in those secret documents contrasts with the vivid, natural and unrehearsed style of Zhao's tapes.

3 For instance, Baum, Richard, Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Fewsmith, Joseph, Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and Economic Debate (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1994)Google Scholar. More theoretical treatments are Fewsmith, Joseph, Elite Politics in Contemporary China (Boulder: M. E. Sharpe, 2001)Google Scholar; Unger, Jonathan (ed.), The Nature of Chinese Politics: From Mao to Jiang (Boulder: M. E. Sharpe, 2002)Google Scholar.

4 Important memoirs include Ming, Ruan, Deng Xiaoping diguo (Deng Xiaoping's Empire) (Taibei: Shibao wenhua chuban qiye youxian gongsi, 1992)Google Scholar, translated as Deng Xiaoping: Chronicle of an Empire (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992). Liqun, Deng, Shierge chunqiu, 1975–1987: Deng Liqun zishu (Deng Liqun's Twelve-Year memoirs, 1975–1987) (Hong Kong: Bozhi chubanshe, 2006)Google Scholar.

5 Fengming, Zong, Zhao Ziyang ruanjinzhong de tanhua (Zhao Ziyang: Captive Conversations)(Hong Kong: Kaifang chubanshe, 2007)Google Scholar; Fengming, Zong, Lixiang, xinnian, zhuiqiu: wode rensheng huigu yu fansi jianhe Zhao Ziyang tanhua de yixue huiyi (My Quest for Faith and Ideals: A Recollection and Reflection of my Life and Reminiscences of Conversations with Zhao Ziyang)(Hong Kong: Huanqiu shiye gongsi, 2005)Google Scholar; Jisheng, Yang, Zhongguo gaige niandai de zhengzhi douzheng (The Political Struggles in China's Reform Era) (Hong Kong: Excellent Culture Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

6 Zhao probably learned a tough lesson by his own practice of the Maoist-style “blind command” during the Great Leap Forward. See Chan, Alfred L., Mao's Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China's Great Leap Forward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, chap. 5, pp. 212–15 and passim.

7 Similar observations can be found in Ruan Ming, Deng Xiaoping.

8 See The Tiananmen Papers, chapters three and four.

9 Zhao was said to have been outvoted in The Tiananmen Papers (p. 175).

10 Ruan Ming, Deng Xiaoping, pp. 206–207.

11 Ibid.

12 Wu, Guoguang and Lansdowne, Helen, Zhao Ziyang and China's Political Future (London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.