Two decades after his downfall and four years after his death, reformist Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) has broken the official silence on the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, denouncing the killings of protesters as a “tragedy.”
In a memoir recorded secretly under house arrest, Zhao has challenged China’s cautious, current leaders just before the 20th anniversary of June 4, 1989, when troops crushed pro-democracy protests centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
He praises Western-style democracy and denounces the armed quelling of the protests, when troops and tanks pushed down Changan Avenue, shooting demonstrators and onlookers.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“On the night of June 3, while sitting in the courtyard with my family, I heard intense gunfire,” Zhao says. “A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted.”
Zhao, who was head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1989, rejects the government’s claim that the student protesters were part of an anti-Communist conspiracy.
“I had said at the time that most people were only asking us to correct our flaws, not attempting to overthrow our political system,” Zhao says in the book Prisoner of the State, to be published by Simon & Schuster in English this month ahead of the 20th anniversary.
The memoirs, about 30 hours of tape, were given to three confidants and smuggled out of China. A manuscript was obtained by Reuters.
Zhao’s account of CCP elders pushing him from power sheds rare light on the political warring behind the protests that shook China 20 years ago, culminating in his ouster and the crackdown that killed hundreds on the streets of Beijing.
“I told myself that no matter what, I refused to become the [CCP] general secretary who mobilized the military to crack down on students,” he says.
Zhao had his eyes fixed on China’s future when he secretively recorded his memories throughout years under house detention until his death in January 2005. He decries what he saw as the mistaken conservative path taken by the CCP after 1989 and argues for a gradual transition to Western-style democracy.
“In fact, it is the Western parliamentary democratic system that has demonstrated the most vitality,” Zhao says. “If we don’t move toward this goal, it will be impossible to resolve the abnormal conditions in China’s market economy.”
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