Speaking out: Zhao Ziyang’s memoir

The memoir of a former head of the Chinese Communist Party who spoke out against 1989 brutality in Tiananmen, entitled ‘Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang’, will be released next week, four years after his death.  Zhao Ziyang called the CCP’s use of martial law in 1989 during protests in Tiananmen illegal, and wrote that there could have been a peaceful solution.  He criticized the conservative ‘old guard’ within the CCP leadership, in particular Deng Xiaoping who is touted as the man who changed the lives of millions ordinary Chinese through his economic reform.  During and after the harsh crushing of Tiananmen in 1989, Zhao Ziyang spoke out and was relegated to house arrest where  began to audio record his memoir.  At the end of his memoir he arrives at some radical conclusions for such a high level official. He argues that the CCP will have to give up it’s tight control on power, that parliamentary democracy is necessary and that China needs a free press, an independent judiciary and the freedom to organize. It remains to be seen when, if ever, his reform agenda and ideas of touming du, or transparency, will resonate in the top echelons of the party.

Zhao’s memoirs revive Tiananmen, CNN

In posthumous memoir, China’s Zhao Ziyang details Tiananmen debate, faults party, The Washington Post

From the inside, out, The Washington Post