Zhao Ziyang
| Zhao Ziyang at his Beijing residence in 2002 | |
| PRC Premier | |
| Order | 6th Premier |
| Term of Office: | June 1983–November 1987 |
| Acting | September 1980–June 1983 |
| Predecessor: | Hua Guofeng |
| Successor: | Li Peng |
| CPC General Secretary | |
| Order | 13th General Secretary |
| Term of Office: | November 11, 1987–June 23, 1989 |
| Acting | January 16. 1987–November 11, 1987 |
| Predecessor: | Hu Yaobang |
| Successor: | Jiang Zemin |
Zhao Ziyang (Simplified Chinese: 赵紫阳, Traditional Chinese: 趙紫陽, Hanyu Pinyin: Zhào Zǐyáng) (17 October 1919–17 January 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 support of 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
The son of a wealthy Hua County, Henan province landlord, 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 Civil War. 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 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 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 Communist Party 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. Zhao turned the province around by introducing radical and successful capitalist rural reforms, which led to an increase 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.
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 transparancy 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: "yao chi liang, Zhao Ziyang." The wordplay on his name, loosely translated, means "if you want to eat, seek Ziyang."
In January 1987, reformist leader Hu Yaobang was forced by Deng to resign for being too lenient to student protestors and he was replaced as by CPC General Secretary by Zhao, 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. Hardliners blamed Zhao for soaring inflation as the economy overheated in 1988. They also feared his political liberalization schemes were moving him closer to being China's Gorbachev (Gorbachev visited only weeks before the Tiananmen crackdown).
Tiananmen, purges, and house arrest
The tragic events of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 sealed his fate and rendered impossible any further democratic movement. When China's communist leaders Deng Xiaoping, Yang Shangkun, Li Peng, Hu Qili were finalizing their plans to declare martial law and crush the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Zhao waded into the students and spoke to them and pleaded with them to abandon their vigil before it was too late. This was the last time Zhao was seen in public.
A day after Zhao's May 19 visit to Tiananmen Square, martial law was declared. 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. After the massacre, Zhao was placed under house arrest and replaced as General Secretary by Jiang Zemin (who had suppressed similar protests in Shanghai without much bloodshed). He remained under tight supervision and allowed to leave his courtyard compound or receive visitors only with permission from the highest levels. There were occaisional reports of him visiting other parts of China, attending the funeral of a dead comrade, or playing golf at Beijing courses, but the government tried to keep him hidden and off news reports and history books.
In February 2004, Zhao had a pneumonia attack that led to a severe lung malfunctioning and was hospitalized for three weeks. 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. He 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, four sons, and a daughter.
See also
External links
- 赵紫阳同志逝世 (in Chinese, official Chinese news agency Xinhua News Agency announcement)
- Zhao Ziyang passes away (above article in English)