Zhao Ziyang (1919–2005)

Chinese politician, prime minister 1980–87 and leader of the Chinese Communist Party 1987–89. His reforms included self-management and incentives for workers and factories. He lost his secretaryship and other posts after the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in June 1989.

Zhao, the son of a wealthy Henan province landlord, joined the Communist Youth League in 1932 and worked underground as a CCP official during the Liberation War 1937–49. He rose to prominence in the party in Guangdong from 1951. As a supporter of the reforms of Liu Shaoqi, he was dismissed as Guangdong party leader during the 1966–69 Cultural Revolution, paraded through Canton in a dunce's cap, and in 1971 he was assigned to work in Inner Mongolia.

He was rehabilitated by Zhou Enlai in 1973 and sent to China's largest province, Sichuan, as first party secretary in 1975. Here he introduced radical and successful market-oriented rural reforms, which led to a rapid increase in output. Deng Xiaoping had him inducted into the Politburo as an alternate member in 1977 and as a full member in 1979. After six months as vice premier, Zhao was appointed prime minister in 1980 and assumed, in addition, the post of CCP general secretary in January 1987. His economic reforms were criticized for causing inflation, and his liberal views of the pro-democracy demonstrations that culminated in the student occupation of Tiananmen Square led to his downfall.

He refused to support the use of military force to suppress the demonstrations and when Deng Xiaoping, declared in a crucial 17 May 1989 Politburo meeting ‘I have the army behind me’, he reportedly retorted, ‘But I have the people behind me. You have nothing’. Zhao sought to resign as party leader and on 19 May 1989 made a final, tearful plea to the hunger-strikers in Tiananmen Square to end their fast. After the June 1989 military crackdown he was sacked as CCP leader and replaced by Jiang Zemin. He remained a CCP member, but became ‘politically invisible’.