Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 6, December 2009–January 2010, pp. 203–210
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When Zhao Ziyang, former general secretary of the Communist Party of China, died on 17 January 2005, China’s state media was ordered to publish only a terse announcement, about 50 characters in length, on the inner pages of the major Chinese newspapers. After all, even though Zhao was still a member of the party, 16 years earlier it had found him guilty of ‘supporting turmoil’ and ‘splitting the party’ for his attempts to avert the bloodshed of the 4 June 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. During his years of house arrest, he had appealed on several occasions for a reversal of the Tiananmen Square verdict, which laid the blame for the Tiananmen protests and their violent outcome on a small group of ‘counterrevolutionaries’, while at the same time staunchly refusing to admit any wrongdoing. With the publication of Prisoner of the State, however, Zhao posthumously has found a way to get a hearing, this time in the court of international opinion.
Zhao’s memoir, transcribed from recordings secretly made by Zhao while under house arrest and subsequently smuggled out of China by supporters, is a riveting read for those of us who have spent most of our professional lives trying to discern from afar the opaque inner workings of the Chinese leadership cloistered in the Zhongnanhai complex, and who watched the events of June 1989 unfold with anguish and dismay. Western Sinologists have gleaned what we can from China’s news media, but the personal dimensions of Chinese leadership politics have come to us only in rare and fleeting glimpses. To have a first-person account of the internal tensions and struggles of the Chinese Communist Party from the time Zhao became an alternate member of the Politburo in 1977 until his abrupt ouster from power in May 1989 is an unprecedented opportunity for scholars of Chinese politics and history. To be sure, there are glaring omissions in Zhao’s memoirs, and those seeking an account of his personal feelings about the events and his interpersonal relationships with the rest of China’s top leaders will be disappointed. Zhao is protective of his emotional life and much more comfortable providing a straightforward historical account and reflecting on political theory. Nonetheless, this memoir could well be the inspiration for a new generation of Chinese to fundamentally alter China’s political landscape, much as Zhao was a major player in transforming China’s economic system.
A government apart
One of the most striking aspects of the book is the way it confirms the profound emotional distance that exists between the Chinese leaders living and working in the Zhongnanhai compound and the population they govern. In my travels to Beijing as part of President George W. Bush’s staff, I was fortunate to get a chance to attend meetings at Zhongnanhai. I could only imagine the intrigues and political machinations of the place. The compound’s lakeside pavilions, marvels of architectural serenity and tranquillity, belie Zhongnanhai’s status as the epicentre of Chinese political power in a teeming metropolis of over 17 million people.
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Dennis C. Wilder authored this essay while a visiting fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He served as China director and then senior director for East Asian affairs at the National Security Council from August 2004 to January 2009.
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