Zhao Ziyang, with bullhorn, made his final appearance in Tiananmen Square with student protesters on May 19, 1989. Mr. Zhao's aide, Wen Jiabao, second from right, is now China's prime minister. STR/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFrom The New York Times:
In May 1989, as he feuded with hard-line party rivals over how to handle the students occupying Tiananmen Square, China’s Communist Party chief requested a personal audience with Deng Xiaoping, the patriarch behind the scenes.
The party chief, Zhao Ziyang, was told to go to Mr. Deng’s home on the afternoon of May 17 for what he thought would be a private talk. To his dismay, he arrived to find that Mr. Deng had assembled several key members of the Politburo, including Mr. Zhao’s bitter foes.
“I realized that things had already taken a bad turn,” Mr. Zhao recalls in a secretly recorded memoir only now coming to light — a rare first-person account of crisis politics at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Read more ....
My Comment: This is a fascinating read .... but not surprising to me. I lived in China in the summer of 1988, and I still clearly remember the economic and soon to be political revolution that was underway at that time. The decisions that were made then are still being felt in China today. While the economic and prosperity boom has temporarily silenced the critics .... the same animosities between the provinces, and the same desire and yearning for freedom .... these goals are still there.
No comments:
Post a Comment