Pierre Gave reviews Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

Plain clothes officers often carry umbrellas in Tiananmen Square to block reporters’ cameras from view.

Bao Pu, one of the editors of Prisoner of the State, is the son of Bao Tong, a former aide to Zhao Ziyang who helped record his memoirs which have recently been released as: Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. The memoirs were released ahead of the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on June 4th this year. The book is not available on the mainland, but is in Hong Kong and sold out earlier this year with many awaiting reprints. Around the book’s release, Bao Pu spoke at numerous events as the Hong Kong public wanted to know more about the controversy surrounding the publication. He said that he had to insist on his father’s words, that Zhao had just as much right as Mao Zedong to publish his memoirs. Bao Pu was accepted as a Hong Kong permanent resident this summer which speaks volumes about Hong Kong’s freedom.

One of Asia’s biggest literary events of the year has been the publication of the clandestine memoirs of Zhao Ziyang, the 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, until Tiananmen. The memoirs have the dramatic title: Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.

As Zhao tells it, this is the story of a man who tried to bring about liberal change to the Mainland and who, at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, tried to stop the massacre and was dethroned for his efforts. When China’s army moved in on June 4th killing hundreds of demonstrators, Zhao was placed under house arrest at his home on a quiet Beijing alley. China’s most promising agent for change had been disgraced, along with the policies he stood for. The former premier spent the last 16 years of his life up until his death in 2005 in heavily monitored seclusion.

The story behind the book is compelling and is a throwback to the world of John Le Carre-like spy shenanigans. After a few years of house arrest, Zhao Ziyang, fearing that his legacy would be tainted, started to meticulously record his memoirs on an old cassette recorder. These tapes were hidden in full view among his children’s toys and were only marked with very faint numbers, indicating the tape’s place in the sequence. Over the years, copies of these tapes were smuggled out by friends and relatives and have now been compiled for the first time.

The book opens at full speed with the events leading up to the Tiananmen massacre, giving the reader a first-hand view of the power plays that, ultimately, led to martial law and the deadly assault by the People’s Liberation Army on the unarmed protestors.

PLA Troop Movement – Beijing, China

From the onset of the unrest, Zhao says he wanted the Party to take a conciliatory approach. In his mind, the student leaders’ main concern – rampant government corruption – was a valid one and something he had been at pains to try to crack down on. Unfortunately, his views were not shared by the hardliners in the Chinese Communist Party who saw this unrest as a dangerous anti-establishment movement, threatening to overthrow the very foundations of the Party.

During the weeks of ensuing unrest, Zhao engages in a titanic struggle with Li Peng, the sitting Premier of China and the man leading the hardliner faction within the Party. At the time, the Party was still very much run by Deng Xiaoping, so Li Peng and Zhao Ziyang try by all means available to win him over to their views. Crucially, Zhao is sent off on a mission to North Korea, which is when Li Peng and his associates make their move, convincing Deng Xiaoping to label the protests as anti-socialist, anti-patriotic, and bourgeois liberal. These were labels that had not been used since the purges of the Cultural Revolution and greatly upset the students who saw their cause as righteous indignation against corruption. This was the point of no return: once these comments had been made, there was no way that the Chinese leadership could ever back down. At the same time, the students’ fervor remained undeterred and a violent confrontation seemed unavoidable.

Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang Author: Zhao Ziyang (Translation copyright by Bao Pu and Renee Chiang (Editors)) Simon & Schuster New York, NY 336 pages

Upon returning from his trip, Zhao quickly understood that the tide had turned and that it was no longer in his favor. In a last-ditch effort – which effectively sealed his fate – Zhao visited the students at the square (with his chief of staff, the current Premier Wen!), beseeching them to disperse and trying to convince them of what would inevitably come if they did not. The students, however, refused to budge. We all know the tragedy that followed. In a poignant passage, Zhao describes how he could hear the incessant gunfire a few days later from his house arrest as the army finally overran the square in a largescale military operation that he failed to stop.

From here on, the rest of the memoir deals with Zhao’s efforts to get his name cleared. He feels that proper Party procedures were not followed and that his dismissal was, therefore, illegal. From someone so intimately involved with the reality of Chinese politics, this seems somewhat strange and even naïve. Surely, Zhao knew that his case was hopeless? Nevertheless, the book is well worth reading, if just for the chapters about the Tiananmen tragedy. This is a rare opportunity to get a peak of one of the secret regimes of its time and read firsthand of how the Chinese leadership panicked. And it still leaves the reader with a question: how would China look today had Zhao prevailed? Would it be any freer?

Pierre Gave is the Head of Global Research at Gavekal.

First printing by Gavekal.

From someone so intimately involved with the reality of Chinese politics, this seems somewhat strange and even naïve. Surely, Zhao knew that his case was hopeless?