The Dead Man Feared by China

China well understands the danger of reformers’ funerals. The 1976 death of Chou En-lai, who tried to rein in the excesses of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, brought masses into the streets. Then in 1989, the death in April of disgraced former Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang propelled tens of thousands of supporters, angered at the government’s treatment of Hu, into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. They protested party corruption and government nepotism. As weeks went by and the crowd grew, the demands came to include greater democracy. The protests ended with the declaration of martial law and the indelible image of tanks routing demonstrators as one young man in the square tried to stop them.

Zhao Ziyang, a former premier who in 1989 was the leader of the Communist Party, supported the protesters, arguing that their ideals should become the party’s. Weeks before tanks and troops crushed the rebellion, Zhao went to Tiananmen to meet the demonstrators, weepingly telling them, “We’ve come too late, we’ve come too late.” It was his last public appearance.

Monday, after nearly 16 years under house arrest, Zhao died. The government, afraid of stirring protests, censored foreign broadcasts of his death, ordered that the news be buried deep inside newspapers if printed at all and insisted again Tuesday that its actions in 1989 were correct. Police fanned preventively into Tiananmen Square.

Zhao was an architect of China’s economic turnaround, proposing that industries be allowed to make their own decisions and live with them, rather than abide by a plan drawn up in Beijing. He also argued to let farmers sell the surplus above what they had to provide to the state, an incentive that reduced rural poverty. Although he failed to persuade party leaders to match political reforms to economic advances, there has been progress in opening local party committees to discussion and dissent, instead of just rubber-stamping edicts from above. If the Chinese can mobilize nascent grass-roots movements into a force that demands a say in government, Zhao will receive the honor he deserves.

The White House on Tuesday aptly called Zhao a “man of moral courage.” China’s refusal to allow public tributes to Zhao demonstrates the leadership’s fear of the ideas he put forth. Beijing would increase its prestige at home and abroad by at least giving him credit for the improved economic conditions across the country, even if it cannot bring itself to concede that unleashing the army on the Tiananmen protesters and killing thousands of them was a grave mistake.