China Plays Down Death of Ex-Leader

Ordinary Chinese easily could have missed the death this week of a purged Communist Party leader who sympathized with the students during protests that led to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. That’s because the government has done everything it can to make sure his passing is a nonevent.

The evening news continued to keep its silence Tuesday, a day after Zhao Ziyang, 85, died in a Beijing hospital after suffering a series of strokes. Newspapers ran brief items tucked into the back pages. Western media coverage on CNN and the BBC was blacked out in China. Click on anything with the words “Zhao Ziyang” on the Internet here, and the page probably will not be available for display.

Analysts believe that it’s all part of an orchestrated effort to prevent Zhao from becoming a catalyst in a country with a history of turning the death of a public figure into a cause for mass protest.

“They don’t want to repeat what happened when Hu Yaobang died,” said Cheng Li, a China expert at Hamilton College in New York, referring to another deposed party leader whose death in April 1989 helped trigger pro-democracy demonstrations that were suppressed at the cost of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of lives.

“They want to prevent it at an early stage,” Li said. “This is the lesson they learned from Tiananmen.”

Li said Chinese leaders probably discussed this strategy before Zhao’s death, with the goal of presenting a united front. “They don’t want to give any indication that there is a split in how to treat Zhao and the Tiananmen incident,” he said.

However, some observers said the virtual news blackout was unnecessary, given that younger Chinese appear preoccupied with the pursuit of material wealth.

“China has changed so much since 1989. Most young people today don’t care too much about politics and see no connection between Zhao and their lives,” said Victor Yuan, an independent pollster in Beijing.

But the authorities were taking no chances. According to Chinese journalists, the central government gave strict instructions to the print media on how to report Zhao’s death, down to the words and placement on the page.

“They want to make sure no one would cross the line,” said Xiao Qiang, a longtime human rights activist who is director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at UC Berkeley.

Security also was tightened around Tiananmen Square on Tuesday. People seeking to view the daily raising and lowering of the Chinese flag were required to have a police escort to the site.

Outside the traditional compound where Zhao lived under house arrest for 15 years, mourners bearing flowers trickled in Tuesday to pay their respects as plainclothes security and uniformed police officers positioned at the entrance of the narrow alley looked on.

How to handle the funeral arrangement has been a balancing act for Beijing’s new leaders. They could not act too callously, lest they trigger public outrage. Nor could they afford to pay too much tribute to the deceased, for fear of suggesting a reversal of the official verdict on the Tiananmen massacre, which viewed Zhao as too conciliatory toward the protesters and the crackdown against them as a needed step toward public order.

The situation is especially delicate for Premier Wen Jiabao. He was one of Zhao’s top lieutenants and stood on Tiananmen Square next to his boss when Zhao tearfully warned the students to go home just before martial law was declared.

The government typically broadcasts funerals of leaders. When party elder Song Renqiong died Jan. 8, the evening news showed a parade of officials, including Wen and President Hu Jintao, bowing deeply before the body and shaking hands with relatives.

Analysts believe that such an elaborate state funeral is unlikely for Zhao.

At a regular news conference held by the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, a spokesman made it clear that officials had no intention of rehabilitating the former protege of the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

“The political disturbance and the problem of Zhao himself have already passed,” said spokesman Kong Quan. “What happened in 1989 has reached its conclusion. The past 15 years have shown China’s decision was correct.”

Bao Tong, Zhao’s onetime secretary who was jailed after Zhao’s fall in 1989, said it was all part of an official effort to erase his former boss’ name from history.

“Their attempts to conceal the truth about the past serve to reveal their weakness and their shamelessness,” Tong wrote in a eulogy his family released.

Unable to express their views in more open forums, some people managed to get around censors by referring to Zhao without naming him.

“Have a safe journey. History will judge the true criminals,” one blogger wrote on the Internet.

“Farewell, the people will remember you,” wrote another.