Zhao Ziyang

Premier of the People’s Republic of China (1980-1987)

• Born: October 17, 1919
• Birthplace: Hua County, Henan Province, China
• Died: January 17, 2005
• Place of death: Beijing, China

As premier of the People’s Republic of China, Zhao advanced economic reform and attempted the political reform of government under the general direction of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese paramount leader. He voted against the institution of martial law during the Tiananmen student demonstrations of 1989, urged the students to disband peacefully, and was stripped of his posts and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

Early Life

Zhao Ziyang (zow zee-yahng) was born to a wealthy landlord in Henan Province who was executed during the Communist land reform campaigns of the late 1940’s. As a teenager, Zhao changed his given name from Xiuye to Ziyang and, in 1932, joined the Communist Youth League, thereby drawing a distinct line between himself and his father. During the war with Japan (1937-1945) and the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949), Zhao performed extremely dangerous work as an underground agent for the Communists, establishing his credentials as a veteran revolutionary.

Life’s Work

As a low-level Communist bureaucrat, Zhao introduced several agricultural innovations and served as the secretary-general of the Communist Party sub-bureaucracy of south China from 1950 to 1954. His successful agricultural work led to a series of fairly rapid promotions within the Guangdong Communist Party to third secretary in 1954-1955 and third deputy secretary in 1955. He was even chosen to lead a harsh purge of Communist Party bureaucrats accused of corruption or having ties to the Chinese Nationalists.

Zhao’s career did not advance much during the 1957 through 1959 Great Leap Forward campaign of Communist Party chair Mao Zedong because his sound agricultural practices were at variance with Mao’s nonproductive policies. Mao’s disastrous policies produced the worst famine in human history, killing from 20 to 40 million Chinese people. Communist Party general-secretary Liu Shaoqi and others would push Mao from the day-to-day operations of the government, scrap Mao’s most damaging policies, and eventually rebuild Chinese agriculture.

In this new political environment, Zhao’s career once again advanced, as he was appointed Guangdong Communist Party secretary in 1962 and first secretary from 1965 to 1967. As a further indication of the party’s confidence in him, he was named a commissar of the People’s Liberation Army for the Guangdong military district in 1964 and served as the secretary of the South Central Bureaucracy from 1965 to 1967. These promotions came as the result of his support for Liu, which proved disastrous for Zhao when Mao attacked Liu during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Zhao was dismissed from his posts in 1967, paraded through the streets of the capital city (Guangzhou), and sentenced to forced labor in a factory.

The most intense phase of the Cultural Revolution was over by 1971, and Zhao was freed from forced labor and sent to Inner Mongolia, where he became the vice chair of the Provincial Revolutionary Committee and the Communist Party secretary. As Premier Zhou Enlai became increasingly incapacitated by cancer, he needed capable people to run the bureaucracy. He rehabilitated Zhao and sent him back to Guangdong Province in 1972 to serve as the Guangdong Revolutionary Committee vice chair in 1972 and the chair in 1974. He also was returned to his post as secretary and first secretary of the South Central Bureaucracy in 1972 and as member to the Tenth Communist Party Central Committee in 1973.

In 1975, Zhao went to Sichuan Province as first secretary of the Sichuan Communist Party Committee and chair of the Sichuan Revolutionary Committee. A year later, Zhao became the first political commissar of the People’s Liberation Army’s Chengdu Military District. Zhou Enlai died on January 8, 1976, but Zhao retained his posts until 1980. It was in Sichuan Province where the national spotlight first focused on Zhao as he carried out the initial agricultural experiments that ultimately became the economic reform known as the Household Responsibility System.

Despite the support of Deng Xiaoping and the people of Sichuan, Zhao faced strong opposition from Maoist radicals, who at one time held power in Sichuan. Zhao was the subject of repeated assassination attempts, including one in which his vehicle was ambushed during a trip through a narrow valley. Zhao survived but his driver was killed.

After the death of Mao in September, 1976, Zhao’s career again moved up as Deng began his rapid ascent to power in 1979 and 1980. Zhao was named an alternate member in 1977 and the executive chair and later vice chair of the Fifth National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 1978. He became a full member of the Eleventh Central Committee in 1979.

Deng successfully displaced Hua Guofeng in 1979 and placed Zhao as premier of the State Council and added him to the Standing Committee of the Politburo in 1980. In 1982, Zhao was given the position of minister of the State Commission for Economic Reconstruction. Because of a lack of transparency within the Chinese government, it is difficult to know whether the ideas for the Chinese economic reform originated with Zhao or whether he was merely acting as the lightning rod for ideas that came from Deng. Zhao clearly supported the economic reform initiative of Deng from 1980 until his fall from power in 1989, including the controversial push for price reform that led to the substantial inflation that drew considerable criticism in 1988. Almost certainly Zhao did not push this price reform without Deng’s support.

On political reform, the linkage between Zhao and Deng was far less clear. The conventional wisdom is that Zhao favored a greater range of political reform than did Deng. Zhao is credited with the first village elections in which non-Communist Party members were allowed to run and be elected village chiefs. Even this reform may have been at Deng’s instigation, with Zhao supporting it, with his name, to free Deng from culpability if the plan ran into trouble. Deng certainly found Zhao politically acceptable when it was necessary to replace Hu Yaobang as the Communist Party general-secretary after Hu failed to crack down hard enough on student demonstrators in 1986. As Zhao’s price reform ran into trouble in 1988, it appears that Zhao realized that he was in danger of being dismissed and may have seen the 1989 student demonstrations for democracy in China as a way to pressure the party to support greater political reform.

The student demonstrations of 1989 known variously as the Beijing Spring and the Tiananmen Square massacre marked the first public indication of a split between Deng and Zhao, as Zhao admitted in a public meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that Deng had the final word on all-important political decisions throughout the period. With this secret exposed, Deng withdrew his support of Zhao. A few days later, on May 18, 1989, in a hastily assembled Politburo meeting in Deng’s home, Zhao knew the end had arrived when he cast the lone vote against the imposition of martial law. A few hours later Zhao made his last public appearance when he went to talk to the demonstrators, telling them he had come too late but urging them to give up their hunger strike and leave Tiananmen Square. Later that day the party leader stripped him of his posts and placed him under house arrest, where he remained until his death on January 17, 2005.

Significance

Zhao was a major figure in developing the economic reform program that played such a major part in China’s economic transformation that began in 1980. Although it is unclear how much of that reform was his idea and not that of Deng or Hu, Zhao clearly supported the reform and pushed it forward. As the lightning rod for Deng’s program, he was always at risk of being replaced if Deng’s policies ran into trouble. That trouble developed in 1988-1989. Zhao ultimately was held responsible for the 1989 student demonstrations, the crackdown to quash the demonstrators, and the resulting deaths of hundreds of students, workers, and other supporters of democracy.

Bibliography

Hsü, Immanuel Chung-yueh. The Rise of Modern China. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. This massive history of modern China has become a professional standard and contains excellent accounts of the governmental activities of both Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang.

Pye, Lucian. The Mandarin and the Cadre: Chinese Political Cultures. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988. Pye continues his lifelong, outstanding analysis of Chinese government and political culture, arguing most significantly that Hu Yaobang was in the process of attempting to stage a political comeback at precisely the point when he died in April, 1989. Pye also argues that Zhao Ziyang was in a no-win situation as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Spence’s masterful history of modern China has fairly extensive coverage of both Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang and their activities as the top leaders in China in the 1980’s.

Yang Zhong Mei. Hu Yaobang: A Chinese Biography. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1988. This biography contains a wealth of factual material about Hu Yaobang and, although focused on him, it also contains a good deal of material on Zhao Ziyang as well. Written in a style typical of twentieth century Chinese writers who avoid analysis or speculation while focusing on minute facts.

Zhang Liang, comp. The Tiananmen Papers. Edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. Collection of hundreds of Communist Party and government documents that recount the positions of the leaders who crushed the demonstration. Features biographical sketches for one hundred of the individuals involved in the events.