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Deposed Chinese leader Zhao dies

BEIJING - Zhao Ziyang, the former Chinese Communist Party leader who helped pioneer reforms that launched China's economic boom but was ousted after the 1989 Tiananmen Square prodemocracy protests, died today (Jan. 17, 2005) at a Beijing hospital. He was 85.

The cause of death wasn't immediately announced, but the official announcement of Mr. Zhao's passing said he suffered from multiple ailments of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

Mr. Zhao had lived under house arrest for 15 years. A premature report of his death last week prompted the Chinese news agency to break its long silence about him and disclose that he had been hospitalized.

Mr. Zhao, a former premier and dapper, articulate protege of the late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, helped to forge bold economic reforms in the 1980s that brought China new prosperity and flung open its doors to the outside world.

In the end, he was purged on June 24, 1989, after the military crushed the student-led prodemocracy protests. He was accused of "splitting the party" by supporting student-led demonstrators who wanted a faster pace of democratic reform. Mr. Zhao had been under house arrest since then.

During the Tiananmen protests, Mr. Zhao called for compromise and expressed sympathy for some of the students' demands. But his adversaries, led by Premier Li Peng, overruled him, called in the military and used the turmoil to attack Mr. Zhao and his faction.

He helped initiate sweeping changes that invigorated an economy mired in the ruins of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Austere central planning gave way to material incentives and market forces that made China the world's fastest-growing economy.

Those changes also brought inflation, income gaps between the rich and poor, corruption and other problems that Mr. Zhao would be blamed for when the conservatives drove him from power.

Mr. Zhao's 1989 downfall was not his first. Mao Tse-tung's youthful Red Guards dragged him from his home in Guangzhou in 1967 and paraded him through the streets with a dunce cap on his head before sending him off for years of internal exile.

The son of a landlord, he was born in 1919 in Henan province. He joined the Communist Youth League in 1932 and became a full-fledged party member in 1938.

Mr. Zhao was known as a solid believer in the party. But he defined socialism much differently from Mao and other leftists.

"What is socialism?" Mr. Zhao asked in 1979. "The hallmark of socialism is the public ownership of the means of production, and the principle of socialism is "to each according to his work."'

Mr. Zhao married twice and had four sons and a daughter. His second wife was Liang Boqi.

[Last modified January 17, 2005, 01:06:09]