ZHAO Ziyang, the former Communist Party leader who helped launch China's economic boom but was ousted after sympathising with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protesters, died earlier yesterday in a Beijing hospital. He was 85.

ZHAO Ziyang, the Chinese Communist Party leader deposed after he sympathised with the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, is in a deep coma and may be near death, a human rights activist said.