Ex-Chinese premier who backed Tiananmen protesters dies at 85

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.

The cause of death wasn't immediately announced but the official Xinhua News Agency said Mr Zhao suffered from multiple ailments of the respiratory and cardiovascular system and died "after failing to respond to all emergency treatment."

"He was very peaceful," said Frank Lu, a Hong Kong-based Chinese human rights activist who said he had spoken to Zhao's daughter Wang Yannan. "He was surrounded by all his family."

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

Mr Zhao, a former premier and dapper, articulate protégé of the late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, helped 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 fell out of favour with Deng and was purged on June 24, 1989, after the military crushed the student-led pro-democracy protests, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of people. Mr Zhao was accused of "splitting the party" by supporting demonstrators who wanted a faster pace of democratic reform.

He was last seen in public on May 19, 1989, the day before martial law was declared in Beijing when he made a tearful visit to Tiananmen Square to talk to student hunger strikers.

He apologised to the students, saying: "I have come too late."

"The Chinese leadership owes him a lot," said Yan Jiaqi, a former Zhao aide. "I hope to see the Beijing leadership formally express to the entire nation that Zhao Ziyang was the people's good premier."

The Chinese government took steps to minimise any public reaction to Mr Zhao's death. The official announcement to the Chinese public was limited to a two-sentence report carried on websites.

Mr Zhao was sometimes seen teeing off at Beijing golf courses or paying respects at the funerals of dead comrades but otherwise remained hidden.

Mr Zhao served as premier in 1980-1987, then took over as general secretary of the Communist Party, the most powerful post in China, under Deng.

Mr Zhao's 1989 downfall was not his first. Mao's "Red Guards" dragged him from his home in Guangzhou in 1967 and paraded him through the streets with a dunce cap before sending him into exile.

Mr Zhao was named party secretary and governor of Sichuan, China's most populous province, in 1975.

He dismantled the commune system, restored private plots and sidelined rural businesses, raised farm prices and revived bonuses for extra work. His pragmatic policies turned acute food shortages into bumper harvests and the "Sichuan Experience" became a model for the nation.

Mr Zhao was known as a believer in the Communist party but he also defined socialism much differently than Mao and other leftists.