China's former party chief dies

Zhao Ziyang, a reformist toppled as China's Communist Party chief in 1989 for opposing an army crackdown on the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, has died in hospital, his family say. He was 85.

The one-time heir-apparent to Deng Xiaoping, his long party career defined by the moment he tearfully pleaded with student protesters in the square, spent his last 15 years confined to house arrest by successors who feared his residual influence as an icon of reform.

"He is free at last," Mr Ziyang's daughter, Wang Yannan, said in a statement obtained by Reuters. Her father died in a coma at a Beijing hospital early yesterday after a series of strokes.

He spent the final years of his life sequestered behind the red doors of a courtyard home in central Beijing, emerging only for brief visits to the provinces or to the golf course. Unmarked cars and police were ever-present on the street outside.

The long years of house arrest were "a showcase of shame for Chinese justice and for the Chinese Communist Party itself", Mr Ziyang's former aide, Bao Tong, wrote. Mr Tong himself was jailed for seven years in 1989 and remains under close surveillance.

Mr Ziyang, accused of splitting the party after opposing the decision of Mr Xiaoping, then China's paramount leader, to crush the Tiananmen protests, remained a politically sensitive figure amid government fears his death could spark a groundswell of protest.

Yesterday, a mere scattering of tourists, Beijing residents and guards walked in the vast wintry expanse of Tiananmen Square. Irish flags flew to mark a visit by Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.

The successors of a man linked with pushing economic reforms in the early 1980s fear his death could serve as a rallying point for reformers, for workers bitter at high unemployment and for poor farmers envious of wealthy urban residents.

He was never again seen in public after May 19, 1989, when he went to the square and urged student demonstrators to leave. The next day the government declared martial law and the army, backed by tanks, crushed the protests on June 3-4. Hundreds were killed.

Mr Ziyang, a farming expert and the son of a landlord, was sacked as party general secretary. Jiang Zemin took his place, ruling for more than a decade before handing over to Hu Jintao in 2002.

China's political and economic landscape has been transformed since 1989, and after years of being kept from public view, Mr Ziyang remains largely an enigma for younger Chinese.

"The leadership will take precautions anyway, with stepped-up security and surveillance - they always do," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert at the University of Michigan.

"But will this be a spark for another protest movement? I have no idea. But I would doubt that it would," he said.

While Mr Ziyang's reforms helped give birth to a new middle class, social pressures provide the potential for unrest.

"That was a time the regime was in deep trouble. Now it seems the regime is rather well consolidated," said Andrew Nathan, a China expert at Columbia University.

"But on the other hand, the cities are full of petitioners and migrant workers and laid-off factory workers and pensioners without pensions, so it's a dangerous mix of people who may take the opportunity to remember," said Mr Nathan.

"He stood for something better."

China is leaving nothing to chance.

The government tightened security around the square once Mr Ziyang's health began to deteriorate last week. Police and plainclothes agents stopped foreign reporters outside his home.

His successors have reason to fear his posthumous influence.

The death in January 1976 of populist premier Zhou Enlai led to an outpouring of grief and protests on Tiananmen Square. The death of purged reformist party chief Hu Yaobang in April 1989 set off the demonstrations that culminated in the army massacre.

Taiwan cabinet spokesman Chen Chi-mai urged China to learn from Mr Ziyang's "spirit of tolerance and to push democratic and political reforms simultaneously and respect different voices in society". Beijing and Taipei have been bitter rivals since Nationalist forces fled to the island on losing the mainland civil war in 1949.

Beijing's leaders have repeatedly ruled out any shift towards Western-style democracy. Indeed, a news blackout existed even as Mr Ziyang's health began to fail.

He was taken to hospital on December 5 for chronic pneumonia and had been in a coma since Friday after multiple strokes.

"He died at 7:01 a.m.. The medical report is not out yet," Mr Ziyang's son, Liang Fang, who adopted his mother's surname, told Reuters.

"National leaders came to pay respects but it is not convenient to say who they are," said Mr Fang.

Such acts are delicate in China's hierarchy, and indicate the finesse that Mr Ziyang's successors must exercise as they decide the level of ceremony with which to salute the passing of a leader who was one of their own without evoking popular anger.

"The thing about him is he never recanted, he never admitted he'd done anything wrong, so that made him an awkward person for the party leadership to deal with," Mr Nathan said.

The official Xinhua news agency confirmed Mr Ziyang's death in a terse report, referring to him as "comrade" - technically leaving room for political rehabilitation at some stage.

"This is the end of an era," said Jiang Peikun, husband of retired professor Ding Zilin, whose teenage son was killed in the crackdown. "At present there is no person like him on the Chinese political stage. No one can replace him."