Background
Zhou Enlai was born in Huai'an, Jiangsu province on 5 March 1898, the first son of his branch of the Zhou family.
赵紫阳
Zhou Enlai was born in Huai'an, Jiangsu province on 5 March 1898, the first son of his branch of the Zhou family.
Zhao Ziyang is not known to have been formally educated beyond secondary school though he was said to be well-versed in Marxism Leninism. Zhao's career was a string of seeming meritocratic promotions involving Party work in agriculture. Capable leadership of economic reform led to his appointment as prime minister (September 1980-April 1988) and as general secretary (January 1987-May 1989). He was removed from the inner circle during the Tiananmen episode.
Zhao joined the Party at age nineteen. In the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC), when Zhao was in his thirties and forties, he focused on rural affairs in Guangdong. He served under powerful regional leader Tao Zhu, and became known to other elite figures, as secretary general of the higher South Party China Sub-Bureau from 1951-1954, and with Tao in the still higher Party Central-South Bureau. In early 1965 he replaced Tao as first secretary of the Guangdong Province Party Committee.
When the Cultural Revolution broke out, at age forty-seven, Zhao’s prominence all but guaranteed he would become a prominent target. Red Guard groups held him under house arrest and questioned him for months at mass criticism rallies, but reportedly met their match in open debate.
Zhao refused to bend, and earned much respect for perseverence and for besting his accusers at ideological arguments. At the end of the Cultural Revolution decade, at fifty-six, Zhao was made first Party secretary in populous Sichuan, hard hit by the previous tumultuous decade and home of Deng Xiaoping. He attracted attention for stimulating revival of farm production by promoting rural free markets, private plots, decentralized land ownership and accounting, and a so-called household responsibility system. Deng recruited him to the new post-Mao leadership team at the center.
At age sixty (September 1979) Zhao was added to the Politburo, and in February 1980 to its standing committee, making up part of a narrow proreform majority on both leadership bodies. The following April he became vice-premier of the state council, and in September replaced Hua Guofeng as premier. As Deng Xiaoping approached eighty, Zhao and another Deng protege, Hu Yaobang, emerged as rivals ro succeed Deng at the top. Zhao's approach to reform emphasized productivity incentives within a political framework of continued central planning and administrative control. Hu's approach emphasized decentralization of budgets and decision-making to localities and enterprise managers. Conservative leaders fearing reform might cause central authority to weaken were suspicious of both but marginally preferred Zhao.
By 1987 bitter infighting led Deng to shift support tentatively to Zhao Ziyang. Zhao was named Party general secretary after conservatives forced out Hu. Zhao failed to win enough support from conservative People's Liberation Army (PLA) commanders to be appointed chair of the Military Affairs Commission (MAC). And conservative Li Peng assumed Zhao's old job as premier. Over the next two years Deng remained aloof from debates between Li and Zhao over the next phase of reform, and withheld explicit expression of confidence in Zhao himself. Zhao's proposals to separate Party and government, and move on enterprise reform, apparently went farther than Deng was prepared to go. Intellectuals wrote praise of Zhao's visions, implying of course that Deng was getting behind the times.
In 1989 he turned seventy. At Hu's death in April he delivered the eulogy. As “democracy” protests swelled in Beijing and other cities, angering control-minded conservatives, he urged a soft hand in dealing with them. In particular, Zhao ardently supported protesters' demands for an end to rampant official corruption. After Deng decided to get tough with protesters, Zhao was isolated, and after the June 4 crackdown he was dismissed as general secretary, his closest associates were imprisoned. He lived thereafter under house arrest as the leading symbol of anticorruption and more liberal politics, both views widely popular in China.
Because Zhao had risen to power through his work in the provinces, he never enjoyed strong connections among the Party leadership in Beijing. Because he had led the Communist Youth League in the 1950s, Zhao often relied on its former members for support, and Zhao's enemies accused him of promoting a "Communist Youth League faction" within the CCP. Among Beijing's Party elders, Chen Yun and Li Xiannian were notably critical of Zhao and his policies.
Despite his criticism of Zhao, Chen Yun was the Party elder most respected by Zhao, and Zhao would frequently attempt to consult with Chen before implementing new policies. Li Xiannian resented Zhao personally for Zhao's interest in foreign culture, and for Zhao's willingness to learn from economic models that had been successful outside of China. According to Zhao, Li Xiannian "hated me because I was implementing Deng Xiaoping's reforms, but since it was difficult for him to openly oppose Deng, he made me the target of the opposition."
Zhao wrote warmly of Hu Yaobang in his autobiography, and generally agreed with Hu on the direction of China's economic reforms. Although Deng Xiaoping was Zhao's only firm supporter among the Party elders, Deng's support was sufficient to protect Zhao throughout Zhao's career. As late as April 1989, one month before the dramatic end of Zhao's career, Deng assured Zhao that he had secured the support of Chen Yun and Li Xiannian for Zhao to serve two more full terms as Party general secretary.
The second half of 1988 saw the increasing deterioration of Zhao's political support. Zhao found himself in multi-front turf battles with the Party elders, who grew increasingly dissatisfied with Zhao's hands-off approach to ideological matters. The conservative faction in the politburo, led by Premier Li Peng and Vice-premier Yao Yilin, were constantly at odds with Zhao in economic and fiscal policy making. Zhao was under growing pressure to combat runaway corruption by rank-and-file officials and their family members. In the beginning of 1989, it was evident that Zhao was faced with an increasingly difficult uphill battle, and he may have seen that he was fighting for his own political survival. If Zhao was unable to turn things around rapidly, a showdown with the Party conservatives would be all but inevitable. The student protests triggered by the sudden death of former CPC general secretary Hu Yaobang, widely admired as a reform-minded leader, created a crisis in which Zhao was forced into a confrontation with his political enemies.
