THE TELEGRAPH: Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party leader, has spoken from beyond the grave to break two decades of official silence on the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 with a wide-ranging attack on the Chinese political system.
In extracts from a secretly recorded memoir, the purged general-secretary denounced the decision to send in the tanks and rebuked his party for failing to embrace the democracy which he claimed was an essential companion to economic reform.
Published four years after his death Zhao, a reformist who pleaded with China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to take a softer line with the protesting students, described the killings as a "tragedy".
Recalling the moment he finally knew his efforts to prevent bloodshed were in vain, Zhao wrote: "On the night of June 3, while sitting in the courtyard with my family, I heard intense gunfire. A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted, and was happening after all."
He goes on to call for the introduction of democracy in China to rectify the country's social problems.
"It is the Western parliamentary democratic system that has demonstrated the most vitality," says Zhao. "If we don't move toward this goal, it will be impossible to resolve the abnormal conditions in China's market economy." >>> By Peter Foster in Beijing | Thursday, May 14, 2009
