Prisoner of the State

This review was originally published on Amazon.com in 2009.

Anyone who has any interest in contemporary Chinese history or current state of China should read it. Even those who have no interest in China can benefit from reading this book (I will explain this later). I received the book as a gift when I was debating whether I should wait for its Chinese version, and I was not supposed to have time to read it, but once I started reading it, I could not stop. Once I finished reading it, I could not help starting writing this review. Actually the Chinese version came out in Hong Kong on the day when I started reading this book, and all of its 14,000 copies were sold out in two hours.

It is very important to keep in mind what this book is not. It is not an autobiography. It is not a scholarly work trying to provide a complete account of certain historic events. It is primarily a person's memoir about two very important series of events of modern China – the June 4th incident and the economic reforms. The memoir was recorded secretly by a person under house arrest with little means to research.

Since many people use autobiographies and memoirs to defend, praise themselves by twisting facts, telling partial truth or even tell outright lies, one cannot help asking whether this book falls into this category. My answer is firmly no. I draw this conclusion based on the following:

1. Everything in the book is consistent with various reports published by media that are not Chinese government mouthpiece, or anecdotes in the past two decades. In other words, it is very easy to find plenty of evidence to support the stories told in the memoir.
2. A common way to let people make the judgment on any controversy is letting two sides present their cases. The Chinese government has been exclusively presenting their case on the author and relevant events for two decades in China suppressing any dissent with an iron fist (Latest news: all computers sold in China must be installed government mandated screening software from July 1, 2009 on) . This book will surely be banned in China. Their fear of dissemination of or inquiry about some facts shows the weakness of their arguments. Actually the author includes the complete list of the 30 points of the government's accusations against him (p 63). Some of them are true and Zhao was proud of them. The opposing side's arguments only add more credibility to the memoir.
3. Zhao is famous for his objectivity. This is reflected more than anything else by his treatment of Deng Xiaoping. Deng purged Zhao and he was the only person with the power to do this. He was also the only person who could free Zhao or offer a little bit more freedom that Zhao was yearning for, but he never did. Zhao did not use his memoir to bash Deng. To the contrary, he gave plenty of credit to Deng for playing a critical role in the reforms that he carried out. Even regarding Deng's decision to use the military to crack down the protests, he did not describe Deng as a ruthless butcher. His assessment of Deng is shared by many people including this reviewer.

However, this is his side of the story. I wish he had told more – more about his early life, more credits to Hu Yaobang, Wan Li, two other key figures who made enormous contributiona to the reforms; but I can understand the limitation of this memoir. Recording 30 tapes under house arrest and sneaking them out is an extraordinary feat by itself.

About a third of the memoir is about the June 4th. Though almost all of Zhao's accounts of the events have been reported to a certain degree one way or another, the memoir offers a unique coherent description of what happened at the top of the government and especially the details of Zhao's thoughts and actions. It clarifies the roles of all the top key players in the government. Deng, the unofficial de facto paramount leader, had the final say in any major decisions. The hardliners had upper hands over reformers such as Zhao. Zhao's assessment of the events during the chaotic period is consistent with that of most objective observers. This shows how well he was connected with the people, how calm and objective he maintained. "I refused to become the General Secretary who mobilized the military to crack down on students”. This statement and his consistent actions show that between the interest of people and his own power, he chose the former. He lost all but a confined body and a noble soul. Even after losing the highest official position of the government, he had many opportunities to retain significant privileges. All he needed to do was to bend to admit "his wrong doing” and ask for forgiveness, but he chose to stand straight and fight in every possible way he could for justice. He was effectively pushed aside about two weeks before the massacre, so the memoir does offer any detailed account of the military move. He kept fighting lies, appealing for reassessment of the June 4th and his rehabilitation. Was he knowingly fighting in vain? No. The Chinese Communist Party has launched political campaigns one after another in its short history, and a large number of people were purged in each campaign, then many of them were rehabilitated. Both Deng and Zhao were purged during the Cultural Revolution and rehabilitated later. The possibility of regaining freedom for Zhao did exist but was remote. Many people were rehabilitated after the Cultural Revolution primarily because the person who was ultimately responsible for their purge Mao died and the Gang of Four who executed many purges were arrested. Though Zhao outlived Deng, but the beneficiaries of the June 4th such as Jiang Zemin and Li Peng were still in power. It is worthwhile note that the government's view of the June 4th has changed significantly implicitly. As Yao Jianfu, a scholar and keen observer of Chinese politics pointed out the word that the government has used to refer to the June 4th has evolved from incriminating to neutral for the past two decades as following: "anti-party, anti-socialist turmoil”, "political turmoil”, "turmoil”, "political disturbance”, "disturbance”, "incident”.

For those who argue that the government crackdown on the movement enabled the sustained high growth grate of China, I'd like to point out that the economic growth slowed down dramatically after the June 4th until Deng Xiaping realized in 1992 that reforms needed to be resumed to prevent the loss of all that had been achieved, and he made the famous southern tour that effectively continued Zhao's economic reforms without saying it explicitly. (Disclosure: I am a witness to the June 4th and spent the darkest night from Xinhuamen, Tiananmen to Hepingmen as a graduate student in uniform in Beijing at that time.)

Approximately two thirds of the memoir is about reform. Actually the Chinese version of the memoir is titled The Journey of Reforms. As described by the book, Deng made the reform and opening of China possible, but Zhao was largely responsible for the ideas and their implementation. This has been widely acknowledged. Zhao's success started much earlier before he was promoted to the premier position. I am the witness to his early success in Sichuan province where I grew up. Sichuan has been historically known as the "Land of Abundance” because its rich soil and suitable weather for agricultural production. However, toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, when Zhao was assigned the top government post there, the economy was so bad like the rest of China that even the easily grown vegetable bok choy was rationed let alone the staple grains. Soon after the death of Mao hence the end of the Cultural Revolution, Zhao carried out a series of reforms and the economy recovered very quickly. Things were changing so fast that even a few months time was long enough to see noticeable changes everywhere. There are all kinds of anecdotes about Zhao's down to earth style, unexpected visits of places to obtain the true pictures without sugarcoating by local officials. Zhao is a sharp contrast to one of his predecessors: Li Jingquan under whom 10 million people starved to death during the Great Leap in the late 1950s. Quite a few of my high school classmates are the kids of Zhao's lieutenants or aides including his successor as the first party secretary of Sichuan. They did not show any sign of being privileged, consistent with Zhao's style.

The memoir details the evolution of Zhao's thinking regarding reforms. It does not indicate in the slightest way that Zhao was a genius economist, instead it shows he was a keen objective student and pragmatist with the passion to serve the people. It reveals the tough battles he had to fight against hard-liners. Deng was critical to his victories, but Deng was also responsible for preventing the badly needed political reform. Deng never allowed any compromise of the CCP's absolute dictating power. Though Zhao's enormous contribution to the reforms is unquestionable and widely acknowledged, I wish the memoir acknowledges more of the great contribution to the economic reforms by another pragmatist leader – Wan Li, and the extraordinary contribution in the political front by another courageous leader, Zhao's predecessor Hu Yaobang. Without Hu's sweeping effort in rehabilitating many pro-reform officials, intellectuals and fighting the leftists to create the atmosphere for the economic reforms, Zhao's job would have been much more difficult and his achievement would have been much more limited.

The memoir is very critical of a few Zhao's enemies but in a very civil way. These people sought Zhao's destruction and this is well known. I'd like to talk about them here to second Zhao's criticisms of them and show they deserve harsher words. Li Peng, then premier, is well a reported figure known for his very limited intellect and hard-line stand. Deng Liqun, known as the "left king”, was the foremost antagonist of reforms. He was the prime mover of the anti-spiritual pollution campaign in early 1980s. The so called "spiritual pollution” includes a broad range of things. For example, love or sexual oriented scenes in the literature, different art forms were regarded as "spiritual pollution” at that time. Ridiculously Deng Liqun's mixture of work and sex is so despicable and disgusting that I cannot bring myself to discuss it here. Zhao only used the vague phrase "moral problem” to just touch it. He mainly criticized Deng Liqun's assault on the reforms from the theoretical front. Zhao abolished Red Flag, a magazine used by Deng as his primary weapon. I was a victim of Red Flag's poison. I red its every issue until I entered college. It took me years to wash out the poison and start to truly appreciate all the significant reforms in the 1980's. It was not just Zhao who despised Deng Liqun. Deng was so unpopular that he could not be elected to the CCP's central committee even the senior leaders tried to promote him to the politburo of the central committee. He failed again to garner enough votes to be elected to the Standing Committee of the Central Advisory Commission even Zhao was kind enough to promote the move. This kind of loss is very rare for a prominent party member because the number of candidates is only slightly bigger than the seats in any CCP's internal election. Even today, Deng Liqun has not stopped his vicious attacks on Zhao with outright lies. Wang Zhen, another Zhao hater, is famous for his ruthlessness. His killing of Uighurs, especially their intellectuals, in Xingjiang sowed the seeds of hatred that still produce conflicts, pains and fear. If he had had his way, the June 4th massacre would probably have had taken tens of thousands of lives instead of thousands. His ruthlessness has nothing to do with his military background. Most early senior CCP leaders were from the military. Actually it was due to the appeals and warnings of many conscientious top military elders such as Marshal Xu, Marshal Nie, General Zhang Aiping that the massacre was prevented from escalating to a much larger scale. These are true brilliant former military commanders who won battles involving casualties of literally tens of thousands in World War II and the Chinese Civil War. However, the most famous achievement by Wang Zhen during war time is this 359th brigade's successful "agricultural production”. There is strong evidence that the "agricultural production” includes opium trade that generated a large amount of cash badly needed by CCP in early 1940s. Li Xiannian, another Zhao hater, can be best understood by looking at his entire career and especially how he treated his colleagues including those of the Fourth Front Red Army, the West Route Army purged brutally by Mao. Mao waged many political campaigns to cleanse CCP in order to consolidate and secure his power. Many people were purged in each campaign. Li always came out OK even when he was at a wrong spot. The only time he showed some principle was in 1969 when he joined a large number of senior leaders to criticize the Cultural Revolution. That was likely his miscalculation. He was punished briefly before he was promoted to the highest position he had ever held by then, and this was in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. He certainly knew very well how to sense the wind direction, read the mind of people with dictating power such as Mao, Deng, and please them accordingly.

The last chapter is Zhao's vision for China's future. It is very telling that a loyal communist party member came to the conclusion that the parliamentary system is the best available system. He made this conclusion with his characteristic objectivity. He believed this system can prevent "commercialization of power, rampant corruption, a society polarized between rich and poor” that exist countries such as China which wealth disparity ranks number one in the world currently. He thought the parliamentary system "is not perfect; it has many problems” and "it is possible that in the future a more advanced political system than parliamentary democracy will emerge. However that is a matter for the future. At present, there is no other”. His suggested approach to achieve this system also reflects his characteristic pragmatism. He thought the democratizing process should be started within CCP while maintaining the ruling position of the party and smoothly transition to the parliamentary system with pace adjusted according to the social development.

Like many legendary figures, Zhao will certainly be written in Chinese history eventually as a noble official who put the interest of the country and people first, refused to sell his soul or kneel down to the ruler, was loyal to his family.

Zhao was a human being after all so he was fallible.  There is no doubt that he was complacent with Mao's political cleansing and disastrous economic policies in 1950s like the vast majority of government officials, but he protected many intellectuals, moderated the Great Leap Forward execution, and especially, did an extraordinary job in remedying the damage in early 60s which later contributed to his dismissal and being forced to labor in a factory for 4 years during the Cultural Revolution. He actively participated in the land reform which resulted in the killing of over a million land owners including his father. However, Zhao did try to prevent the land reform from going extreme at one point by issuing a moratorium on many measures in his district. I wish he had expanded the memoir to an autobiography detailed his fascinating journey of life. Zhao's primary interest was in economy. Politics was something that he had to deal with. This probably explains why he did not rally many people in the top to build a strong reform alliance. The memoir shows that he relied on Deng frequently as a short cut to maneuver politics. It is said that he heavily utilized a think tank of elites (the memoir did not shed much light on this), and this alienated many elders. Very unfortunately, Hu Yaobang did not have the chance to write his memoir. I hope there will be a memoir by Wan Li.

This memoir is worth reading even for people who are not interested in China. It can help the appreciation of freedom, liberty and protection provided by a democratic government and free press all of which are often taken for granted. It can help disillusion of totalitarian regimes. It can help understanding of the heterogeneity of communists some of whom share the same goal of prosperity and justice for the people,H and they can be set free by the truth hence embrace true democracy. If some democratic powers can restore their status of shining beacons that have been diminished by various events since 2003, the dramatic advancement of the world of 1980s can happen again ridding of many of the remaining totalitarian regimes. Though Zhao was under house arrest for his last 16 years, but his soul was free.

Though he has passed away, but he lives in the hearts of many people who admire and are grateful to him. I have no doubt his statues will be raised on the land by the people that he loved so much that he devoted all his life to.