China: Publisher Speaks on Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

Zhao Ziyang is a name that is not really spoken in China, taboo since the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.

The former Chinese premier and general secretary was an advocate for market reform and anti-corruption.

But it was his sympathy for the student protesters at Tiananmen Square that saw him ousted from the CCP and subsequently placed under house arrest until his death in 2005.

[Bao Pu, Hong Kong-based Publisher]:

“It was moving because a politician was making moral choices and he did what he could. And that was the last thing he could do.”

Bao Pu has just published Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.

He compiled it from secret recordings made during Zhao’s detention. The book speaks of the corruption within the CCP ranks and gives context to the CCP’s political motivation for the slaughter of students in 1989.

Bao says despite China’s information blockade, within days of the book being published, copies had been pirated and posted on websites in the Mainland.

And many other people have been using USB drives to spread the book, he says.

[Bao Pu, Hong Kong-based Publisher]:

“The most significant part of this book is it serves as the restoration of part of history that has been lost. And this part of history is important to today’s China. It went through the areas of reform, and the so-called reform was basically a dismantling process to dismantle Mao’s China.”

Bao is the son of Bao Tong, who at one time served as Zhao’s secretary. Bao was also one of the student protestors at Tiananmen.

He said that his father warned him about the massacre, but he truly did not believe the CCP was capable of such ruthless killing.

[Bao Pu, Hong Kong-based Publisher]:

“Not until you see somebody wounded, with a hole in the stomach, can you… people started to realize that it was a real bullet. It shows you that there was this kind of faith in the government, that they would not do such a thing.”

He says the Tiananmen massacre changed the way people viewed the CCP, and also stopped many people from openly speaking out again. But at the same time, because of China’s information blockade, many Chinese still do not even know about the tragedy.

This is NTD, New York.

(NTDTV)