Prisoner of the state: The secret journal of Zhao Ziyang Translated and edited by Bao Pu, Renee Hiang, and Adi Ignatius, Simon & Schuster, $20

Zhao Ziyang, who once held the two most important positions in the country as premier and general secretary of the CPC, was once part of that world. Then, on the eve of the Tiananmen massacre of June 3-4 in 1989, he became a victim of that cloak-and-dagger world. Accused of sympathizing with the pro-democracy student demonstrators and thereby abetting the “political turmoil”, and hastily removed as the party chief, he spent the next 16 years under house arrest until his death in 2005.

Over the next 20 years, China’s rulers tried everything to banish both the Tiananmen tragedy and Zhao from history and public memory. Even a mention of either could bring a knock on the door by the dreaded men of the public security bureau. But there were always too many people who forgot or forgave nothing. Zhao’s memoir, secretly recorded on audio tapes hidden among his grandchildren’s toys in his study and smuggled out to Hong Kong, has now not only reopened old wounds but has also exposed the men who caused them.

Curiously, for the first time in 20 years, a new government-controlled English newspaper, Global Times, carried a long, front-page article on the Tiananmen “incident” in its June 4 edition this year. How and why did it happen?

A friend from Beijing tells me that the idea came from the editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, “who is something of a maverick”. My friend also recalls how, on the night of June 3, the story was undergoing “revision after revision after revision” because the Chinese staff had “a genuine fear that they would all come to a shutdown office the next day”. The fact that the paper is part of the group publishing the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the CPC, makes the event particularly significant. Of course, it was an attempt at vindicating the party line; but the world took note of Tiananmen staging a comeback in the official Chinese media.

Barely two weeks before the Global Times surprise, Reuters reported from Beijing that “a group of intellectuals … recently met to urge an end to official silence about the bloodshed 20 years ago. Their speeches are now circulating on some Chinese-language internet sites and through email.” The report quoted Cui Weiping, a Beijing-based academic, as saying, “This secret is in fact a toxin poisoning the air around us and affecting our whole lives and spirit.”

It is thus a fair guess that Zhao’s book will act as a powerful force multiplier for those who will not let the party erase that history. It is uncertain, though, what effect it can have on millions of young, ordinary Chinese who know little about Zhao or the truth about Tiananmen.

Broadly, the issues Zhao deals with fall into three major categories — his struggle against party conservatives to find a peaceful resolution of the Tiananmen conflict, the battle for political and economic reform and the power struggle within the top leadership. And, of course, straddling all three is the figure of the paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, who ordered the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square on that fateful day. Citing the party charter, he shows how both decisions — the military crackdown and his own dismissal — had no ‘legal’ validity.

His account makes it clear that for all the back-stabbing and intrigues by his conservative opponents in the party leadership, Zhao’s fall was ultimately Deng’s doing. But then, his rise too was because of Deng’s support. No wonder Zhao’s assessment of Deng is somewhat ambivalent. Deng, he says, “always stood out among the Party elders as the one who emphasized the means of dictatorship.” On the other hand, he remains an unabashed Deng acolyte as far as economic reform was concerned.

A similar ambivalence marks his portrayal of Chen Yun, the veteran architect of China’s planned economy, who pleaded for a cautious approach to market economy.

His most damning judgment is, however, reserved for men like Li Peng, who was premier during the Tiananmen tragedy, vice-premier Yao Yilin, Li Xiannian, Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun, known as “little Deng” but no relative of Deng Xiaoping. This coterie of conservatives, aided by Chen Yun, made things difficult for Zhao and his reformist agenda and poisoned Deng Xiaoping’s ears against him. But it is Li Peng who emerges as the real villain of the piece.

And what about the portrait of Zhao himself that the book presents? No doubt he was keen on both economic and political reform. In fact, his agricultural reforms in Sichuan, where he served as party chief before Deng called him over to Beijing, are ample proof of his innovative ideas. In fact, in his excellent foreword to the book, Roderick MacFarquhar goes as far as to put Zhao above Deng in making a “conceptual breakthrough” in both farming reforms and the hugely successful coastal development strategy.

As for his zeal for political reform, the book offers a mixed impression. He hailed Western-type parliamentary democracy and cited the examples of Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, but thought China would need a long period of transition to graduate to such a system. Somehow, one cannot escape the feeling that his late advocacy of democracy is an attempted atonement for creating a system that has now rejected him.

Zhao’s self-portrait also has a pathetic ring. Once so powerful a man, he is, in the twilight of his life, powerless to even persuade his captors to let him go out to play golf or go to the southern provinces to escape the cruel winter of northern China.

It is possible that Zhao’s limited quest for political reform may have a greater appeal for the ordinary Chinese than Deng’s economic magic once they tire of their rulers’ policy of trading freedom for prosperity.