Zhao Ziyang

[jou zœ-yahng]

noun

1. 1919–2005, Chinese Communist leader: premier 1980–87; general secretary of the Communist Party 1987–89.

Example Sentences

As Mr. Bird tells us, Fok explained to Zhao Ziyang, China’s premier in the 1980s, that in Hong Kong “the government owned all of the land and funded its own capital expenditures with an extensive land-leasing program.”

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Beijing last purged an incumbent CMC vice chair in 1989, when Zhao Ziyang was removed as the party’s general secretary and the CMC’s first-ranked vice chairman over his perceived softness in handling student protests in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

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When student protesters occupied Tiananmen Square to demand democratization and an end to official corruption, Mr. Yan was sent as an intermediary by the reformist party secretary, Zhao Ziyang, who wanted to persuade the students to end a hunger strike and ensure a successful visit to Beijing by Mr. Gorbachev.

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In 1989, Yan was a member of the four-person Secretariat under then-General Secretary Zhao Ziyang when student-led protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square appealed for a public voice in government and an easing of strict social and political controls.

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Party elders picked Jiang to replace General Secretary Zhao Ziyang amid the party’s greatest crisis in the post-Mao era.

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