An Octogenarian Tweaks the Party Elite Again

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Last fall we mentioned Du Daozheng, a former high-level Party cadre and publisher of the reformist magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu. At that time he was resisting official efforts to force him to step down from the publication. It turns out that Du was up to much more than fighting for the magazine. Reuters reports that he had a key role in convincing deposed leader Zhao Ziyang to compile his memoirs:

In a statement explaining his role in making the memoirs, Du said it was time to rehabilitate Zhao, ousted in 1989 by Party conservatives who accused him of siding with the protesters.

“At the major historic juncture of June 4, Zhao Ziyang acted responsibly to the Chinese nation, to history and to ordinary people,” Du said in the statement, which will appear in the Chinese-language version of Zhao’s memoirs to be published in separately administered Hong Kong this month.

Zhao’s book, which came out this month–four years after his death–has further explained the rift at the top of the Communist Party that precipitated the June 4 killings. It has been sold out at Hong Kong bookstores. In Beijing, the book has been officially ignored.